SEASON 1 EPISODE 6 with

episode transcript +

Why eBay is donating $1 billion by 2021 w/ eBay’s Steve Wymer Season 1, Episode 6

Guest: Steve Wymer, Senior VP and Chief Communications Officer of eBay and chairman of the eBay Foundation

AARON KWITTKEN Broadcasting from the 10 Hudson Square Building, home of WNYC Radio in Soho, New York, welcome to Brand on Purpose, the podcast dedicated to uncovering the untold stories behind the most impactful purpose-driven companies.

My guest today is Steve Wymer. Steve is Senior VP and Chief Communications Officer of eBay. He also is a member of the eBay Foundation, and serves on its board and helps to run that foundation, we’ll talk a little bit about that. Steve has a really interesting and diverse career. He spanned a lot of different positions in politics and government affairs. He also has some experience in Africa and Eastern Europe training entrepreneurs and also has a very deep and extensive background in branding and reputation management, and of course, in social responsibility.

So, Steve’s current role, besides running a staff of about 125 people on the Comms and Reputation Management side, he’s also responsible for running and advancing eBay impact. It’s eBay’s formal commitment to empowering its community of sellers and creating economic opportunities. Steve, welcome to Brand on Purpose.

STEVE WYMER Great to be here.

AK Hopefully, I didn’t mess up that introduction. Great to have you in studio.

SW It’s great to be here.

AK So, you have two worlds that on the outside might seem different, but you and I both know, actually, overlap and have a lot of mutual beneficial objections. So, on the one hand, you run communications for eBay, relatively new role for you right, you joined earlier this year?

SW Yeah, I’m a grizzled vet of about five months.

AK Five months, but looking at your Twitter feed, I’d say that you have about 5 years of work and stuff behind you. So, on the one hand, you are Chief Communications Officer of eBay. On the other hand, you also serve a very important role on eBay’s foundation. And, if you could, talk a little bit about how those two intersect and where you spend most of your time. I think that’s a job for three people, but you’re one person. So, how do you do it?

SW Well, most importantly, I have an awesome team. We have really a stellar crew of people who make our impact programs happen and run our corporate communication.

AK And you’re not just saying that cause one of them is in the studio today, right?

SW No, I even say it behind their back.

AK Ok, good.

SW I’m very fortunate. One of the reasons I joined the team, there really is a deeply experienced, passionate, committed crew of folks who make it all happen. But, I think, maybe more importantly, our eBay’s purpose work is not a bolt on. It’s deeply embedded in the culture of the company, in fact, it’s evident in the very early stages that sparked the idea of the company. And it’s been a north star for the company for 24 ½ years.

And, we’re able to take that purpose work, leverage it as a piece of our real communications strategy, both our proactive strategies as we tell the consumer value proposition story of eBay, on the regulatory front, on our corporate narrative, all that is interwoven with purpose because it’s why we exist as a company.

eBay is one of the only ecommerce platforms you will ever be able to find who only wins when our customers win. That’s the actual business model of eBay. We don’t compete with our sellers. We’re a platform in an open marketplace that thrives when we provide economic empowerment to people around the world, nearly 200 million buyers leveraging the platform to connect with sellers on popular goods. New, used, the most robust inventory of any marketplace you could find.

It’s an amazing story and when you intersect it with that purpose work it’s even more interesting. It’s one of the reasons I took the job. It’s the paramount reason.

AK When you talk about eBay impact, about a year ago I actually interviewed your predecessor for my Forbes column. And I remember walking away from that thinking, oh my god, eBay does so much and not enough people know about it. I imagine that’s part of your role and the reason why Comms and Impact should go together, and they make for a perfect marriage. And I still think not enough people know all the good that eBay does in the world.

SW Yeah. And I think that’s a challenge that’s…it’s one of the challenges of our time, too. How do corporations make corporate social responsibility and their commitment to being a good citizen, both in the industry and of the world, in a way that doesn’t feel like it’s an advertisement, in a way that feels authentic? And sadly, I’m not sure it is authentic frequently enough.

At eBay it is, and it’s something that were very proud of. But on the other hand, it’s a difficult thing to run around promoting if it’s really a core purpose that matters to you from the substance of the issue, not just the value you may receive and credit you may receive as a company. Yeah, so that’s a delicate balance.

