Margaret Whitman

Margaret Whitman is CEO of eBay.com, the world's leading online auction site, with more than 8,000 product categories and 22 million registered users. She joined eBay in March of 1998, to assist founder Pierre Omidyar in managing the growth of his booming business.

Omidyar came up with the idea for eBay.com after his girlfriend, a Pez candy dispenser collector, expressed her wish to contact similar collectors. In 1995, Omidyar created Auction Web, a World Wide Web site that allowed sellers to post items for sale and buyers to competitively bid on merchandise. Omidyar offered no guarantees for merchandise sold, and buyers and sellers were responsible for handling payment and delivery. The following year, as site traffic grew well beyond his expectations, Omidyar began focusing on Auction Web full time. Auction Web began charging a small fee for each item listed and also took a cut of the final price. Because the entire auctioning process was automated, overhead costs were minimal. As a result, Omidyar's business became profitable very quickly, unlike many other Internet ventures. In 1997, Omidyar changed the site's named to eBay. Revenues for that year neared $6 million, and traffic continued to grow exponentially. Recognizing that he needed help managing what was becoming one of the Web's most frequently visited sites, Omidyar sold a 22 percent stake in eBay to Benchmark Capital for $4.5 million. Benchmark recruited a seasoned executive, Margaret Whitman, as CEO. Whitman's wide ranging experience included running the preschool division of Hasbro Inc.; handling global marketing for Mr. Potato Head and Playskool brands; and serving as president and CEO of FTD, where she spearheaded the florist's Internet operations. The Harvard Business School graduate had also held management positions at Bain & Co., Procter & Gamble, Stride Rite Corp., and Walt Disney Co.

One of Whitman's first tasks at eBay was to increase advertising efforts. She oversaw the firm's three-year, $12 million marketing agreement with America Online Inc. (AOL), whereby AOL agreed to list eBay as the preferred provider of person-to-person auction services. Whitman also worked to grow the firm. The acquisitions of Kruse, Inc., a company that conducted auctions and performed appraisal services and auctioneer training for classic car auctions, and Butterfield and Butterfield Auctioneers Corp. were designed to position eBay as a big-ticket auction house. The purchase of alando.de.ag, Germany's leading online personal trading platform, marked eBay's first international venture. Omidyar and Whitman listed eBay publicly for $18 a share, a price that nearly tripled by the end of the day. eBay's registered users climbed to 1.2 million by the end of 1998, and sales soared 724 percent to $47.4 million.

In 1999, Whitman furthered international growth efforts by launching sites in the United Kingdom and Canada. She convinced Omidyar to begin guaranteeing purchases up to $200, move certain adult-oriented products to an "Adult Only" section, and prohibit the sale of firearms. To facilitate the trading of larger items—such as vehicles and musical instruments—that were difficult and costly to ship, Whitman masterminded the launch of several regional sites. By early 2000, the number of registered users on eBay reached ten million. Despite the launch of competing auction sites from Amazon.com, Lycos, and Yahoo!, eBay continued to grow in 2000. According to a May 2000 article in BusinessWeek Online, Whitman was able to fend off competitors because she "kept eBay growing fast by adding categories and 53 local sites. . . and remaining firmly in control of the fast-growing market for online auctions."