Introduction Founded in 1995, eBay Inc. provides consumers with Internet platforms for global commerce, payments and communications. Since its inception, eBay Inc. has expanded to include some of the strongest brands in the world, including the eBay e-commerce marketplace, PayPal, Skype, Shopping.com, and others. Today, eBay has three operating segments: Marketplaces, Payments and Communications. The [...]
On August 31, just around the time I wrote my last post on Sandisk, it announced the introduction of Memory Stick Micro (M2) flash memory cards that would be mainly used in Sony Ericsson mobiles. The price is $149.99 for 8Gb and $99.99 for 4Gb. On October 18, SanDisk (NASDAQ:SNDK) released its third quarter earnings. Revenue [...]
SM: How did LeapFrog miss the Internet? JK: This is an interesting question, one that I used to ask a lot. The company was, in 2001, very active with a product called MindStation which was a dial up hub where customers would subscribe and get learning applets from LeapFrog. It was a flop because it [...]
SM: What was your response to the customer demands? We created a suite of solutions. We bought Accord Networks which we felt was the best multipoint conferencing network. Then we had the endpoints in the multipoint. From within we built an IT application called GMS, which allowed us to run all of the equipment. We [...]
SM: While you were doing Orbitz, did you already join the board of LeapFrog? JK: No, I joined the board in April of 2005. SM: How did they find you? JK: Leapfrog had been in the process of restructuring its board of directors, moving from insider directors to independent directors. They were looking for somebody [...]
I am in Argentina this week on a Consulting assignment with Mercado Libre (MELI), the region’s largest e-commerce marketplace. So here’s some interesting data about the Latin American Internet market from a bunch of different sources that I am working with. [My Indian readers would find it interesting to contrast some of this data with [...]
SM: You do serve the mid market, extensively. BH: We do. Below the strategic’s we have global accounts. Our solution is better than being somewhere in person, and that is a nice mantra. You want people to be productive when they are not in the same place. That is fundamentally our market. You have to [...]
SM: Was Saber under American Airlines or on its own? JK: Saber, by that time, was a public company. It was not controlled by American Airlines anymore. The Chief Financial officer at United had the idea that the airline industry needed to form its own competitor to Travelocity and Saber, otherwise the industry would be [...]