Of course, one of the great benefits for us is when we’ve developed programming that actually combines both. Our storytelling about the value proposition we provide to buyers and sellers and also an opportunity to transform and impact real communities through our retail revival program. The eBay foundation is supporting the circular economy, entrepreneurship, emerging opportunities to help diversity, education…

AK Diversity…

SW And then, we actually have proactive programs that are in communities helping brick and mortar stores have access to a global e-market, e-commerce market. It all intersects well together in a way that has served the company very well, but of course, we’d love more people to know about it, and that’s our challenge everyday.

AK And the challenge is you’re doing so much, so what are you talking about and when. You’re very active on Twitter. You’re fun to watch on Twitter, or actually, because you have some whimsy to you, and I see you’re a huge Mariners fan.

SW This is true. Lifelong. Can’t help it.

AK You’re a huge sports guy. You’re very careful to kind of share stories that are interesting without always providing a very specific point of view, but I also noticed that you also got to spend some time with Warren Buffet. Can you talk about that a little bit? I’ve never met him. I can imagine it’s an incredible experience. What’s that like?

SW It’s one more facet of our purpose work. We have eBay for charity. It’s a very unique facet because, most people are unaware of this, but, often times, sellers put something on eBay to sell and we have options. It’s very simple for them to choose, that they can allow the proceeds of their sale to go to benefit a charity.

Thousands of charities are listed as partners on eBay and the seller can select one of those. It might benefit veterans or homelessness or a variety, literacy program. It can be, literally, thousands of different charities. And so, you go to sell your used baseball glove and you don’t really need it and the $10 you get for it you donate to charity. Well, this has raised hundreds of millions of dollars.

AK Yeah, the multiplier on that is massive.

SW $900 million dollars over the last 24 years, raised.

AK So you’ve raised almost a billion dollars, just through that one program?

SW Correct. It dwarfs any other program of its kind in the world, that I’m aware of. And it’s a fascinatingly powerful tool. It also works on the opposite end for charities. For example, one of our biggest partners is Goodwill Industries. Good Will, they may receive donations that don’t have great appeal in the specific market. For example, in Seattle they may receive a Goodwill donation of raincoats. And maybe they have…

AK Doesn’t it rain a lot in Seattle?

SW It does! But maybe they have too many, right?

AK Ah, got it.

SW And so, they may have an excessive amount of a certain product. They list them on eBay, sell them for charity, the proceeds go to them. We waive their fees and it’s a really great opportunity a charity like Goodwill to have access to a global marketplace.

Then, you as a seller, could do the same. We raise funds for those people and those organizations, it’s a very powerful tool. One of the things that we’ve added to that suite of products is a high profile charity campaign like the one you referred to with Mr. Buffet, where he is supporting Glide which is a really effective and well known organization in San Francisco addressing homelessness and poverty.

And he auctions off a lunch with him, and this year it was over $4 million dollars that a donor paid to support Glide to have lunch with Warren Buffet. What an amazing opportunity to have access to donors all over the world who would be interested in bidding in something like that, benefit a great organization and partner with Mr. Buffet. So, the opportunities are endless.

AK And do you report right into the CEO?

SW I do.

AK How important is that?

SW It’s critical. That’s another reason I took the job. I give people this, whenever I go back to my alma mater, The Washington State University, the greatest university ever.

AK Emphasis on THE, I like that.

SW I always tell people that I’m so grateful that I’ve never really sought to work for a logo or a specific company, so much that I’ve really found so much benefit in working for people, not companies. And it really fits well with my philosophy on that, to work at an eBay, a company that is really focused on people, both our sellers, buyers and our employees.

And I think that’s very apparent in the way we’ve structured the company, the priorities of the company, the culture of the company and the way we’re able to help empower economic opportunity around the world. I met our CEO Devin Wenig and I knew immediately he was the type of person that I wanted to work for. He values communications and understands our purpose. He always says he’s our Chief Culture Operator.

AK Sounds like he has a good sense of humor, too.

SW He definitely does. He loves a snarky tweet now and again.

AK Saw the one about that vest, that was good.

SW Oh yeah. And it’s hilarious that he was listed in it, and there was some article in the biz journal, I think, about how all these VC guys were wearing vests to conferences and vest companies, I think, were saying, “I don’t know if we want our vests worn at this conference.”

