The Perfect Store
Between crime novels I decided to read Adam Cohen’s The Perfect Store, a really fascinating book on the history of our favorite online auction house, eBay. The book, published in 2002, explores how Pierre Omidyar’s pet project AuctionWeb, founded in September of 1995, would go on to become eBay, one of the most important online marketplaces and all the steps it took to get there. This book is really inspiring. It describes a time of incredible entrepreneurship, when everyone was trying to jump on the dot-com craze, and how eBay managed to survive on the basis of being a totally virtual business supported by its most important asset, its community.
This book is super comprehensive, touching on many key players in eBay’s rise to a public company (‘becoming too corporate,’ and upsetting many users) including the founder, early employees, the CEO, and many members of eBay’s online community, both sellers and buyers. I truly recommend reading this for anyone interested in internet business. This book is a fun read! I must say, this book is from 2002, and I’m curious as to what has been going on in the past 8 years.
