Pierre Omidyar, Founder and Chairman

John Donahoe, Chief of eBay Marketplace

The one you could say invented would be Pierre Omidyar a programmer that started ebay as AuctionWeb so there you go.

The very first item sold on eBay was a broken laser pointer for $14.83. Astonished, Omidyar contacted the winning bidder and asked if he understood that the laser pointer was broken. In his responding email, the buyer explained: “I’m a collector of broken laser pointers.” The frequently repeated story that eBay was founded to help Omidyar’s fiancée trade PEZ Candy dispensers was fabricated by a public relations manager in 1997 to interest the media. This was revealed in Adam Cohen’s 2002 book and confirmed by eBay.

Chris Agarpao was hired as eBay’s first employee and Jeff Skoll was hired as the first president of the company in 1996. In November 1996, eBay entered into its first third-party licensing deal, with a company called Electronic Travel Auction to use SmartMarket Technology to sell plane tickets and other travel products. The company officially changed the name of its service from AuctionWeb to eBay in September 1997. Originally, the site belonged to Echo Bay Technology Group, Omidyar’s consulting firm. Omidyar had tried to register the domain name echobay.combut found it already taken by the Echo Bay Mines, a gold mining company, so he shortened it to his second choice, eBay.com.

eBay went public in 1998, and both Omidyar and Skoll became instant billionaires. The company purchased PayPal in October 2002.