And there was a picture of Devin going to a conference and he wasn’t wearing a vest, he’s not a VC guy, he said, “I don’t even wear vests and my picture’s on here!” So he got a kick out of that. He has a great sense of humor and he’s very passionate about our purpose as a company but he’s a media guy. He came from Thompson Reuters and he’s very passionate, he’s a news junkie like I am, so he and I will text each other interesting news clips late into the night at times. And he’s a great guy and he’s a great leader for our time at eBay.

AK There’s a feeling of, kind of, a humbleness, almost a humility, about eBay, especially when it comes to its impact programs. And I say that, then you look at like a Patagonia, and I don’t know if you’ve been following what they’ve been doing.

SW Of course I do.

AK I’ve got a lot of respect for them.

SW They are a good Instagram follow.

AK Amazing. That, and Ben and Jerry’s, by the way, Ben and Jerry’s is a really good Instagram.

SW Buffalo Jackson. Patagonia. I follow a lot of brands on Instagram. That’s a phenomenal place. I’m a sucker. My wife prefers me to probably not spend as much time on Instagram because it tends to impact my credit card.

AK All the selling, right?

SW I mean, Instagram’s a great advertising platform.

AK It’s true, it’s true. But what I was getting at is, so, there’re some brands, and Patagonia is a good example, that they are purpose provocateurs. It’s good for people like me, because I like writing about it, I like thinking about it, I like taking lessons from it, and then bestowing it and integrating it with some of the client work that we do.

But, Patagonia really is constantly in the news, whether it’s donating the Trump tax credit back to the environment, or then saying, we’re not going to actually provide custom apparel services to companies who don’t share our sustainability values.

What do you think about companies like that, that are provocative with purpose and they still walk the talk, though. It’s authentic. It’s very real, because in my mind, I think it’s creating conversation, whether we like it or not, because we’re talking about it right now, and my feeling is if just one company changes or finds a way to create more impact and give back in the world, even if they don’t agree with Patagonia’s position then actually, Patagonia wins.

SW Yeah. What’s interesting about that is the only reason we’re talking about it, and the only reason they’re in a position to be provocative is because they make a good quality product. My closet would attest to that when it comes to Patagonia, too. So I think it’s important to be obsessed about delivering a valuable product to a consumer set who has a demand for that product, and appreciates it and values it and becomes a loyal customer.

Because, the person who has three Patagonia vests and a hat and wears those gloves while they hit their favorite ski hill, that person is, they’re invested to your brand. And so, they create an audience by which social change can happen because they’ve connected emotionally with your brand. And they value it. And so you’ve earned a place to speak into their lives in a way that can be profound.

AK Why did you originally start in politics? There’s a question behind that question which is, you’re probably the third or fourth person I’ve had on this show now who has a policy and politics background and its been hugely beneficial and helpful to their current role today, which is impact, social impact within larger corporations.

SW I use the analogy is it’s sort of either sports or politics. And the reason for me that it’s, it had to be politics for me because my batting average was too low and my shooting percentage was even worse in basketball, and so, I loved the intensity.

AK Let me guess, though, you’re probably an infielder. Shortstop?

SW I was. Yeah. Third, first. Third base, First base. A little relief pitching, badly.

AK Yeah, you got to be tough to be an infielder.

SW It’s true.

AK You know what? Those balls are coming at you really hard.

SW I can tell you this: I never took a play off, so. Made many bad plays, but never took one off.

AK Same.

SW And you know what, I just love that intensity because I love the fact that in those trenches, when the heat is on, there’s really no BS. There’s no politics, there’s no tension, there’s just everybody striving. The sweat and the blood of harsh competition, it’s a bonding thing. And that’s why anytime you can think of a scenario in which there’s great intensity and great effort you can find deep, deep friendships.

AK And that’s also where your metals tested the most, right?

SW Absolutely.

AK When things are great everybody is at their best, right?

SW Yes, yes.

AK It’s when things are going wrong that you see real human beings, or real character or lack of character.

SW Yes. My old boss at Nextdoor was a very good friend of mine. He gave me a nickname of Wartime Wymer. And I thought it was the greatest compliment ever. I love the heat of a worthy pursuit.

