eBay Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe, will address graduates during Stanford GSB's ceremony on Saturday, June 15, 2013.
eBay Inc. President and Chief Executive Officer John Donahoe
The alumni speaker program was inaugurated in 2010 as a means to inspire graduates in their future careers. “John has reinvigorated one of Silicon Valley’s giants with his strong focus on innovation and customers,” said Garth Saloner, Philip H. Knight Professor and Dean of the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “He has also united the company behind a shared purpose that technology and commerce can create economic opportunity — a philosophy that is very much in line with our own mission as a school and that of our students.”
Donahoe was appointed president and chief executive officer of eBay Inc. in 2008, after serving as president of the company’s eBay Marketplaces business for three years. Since he assumed the company’s top spot, eBay has reinvigorated its core marketplace business, aggressively grown its PayPal business, and established leadership in mobile commerce. The company’s net revenues and net income both increased approximately 50 percent from 2010 to 2012, and in 2012 alone the company’s stock price increased approximately 68 percent (an increase in market capitalization of $27 billion).
As industry analyst Gil Luria of Wedbush Securities noted in a recent Fortune article, Donahoe “took an underperforming Silicon Valley giant and transformed it into a high-growth, innovative, mobile-focused technology leader.”
Donahoe recognized early that the shift in consumer behavior to mobile was inevitable. In fact, he made several investments in mobile technology even before the first iPhone was released in 2007, and the company now embraces a “mobile first” development mentality. Today, the eBay and PayPal apps rank among the top 10 mobile apps within their respective categories in the Apple iTunes and Google Play app stores. In 2013, the company expects eBay and PayPal to each generate more than $20 billion of mobile volume.
Under Donahoe’s leadership, eBay has evolved from a company focused on the $500 billion e-commerce market to a global commerce platform company competing in the $10 trillion retail market. Two key moves included the 2011 acquisition of GSI Commerce, which operates websites for major retailers and provides analysis of consumer behavior, and a partnership with Discover that will allow consumers to use PayPal at any one of seven million retail locations that accept Discover card.
Prior to eBay, Donahoe spent more than 20 years at Bain & Company, a worldwide consulting firm based in Boston. Starting as an associate consultant, he rose to become the firm’s president and CEO in 1999, overseeing Bain’s 30 offices and 3,000 employees.
Donahoe received a BA in economics from Dartmouth College and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He currently serves on the boards of directors for eBay Inc. and Intel Corp. and previously served on the Advisory Council for Stanford Graduate School of Business.
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