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Why eBay lost to Amazon: A quality lesson for fintech founders

Tim Chong, Co-Founder and CEO at Yonder on Riding Unicorns · The operational side of building a credit card rocketship...

“And I always think about it as, you know, most of us remember the eBay era, and then it kinda moved to Amazon.”

25:10 / 25:32

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And I always think about it as, you know, most of us remember the eBay era, and then it kinda moved to Amazon. And part of why that happened was because the quality of eBay started to go down. And so we're really adamant that the quality of the platform is really, really important because you let that slip, everything falls apart. And so that's both quality of customers and also quality of partners, and that's why we spend a lot of time

About this clip

Tim Chong draws parallels between eBay's decline and Amazon's rise to explain why maintaining platform quality is crucial for sustained growth. He argues that eBay's deteriorating quality opened the door for Amazon, and emphasizes how this lesson applies to building sustainable fintech platforms today.

Why this clip

Provides a concrete historical example that illustrates a fundamental business principle about quality maintenance and competitive positioning.

25:10 - 25:3222smarket insight

platform-quality marketplace-dynamics competitive-strategy

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