And so, it wasn’t sports for me in a career, and I volunteered on a campaign when I was in college and I just loved the intensity of it and I loved that it mattered so much. And I’ve never really been an ideologue. This is kind of a weird way of describing it but I think I was more of a partisan than an ideologue because I’m so practical that I really wanted to see progress and I’m not shaped by some real political ideology so much as I just love being on a team. I guess if you’re on a team in politics it makes you partisan, but, I just wanted to win.

AK I guess it depends on what your role on that team, right? Everybody has a different role.

SW Yeah. I’m lucky that I also, another thing that drew me to politics that I was so interested in is that I remember watching Chiefs of Staff, even US Senators and Congressmen roll their sleeves up and pound yard signs. And I loved that. And I try to do that with my team to this day.

I don’t want to ask anything of my team that I wouldn’t do. And I think that’s a phenomenal example and I used to have a basketball coach in high school who would run lines with us and never make us run a line that he didn’t run with us. I loved him for it. And in politics, I think there’s that heat, it’s a blue flame heat around winning an election.

AK And you worked for a senator?

SW I worked for several senators. I worked for almost 10 years in DC in the senate. I started off as a junior policy aid. I did postal issues, and faith-based orgs and education for an amazing guy, Senator Gordon H. Smith from Oregon. At the time, I think he was the only Republican senator on the West Coast. He may have been, he was one of maybe only a couple of Republican statewide elected officials in Washington, Oregon or California. And he was an awesome, thoughtful moderate, really inspirational guy. I stayed in touch with him and he’s a mentor.

AK Yeah, and you’re like, what, 22 at the time?

SW Yeah. 22 or 23.

AK You’re a baby.

SW Yeah. I worked like a dog. We had two feet wide desks and all 50 of us in a room and made some of my best friends ever. Groomsmen in my wedding and vice versa from those days. And it was awesome, I learned so much. I think I made, I think my starting salary was $26k, $25.5k?

AK That’s a lot. That’s double what mine was in DC.

SW It was huge, I know, I was rich. I was rolling around town.

AK Especially in Oregon. You could live large.

SW I did a lot of Ross Dress for Less shopping. I was really rolling.

AK Did you ever go to Simms? See, that’s where I went.

SW Simms…no.

AK It’s no longer. You probably don’t remember this. Sy Simms. It’s kind of like a, before there was Men’s Warehouse there was Simms and that’s where I bought my first two suits and I started in DC in the early 90’s. And I remember, actually I bought three suits with bonds leftover from my Bar Mitzvah money.

SW Perfect.

AK Many years later. And I remember I had three suits and those were back in the Alex P. Keaton days, right, I was wearing a bow tie, and suspenders in DC. It was a moment.

SW Yeah.

AK Cell phones were like, and nobody could see this but it was like, 12 inches.

SW It was a backpack, so.

AK Right. Right. It was a backpack.

SW And back then, we were very Blackberry. We had all kinds of Blackberries.

AK Oh, no, I had pagers. What’s your favorite story. And I know you’re five months dipped. But there’s just so many stories, right? I mean, that’s just one of thousands.

SW So, I will say this. I hesitate on this kind of question, even just chatting with my friends about it, because it’s like it exceeds the cheese.

AK And it’s also like saying, which is your favorite child.

SW Oh well that’s true.

AK I do have a favorite dog of my two dogs.

SW Well, my wife and I have four, so, four kids. So, I have no favorite kid. They all are. But, the stories from eBay are.

AK You heard it here first, no favorite child.

SW For sure. Yeah, write that down. For sure there are countless stories. I was in the UK two months ago and met a seller, part of our Wolver Hampton Retail Revival Program. Our retail revival program’s a big piece of our impact team’s project to bring brick and mortar stores online. And it’s been really successful. We started in Akron, in Lansing, Michigan. Greensboro, North Carolina, Baton Rouge, Wolver Hampton in the UK and then we’ve had sort of hybrid versions of this in Greece and Israel.

AK So your kids are going to call you Uncle Steve, soon. You travel a lot.

SW I do travel a lot, I tear up redeye flights to get home to spend time with my kids, so.

AK Uh-huh, I get it.

SW I’m leaving tonight to go home.

AK I’m sorry, how old is your oldest?

