I believe in being comfortable with criticism; our customers clearly wanted e-commerce, and I had the conviction to push for it despite challenges.

Many e-commerce companies raised large sums but failed due to poor customer acquisition strategies, which we aimed to avoid by focusing on profitability.

We were patient in the first three years, focusing on creating a strong business model to support small to medium-sized merchants rather than copying models from Amazon or eBay.

Despite initial investor reluctance due to past failures in grocery delivery, we eventually closed a seed round with an investor who believed in us.

We launched our product online, supported it via email, and maintained a frugal, cash-neutral operation while reaching an international market from the start.

Using unscalable techniques, we successfully added stores like Whole Foods and Costco, leading to rapid growth and customer satisfaction.

With Zip2, we built incredible technology, but it never really got used as we intended. I wanted to go direct to consumers instead of being constrained by our customers, which led to the creation of X.com, which became PayPal.

After turning down Yahoo's offer, we decided to focus on connecting more people, which ultimately led to significant growth.

Amazon had been interested in acquiring our company for a long time, and their offer was compelling because we could remain a separate brand and business.