It Was a Beginning

eBay is a remarkable place – I believe it is one of the best use cases of internet connectivity that is possible: a global platform for trade. So I have always preferred the iteration of our mission that aspired to be the world’s marketplace. Creating economic opportunities is just one of the consequences of being such a marketplace, but not the most important and only half of it at most. The opportunity to trade, to exchange value with virtually anyone, that is the power of eBay’s platform.

This has been the case even at eBay the workplace. I have experienced and witnessed so much generosity, openness and goodwill, you have afforded me so much help, learning and partnership, that I have certainly had the better end of the bargain in this trade. Just as remarkable, most of you probably feel the same way from your own perspective. This is the power of a marketplace and trade: by exchanging value, we create new value.

A personal example is hiking. In 2017, I made one of my first business trips to California. While there, the Shipping team’s OG program manager, Galia T, invited us to her family cabin in Yosemite for a hiking weekend. Being inexperienced and unprepared, I had a borrowed hat from Galia’s husband Vitaly and a pair of thick socks I had just pilfered from Shippo after visiting their San Francisco office.

But the walking was sublime! Deafening waterfalls, giant boulders atop peaks, valleys patched with flat rocks, glassy lakes. Galia planted a seed in me, and it grew to be one of my chief joys in life. There is nothing quite like coming into a new place, a village or a town, on foot, all the way from another village or town, via old paths and fields. Like my commute –

Burgess Park – St Peter’s Churchyard – Faraday Gardens – East Street Market – St John’s Church Walworth – Elephant Springs – Falmouth Park – Dickens Field – Tabard Gardens – St Hugh’s Church Bermondsey – Guy’s Hospital – The Shard – London Bridge – Old Broad Street – Sun Street Passage – 11 Curtain Road, The Courtyard Building, Shoreditch, London, Eye of the World and the Old Blighty –

and it all began from that weekend 9 years ago, just one of the many invaluable things I learnt at eBay. Now I walk on, in better boots, and leave this marketplace. Thank you for your kindness and company.

The Wheel of Time turns, and Ages come and pass, leaving memories that become legend. Legend fades to myth, and even myth is long forgotten when the Age that gave it birth comes again. In one Age … an Age yet to come, an Age long past … a wind rose. The wind was not the beginning. There are neither beginnings nor endings to the turning of the Wheel of Time. But it was a beginning.

— Robert Jordan, The Wheel of Time