SW 10.

AK They still love you.

SW Yeah. They do. They do. That’s good. Yeah, they haven’t gotten smart enough to know…

AK Wait ‘till you get to like, 15.

SW It’s a life goal, to get to that relationship. I’m in the UK. I meet these sellers and every one of them is inspiring. But this one lady sort of captures my heart. She says, “I’m a Latvian refugee. I came here to the UK. I was cleaning in a factory.” And I just loved how raw she was and she said, “I didn’t like cleaning in a factory.” And I was thinking, God bless you. I understand.

She said, “So, I came home and I saw a shirt that my husband had and I thought it was an ugly shirt and he hadn’t worn it. So, I decided, I’m gonna sell it on eBay. So I sold it. And I got 12 pounds. And I said, ‘well that’s cool.’” She took the twelve pounds, she went to a thrift store, she bought three more shirts. She told those for a total of 25 pounds. She rinsed and repeated this for months until she came up with five thousand pounds. She came up with five thousand pounds. That’s hard work, by the way.

She bought a crate of shoes. Little. What you’d think of maybe in America, you’d think of them as $10 ladies’ shoes. Just kind of simple, little, slip on kind of shoes. She buys them. She starts listing them all on eBay. Lo and behold, they sell. They’re selling like 17- 18 pounds a piece. She keeps selling until she kind of gets a little knowledge about it and gets more and more sophisticated.

We came along with our Retail Revival Program. Our UK team, that program, by the way, is like a 12 month, in-depth intensive training. We bring in our customer support people. We give you an eBay store and an account. We really help you turn it into a real business that’s an ecommerce store, right? We help you with logistics of storage and how you do shipping. We have a global shipping program to make it easy to print the labels and move the product.

So, she said, “And your people, they taught me how to take the pictures.” She said, “And I learned, you have to have 12 pictures for every pair of shoes.” Why do you need 12 pictures, I don’t know. Makes no sense to me but that’s what the research shows. You have to take one picture where the shoes are actually on a lady's feet. Then you have to take a picture with a white background. Then you have to take pictures of the front of the shoes, and the back of the shoes and turn them over to take the soles of the shoes.

She said, “And I learned how to do it and guess what? They started selling.” And she said, “I’m selling so many shoes now. My goal this year, which I think I’m going to be able to do, is I’m gonna cut out the middleman and I’m gonna buy crates, shipping containers, of my shoes from China.” She said, “I’m going to cut out the middleman and I’m going to do this myself.” And, she said, “I’m a real businesswoman.” And she goes, “The best part, I don’t work at this factory anymore, right?”

AK Exactly. Yeah.

SW And I just looked at her, and I said, “Can I give you a hug?”

AK Isn’t that what it’s about? It’s about economic empowerment.

SW Totally.

AK Right. You can’t live your best life unless you have economic empowerment regardless of who you are.

SW That’s right. That’s right. And standing next to her were two brothers who did a power tool business who said to me, he said it in like a very gregarious voice, he said, “I’m gonna cut you guys a check for $100,000 this month in seller fees.” And I looked and him and I’m thinking, “ohhh.” And he goes, “But that’s great cause it means I’m killing it!” He goes, “I’m selling more power tools, I’m selling them all over Europe. Everything I sell on eBay.” And he goes, “I’ve blown up my business.” He’s all, “I’ve got an extra warehouse.” And the mayor of Wolver Hampton’s standing next to him like, “Yeah, these guys are my stars.”

And I’m just thinking, all that’s empowered by eBay. Man, I just, it’s hard to not be fired up about your job when you see that happening. And then when you realize, and I don’t mind if it comes across as braggadocious because I’m just so proud.

AK We’ll call it a humble brag.

SW Humble brag incoming, ok. eBay for Charity, which is a real platform enabled.

AK This was started after 9/11, am I correct in saying that?

SW Correct, yes.

AK I got one thing right.

SW And that’s empowering both charities to sell and letting us amplify the hundreds of thousands of transactions that happen every week where people can just donate the proceeds to charity. That’s adding up, as we mentioned, to almost a billion dollars.

AK It’s exponential.

SW We crossed that threshold for our 25th anniversary next year. A billion dollars over 25 years.

