Shanti’s Dispatches

I’ve been reading The Perfect Store: Inside eBay these last few hours. As you may know, eBay now has a market cap that is greater than that of Yahoo and Amazon combined. I actually knew very little about eBay’s history, besides the lore of PEZ dispensers, etc.

Over and over again, people who came into contact with the eBay founders and employees just “didn’t get it.” They didn’t believe that people would actually buy and sell items with each other, anonymously, over the Internet. Even when eBay was doing millions of dollars worth of sales per month, they’d meet skeptics (even leading VCs) who said “it just won’t work.” Well, wake up, and smell the marketplace. It already is working.

I’ve said it before: ideas are a dime a dozen (and 46,800 people agree with me). Anyone can tell you why something won’t work. These people, in all fairness, are trying to help you. They’re usually trying to save you from wasting your time. But if you really want to see whether your idea will work, there’s only one way to find out: Let the marketplace decide.

You can bookmark this, digg this or check the cosmos