Get the latest alerts and community news about eBay Web Services here in our blog.
informed by Silicon Valley venture capitalists and Lorrie Norrington
Posted by
Rolf Skyberg
in Developers Conference
Thursday, Jun.18.2009, 3:30 PM PT
For the second day of opening keynotes, we kept with the theme of "building your business with us", and welcomed four notable Silicon Valley venture capitalists to share their insights on funding, business trends, and good business practices. After the panel, Lorrie Norrington took the stage and laid out some of the stepping stones to eBay's future, and where we say the business going.
Charlene Li founder of The Altimeter Group invited Mark Gorenberg from Hummer Winblad Venture Partners, Rob Hayes from First Round Capital, Sergio Mansalve from Norwest Venture Partners, and Ravi Mohan from Shasta Ventures. You can learn more about our keynote speakers on devcon keynote speakers page. For someone who who started work in technology during the dot-com boom of 1998/1999 and had big dreams of "going big" with an IPO, hearing from actual VC's about how and when to get funded was a fascinating talk.
Mostly what I was impressed with, was the idea that getting funded by a VC was more about the people, the team, and the market rather than the technology. A few members of the panel said that they've funded "one guy and his dog", who only had presentation, and no profit or business to show for it. They said they based their decision on the personality of the entrepreneur, and the VC's belief in the team to carry out their plan, pivoting as necessary to track with a changing environment. Another important factor the entire panel stressed was the size of the market. There are lots of good ideas, that simply don't have a large enough market behind them to make them fundable. The final takeaway was that times have changed since '98 and '99. While VC's were willing to fund a company based on their potential to build a big network and get bought out, now they're looking for continued cashflow and sustainability.
Lorrie's portion of the keynote covered a surprising amount of information that we eBay employees hear internally. I know that we've re-doubled our commitment to transparency, and when I see slides at a public conference that I've seen earlier at an all-hands meeting, it makes me proud to see us carrying through on that promise. She covered our stragtegy (seeking to become a platform agnostic of format or origin, available to all), our future (working to become a larger part of the very large secondary market of surplus and over-stock goods), and a firm recognition that developers and the creativity that they bring to the eBay marketplace are critical to our success.
In closing, Lorrie reaffirmed eBay's commitment to a strong platform architecture, and continued involvement with external developers. We are working to build the eBay software to be more service oriented, a type of work that should support our ongoing releases of robust API's into eBay's functionality.
As the closing keynote of our DevCon, I think this set of speakers and talks really gave me a good idea of where eBay was headed as a company, and what it would take from a funding standpoint to bring a startup to the next level. We delivered on our promise with information to help build a business with us.
-Rolf
