The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 29 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
PayPal sold to eBay primarily because the team was completely exhausted
“The reason ultimately eBay was able to acquire us is because the team was so overloaded over the four years of previous life.”
Collison: PayPal was designed for consumers, not scalable business integration
“So the basic issue with PayPal was that it's designed for consumers, not for businesses. And so if you're building an app, if you're building, you know, a website, if you're building a new marketplace, something like this, PayPal works okay for sending, you kn…”
Newmark says eBay's Kijiji was never a real Craigslist competitor
“In part, I don't perceive them being a competitor because they don't have the same vibe, the same mission that we do.”
Zennström: Skype Was the Largest Post-Dot-Com Internet Acquisition Globally
“The largest Internet M&A before us was PayPal to eBay, right? One point by a billion. And So this was like two X. And then you had. This is amazing. YouTube. YouTube was also 1.6 billion or something like that. Yeah. Also the same year with Google. So this was…”
Zennström: Early 2000s European VCs Primarily Funded US Internet Copycats
“The model for European VCs at the time was to invest in a copycat of a U.S. Internet company, and use the language barrier as a moat. So you kind of was really smart to invest in say a German copycat of eBay because eBay would probably buy them or a Nordic ver…”
Kalin: Modern marketplaces like Etsy and eBay optimize for buyers, not sellers
“And you look at a marketplace, like, I would say Etsy now, or eBay, And the primary customer is clearly the buyer, where the whole experience is optimized on the buying side, to the point where, you know, I pay a listing fee, and here's my item, but the websit…”
Craigslist approved eBay's investment after eBay claimed a shared community mission
“EBay told us that they had the same community mission, the same vibe that we did. We were convinced of it. So we authorized that guy to sell his equity to eBay.”
Zennström: eBay Acquired Skype for $2.6B Upfront Plus a $500M Earn-Out
“EBay coming up with, like, a really attractive offer. 2.6 billion and a 500 million earn out.”
Rubin: Fanatics Commerce division grew from $250M to $6.7B in revenue
“The business has grown from two hundred fifty million dollars when I bought it back from eBay, to this year that division is like a 6.7 billion dollar business, ok?”
Liu: Automated e-commerce price arbitrage remains viable across platforms today
“You can still do that today, and you can do, like, even more, right? So now there are, like, cross-border companies. You can actually scrape those companies and list down on eBay.”
Kalin: Cold-start marketplace inertia requires an organic community to start the flywheel
“Overcoming inertia in the early stages of a marketplace is incredibly difficult. It's almost impossible, which is why, you know, there were so many eBay clones that never went anywhere. And, you know, you need to be able to tell a compelling story, and you nee…”
Levchin: eBay Should Have Won Payments Race Against PayPal With Billpoint
“And so it was kind of a race, which they should have absolutely won because they had a Product that was supposed to do what we did that they owned, that could be built in, that, you know, could be promoted much, much, much better than we could.”
Levchin: eBay Offered to Buy PayPal to Stop Its 2002 IPO
“Right as we filed to go public, they came in and said, Hey we'll we'll buy you. Don't go public. And we said no.”
Tolia: Shopping.com Went Public And Was Acquired By eBay For ~$620M-$630M
“We merged with another private company. We renamed the entire thing shopping.com. And believe it or not, shopping.com ultimately went public. Had a bit of a mixed track record, but ultimately was bought by eBay for, I think, about 626 hundred thirty million.”
Founders Spent $65,000 Cash on an eBay Candy Wrapper Machine
“We spent 65,000 cash on a candy wrapper machine off of eBay, and it's arriving on a truck.”
Rubin: Bought back Fanatics and GSI's licensed business for $330M
“We bought back Fanatics, including the licensed business that GSI had for three hundred thirty million bucks.”
Shear: Kiko Sold on eBay for $265,000 After 13 Bids
“It was on eBay. I believe 265,000 dollars was the winning bid. 13 bidders.”
Levchin: In 1999, individual eBay sellers could not process credit cards online
“Back in 99, there really isn't a way to take a credit card payment online if you were trying to sell things. For a business, there were a couple of companies that kind of provided that service. But if you were a, like, a normal person just trying to sell somet…”
Levchin: PayPal crashed for multiple hours every Monday in 2001
“Every Monday when eBay auctions would settle, the system would just go down for multiple hours.”
Levchin: PayPal and X.com copied each other and competed on eBay incentives
“They came at payments a little bit after we did, but they had some really good ideas that we didn't have. So very quickly, we start just looking at each other and going, oh, that's a good idea. We'll copy that, and vice versa. And we were in the market just be…”
Tatarko: Alon Cohen built eBay's API from scratch
“Alon was really, he built the API from scratch, you know.”
Resold WordPress invites on eBay revealed monetization potential to founders
“And then these tickets started to sell on eBay. So people would get the free ticket, and then they would start to list it or sell it, and tickets were starting to sell for like, 9000 dollars, 120 dollars on eBay. And we were like, huh, maybe people will pay fo…”
eBay attempted to route all platform transactions through Billpoint instead of PayPal
“EBay had bought a company called Billpoint, which it owned a hundred percent of, and it launched on its platform, and it wanted everything to go through Billpoint, nothing to go through PayPal.”
Vaccarella bought carloads of Target designer collaborations to resell on eBay
“I would go to Target when Target would have launches with, like, Missoni or, like, any one of those big, huge launches. I would buy as much stuff as I could fit into my car, and I would resell it.”
Liu says eBay side business made $30K to $50K annual profit
“It's probably between 30 to 50 grand a year at the time.”
Liu: Weee! Was Initially Self-Funded Using eBay Savings
“So we decided to run the business using our savings from the eBay days and to self-fund the business until we see significant traction, then we can try to raise money.”
Lin: eBay's fashion division was a $2 billion business
“Yeah, it was about a two billion dollar business and I was the general manager for the fashion business.”
Schreiber funded his move to Chicago by selling CDs on eBay
“I just started selling the stuff that I already had in my collection, kind of like whittling it down and what can I get rid of and what's worth a lot. And through doing that, I made, I don't know, Probably five grand, but I moved to Chicago with that much mone…”