Pierre Omidyar

Pierre is married to a biology graduate and co-founder in most of his ventures, Pamela Wesley, and the two have been blessed with three children.

In 2010, Omidyar, along with Pamela, Richard Branson, and the 'Nduna Foundation', founded the 'Enterprise Zimbabwe', as a venture aimed at helping the nation develop their economy.

Pierre Morad Omidyar was born to Iranian settlers, Elahé Mir-Djalali Omidyar, and her husband, in Paris, on June 21, 1967.His mother is a renowned linguistics scholar, and his father was employed at the 'Johns Hopkins University' as a surgeon.

The family later settled down in the U.S, where the young boy attended the 'Potomac School', Virginia. He eventually completed his secondary education in 1984, from 'St. Andrew's Episcopal School' in Maryland.

In 1988, Pierre earned his bachelor's degree from Massachusetts' 'Tufts University', with a specialization in computer science. After graduating, he worked for a few years at a company called ‘Claris’ that developed some of the software used by 'Apple Inc.'.

In 1991, this software enthusiast, along with Arnold Blinn, Greg Stein, Will Poole, and Matt Kursh, founded a small-scale pen computing firm named, 'Ink Development'.

Two years later, the founders of 'Ink Development' rechristened the company to 'eShop', and began focussing on e-commerce.

On September 4, 1995, Omidyar inaugurated an internet site called 'Auction Web', which allowed users to buy and sell items online.

Within a span of one year, the brilliant businessman acquired the license to sell airplane tickets on the site. In 1996, he also hired the proficient engineer, 'Jeffrey Skoll', to work with him on 'Auction Web'.

In 1997, 'Auction Web' was renamed as 'eBay', after his initial choice of 'echobay' was already in use. During the same period auctions of items on sale had hit an average of 800,000 per day.

His most successful establishment has been that of ‘eBay’, which started out as a small-scale e-business website. However in recent times, it has earned billions of dollars, and has also launched subsidiaries like ‘Half.com’, ‘Kijiji’, and ‘StubHub’.