Which entrepreneur founded the online auction site AuctionWeb in 1995?

Pierre Omidyar founded the online auction site AuctionWeb in 1995.

Omidyar created AuctionWeb as a personal project while developing software for online commerce. The service allowed people to list items and bid against one another, making it an early example of a large-scale person-to-person online marketplace.

The service was later renamed eBay, the name by which it became globally known. Its marketplace model differed from a conventional online store because many listings came from users rather than from the company’s own inventory.

A popular story says the first item sold was a broken laser pointer, but the wider lesson is that the transaction demonstrated real demand for online auctions. Omidyar later founded the Omidyar Network, a philanthropic investment firm.