AK So that’s actually earlier than planned. Wasn’t the original goal 2022? So you’re actually going to hit that goal 2 years early.

SW Yes, we will.

AK That’s amazing.

SW We haven’t announced it. That’s an exclusive announcement for you.

AK Ok.

SW So we have eBay for Charity. We have the Retail Revival Program. That’s not a masses program. That’s more of a deep integration, but profoundly impacting the lives of these business owners. And something that we’re working very hard to try to scale that program, to get more out of our Retail Revival Program so that we can touch more businesses around the world. We know that our goal is to do much more than just 5 or 6 cities a year, but we also realize the reason they’re so successful is we’re investing a ton in those individual entrepreneurs, to help them be successful.

AK At what point, you might not know this, I know to the company, but at what point in eBay’s history did purpose, real social impact purpose not just commercial purpose, but real social impact purpose, at what point was that pivot so prominent in eBay’s history?

SW It’s one of the really unique things about the company. I actually, I’m not sure there was a moment, I think that was Pierre, the founder.

AK Yeah, and he has his own fund, now. And he invests in…

SW Huge, huge foundation, himself. But it was his vision, and this was, by the way, ironically, the reason why I went to go work at Nextdoor, originally, I was at Tivo. I left DC to come to Silicon Valley to work at Tivo, I was there for five years and then wound up going to Nextdoor. Was that I wanted to start Nextdoor.org. It was a pre-IPO.

AK By the way, my kids have no idea what Tivo is. It’s so funny.

SW Well, it shaped the entire on-demand industry, so.

AK 100%. It was the basis for everything. All the streaming that we have now, was born of that.

SW Still running Tivos in my house.

AK I love it. Really?

SW Yeah. The best. And I wanted to start Nextdoor.org at Nextdoor. And the idea was, I didn’t even know this at he time, inspired by the model that Pierre did at eBay, where some of the company’s stock, prior to the IPO, set aside for a foundation, a corporate foundation. We were working on it at Nextdoor, and Pierre did that.

And so, the eBay Foundation, which is that other third pillar. You have the eBay for Charity, you have Retail Revival, which is part of our big impact program, and the Foundation. It’s a huge honor to be the chair of the Foundation. And that foundation is funded by eBay as a company.

Initially, the equity that was put in has grown to a nice endowment that allows us to support a lot of worthy organizations each year, mostly focused on the entrepreneur space, and access to education that can help you if you’d like to pursue entrepreneurship in the circular economy. And it’s very unique and I don’t know of another company in the Valley, or anywhere, that has that sort of three-headed horse where the product itself is enabling philanthropy in a really profound way, at scale.

AK So, last question. What’s your biggest fear? I think you’ve touched on it a little bit but, I’m not gonna ask you what keeps you up at night, it’s super cliché but really, what are you working on, that we don’t know that you’re working on that you can, at least, allude to something that you’re working on, that might threaten, not eBay, but the impact model, the purpose part of it. Which I now the two are very intertwined, obviously, because you have to have a good company in order to give back.

SW Yeah. Totally, I mean we want a forever horizon company, right?

AK Yes.

SW And we realize that we’re in the tech industry where it’s rapidly changing all the time. And every time we’re innovating we’re also playing catch up to someone else. It may sound cliché, but I do think about a lot what keeps me up at night is that I worry obsessively about all kinds of things, and my team is very gracious in my worrying emails and texts, but that’s my job, right? I’ve always done that.

AK It’s always on.

SW That’s a role. But, I’m worried about the micro and the macro. On the micro, I want eBay to execute and deliver on our road map. And it’s hard. It’s hard to turn a big ship. It’s a big platform. There’s a lot of smart people who look at things differently, both in the industry and even in our company. It’s one of the assets of the company but it’s a challenge, too.

AK And there’s an issue a day, if not more.

SW Abosolu- twenty, right? We need to get into more markets. We’re very focused on growing new markets. India, Italy, France, Spain.

AK Not China.

SW Not China, no. But we do have an export business there. We’re the largest exporter in the world, in that sense. So, I’m worried about expansion and growth, obviously. I’m worried about the number one goal for our team is consideration. We need to increase people’s consideration of eBay as a place to shop. We’re obsessed with that.

A lot of people still have a misperception of what eBay is. They don’t realize. A lot of people sort of think that we’re the eBay of 2000. So that’s something I worry about.

