Today I went to see a presentation by Neel Sundaresan, the director of eBay Research Labs and a distinguished research scientist. He held an interesting lecture beginning with an “Ultimate reject letter“.

Next, he expressed Ebay’s business standpoint in a very amusing way, with a funny example. His message was simple and clear – national philosophy doesn’t work in global economy.

EU, small power sources, big consumtion

US, small power sources, big consumption, the majority lives in ghettos

Ebay start-up was simple and stupid, started with the following message: “What is useless to me, others can use“. The first item ever sold on Ebay was a small laser pointer which used to be a cat’s toy.

He showed us some major selling techniques and statistics. Today, most of trades are in car industry, pets, etc. He mentioned an example of a guy, who just repacks and resells stuff on ebay, gives added value and earns about a million per year. He showed us some really wierdo stuff and collectors’ philosophy, what people search and examples of searches for stuff connected to celebrities.

He explained desairablity, connection between demands and supply, how Ebay became more like a free supermarket where people buy accidentaly, not just on direct purpuse or need.

At the end he showed us why rookies don’t have much chance to succseed and how important making good and solid trade networks is and he showed some examples and networking structure of Ebay market from their point of view.

The lecture was interesting and I got a deeper understanding of the background and why they are not changing the model. There are many reasons why they don’t need to.

Check out the following video of this presentation or related content from Neel, talking about The future of search.