When I started eBay, it was a hobby, an experiment to see if people could use the Internet to be empowered through access to an efficient market. I actually wasn't thinking about it in terms of a social impact.

Whatever future you’re building, don’t try to program everything.

In the same way that you’re driven in your business to keep innovating – Facebook is a wonderful example of constant innovation – think about doing that in philanthropy.

The personal wealth that’s coming is absolutely secondary to the stories that I hear about our users who have given themselves some financial independence as well by starting businesses, and all the lives we’ve touched positively.

You’re able to accomplish anything you set out to accomplish.

I never had it in mind that I would start a company one day and it would really be successful. I have just been motivated by working on interesting technology.

You have to really believe in what you’re doing, be passionate enough about it so that you will put in the hours and hard work that it takes to actually succeed there, and then you’ll be successful.

In order to access private capital, you have to provide competitive return on investment. In order to give competitive returns to investors, you’ve got to operate on a profitable basis and be thinking of yourself as a business.

I’ve got a passion for solving a problem that I think I can solve in a new way. And that maybe it helps that nobody has done it before as well.

People were doing business with one another through the Internet already, through bulletin boards. But on the Web, we could make it interactive, we could create an auction, we could create a real marketplace. And that’s really what triggered my imagination, if you will, and that’s what I did.