But maybe more importantly, I worry about the macro. I worry that there’s bad players in tech. There’s bad players in every industry, so I don’t know that it over-indexes on tech. And one thing working in politics taught me is that nobody in politics who you admire is quite as awesome as you think and no one who you…

AK That’s true to life.

SW No one who you think is quite as bad as you think. I had the pleasure of meeting a lot of well known elected officials in my career. And I was shocked at how profoundly different I found some of them to be with real human connections in private versus what I thought of them publically.

And my worry for our industry, as a whole, is that the pursuit of pure money and power by some has cast a negative light on tech in a way that…I live in San Jose. It’s the capital of Silicon Valley. It’s where our company is headquartered. My kids go tot school there. I live there and I care about the community very much and 7,200 people are going to sleep outside there tonight, homeless, in the middle of huge…

AK There’s been a lot of press about that, right.

SW I want to see us as an industry lead from the front with purpose, with impact and making a difference. And eBay is trying to lead the charge. It’s a crowded sea of need. We’re going to do our part and we’re going to be a good example. And I think it’ll serve the business well, and I’m hopeful that we can be an example that inspires other companies to do the same.

AK I will say, it’s fair to say, based on your good work and those who came before you and the leadership at eBay, eBay is not a company, I’m knocking on wood right now, that’s not in the crosshairs like the likes of Facebook and Google and other tech behemoths who have data and privacy concerns. I feel like you guys have steered pretty clear of those things. And probably because the business practices are good.

SW You are correct that’s part of our- and it’s a reason we’re very diligent about it. We have leaders in our company who are focused on things like compliance and privacy and data protection and other things.

AK And that’s all they do.

SW They’re amazing at it. And they’ve built a culture of that for sure and I’m very proud of that. But every time someone says that to me, I also say, those companies who are in the crosshairs are in the crosshairs because they’re killing it. Because they’re killing it for their shareholders, they’re growing like crazy and they’re dominant forces in the industry.

So I’ll take some of those problems. We need to have a blend. We need to have a blend of our good practices, and our culture. But, I also don’t want to not be in the crosshairs because we’re not considered, and we’re not growing, and we’re not innovating and we’re not pushing the boundaries.

So, we need a culture that mixes the two and I embrace that because I think we do have that kind of culture and we are committed to being a good citizen. But if it comes to, if the hottest, newest, most thriving vibrant companies are the ones in the crosshairs then I want to get back in that company, too.

AK Yeah. It’s an unpopular thing to say sometimes. I’ve found that my clients over the past 30 years have been strongest when there was unwanted government intervention or the threat of government intervention. Even if it’s a non-prosecution agreement.

Not only did it make their businesses more interesting and more profitable, but, they had to look themselves in the mirror and say they run a better business. Obviously, no one wants that but sometimes there’s a reason why we have third parties and checks and balances and systems in place because it’s there for a reason.

SW That’s right. And that’s the intensity that we were talking about, right? We welcome that and I want our team to be super intense and the whole company to be about winning for our sellers, and buyers.

AK Steve, it’s been awesome. We can find you on Twitter, which is most fun.

SW Yeah.

AK How else do we follow you? You’re not on Insta, right?

SW I am on Insta, but that’s more personal. But I’m on Twitter, the professional baseball analysis is probably lacking, but it’s very biased towards my beloved, hapless hometown.

AK Listen, I’m a Mets fan so I don’t have a leg to stand on.

SW Oh, well, you have Robby Cano, ok. And LinkedIn, as well, I’m a very active user on LinkedIn. I use that. I leverage LinkedIn.

AK It’s a great platform.

SW It’s probably one of the most important products that I use in my career, is LinkedIn. I use it for everything from keeping track of people, I learn a lot on LinkedIn. It’s a very, very valuable app for me. One of my most frequented.

AK I agree. I think that feed is really good. I mean, they have that algorithm right.

SW I love what Daniel Roth does and does some great interviews, I love, we have some good friends that are with the company, and I think they’re doing great work. And, frankly, just selfishly, it’s kind of more of my Rolodex at this point.

AK Yeah, sure.

SW It’s very valuable.

AK Thanks again, Steve. It was great to have you on.

SW My pleasure.