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Here for me is what was truly remarkable about eBay in the early years.
One complete stranger would send money to another complete stranger,
who claimed to have something of value In her basement [LAUGH]
with no ability to verify and virtually no recourse if anything went wrong.
There were many skeptics who thought that this was a flawed business model.
How can you trust a complete stranger?
I think it says something important about Jeff's belief in human nature
that he was able to embrace that model.
>> I've been looking forward to giving this speech
more than any speech I've ever given, and it's because Jeff Skoll
is such an extraordinary person.
[APPLAUSE] I know, with all my Stanford connections,
just how seriously Stanford takes training,
the business, government, media leaders of the future.
>> But rarely is someone a global leader in all three.
He's lived many lives and is still, and I hope you appreciate this, the youngest
person to ever win this award.
[LAUGH] >> In 1995,
as we were graduating, Dave introduced me to his friend, Pierre
[UNKNOWN] who had this idea to help people buy and sell with each other online.
With my newly minted Stanford degree in hand, I said, Pierre,
what a terrible idea.
[LAUGH] Nonetheless, soon after I saw the light,
and Pierre and I decided to pursue eBay as a full time endeavor.
The Skoll Foundation began in 1999, but it really took off in 2001,
when Sally Osberg came on as, as CEO and employee number one.
[APPLAUSE] Sally took me to meet her mentor,
John Gardner.
I asked John what we could do
to best ensure that mankind would survive into the future.
John said, bet on good people doing good things.
John fe, felt that although there were many big problems in the world,
there were also people who would stop at nothing to solve these problems.
We now call these people social entrepreneurs.
Today the Skoll Foundation is the largest foundation in the world supporting
social entrepreneurs.
To date, we've bet on nearly 150 social entrepreneurs whose work impacts
all of our lives but most often in the most desperate places on earth.
We have an annual conference in Oxford called
the Skoll World Forum on social entrepreneurship.
>> With over a thousand attendees, our,
our three day conference has been called the Davos for good,
or as one attendee said, it's a, unlike
most conferences where there are a lot of big shots who say a lot and do nothing,
our conference we have a lot of little shots who don't say a lot, but do a lot.
[COUGH].
[APPLAUSE] We believe that a small agile
group can make an impact on the complex threats facing, humanity.
>> At no time was this more true than last year, during the Ebola crisis.
At Global Threats, we had been building labs and implementing programs
all over the world with a mission to end pandemics in our lifetime.
Unfortunately, we still had a hole in West Africa right where Ebola had begun.
Larry and his team including Mark Malinksi,
our new president Annie Maxwell sprang into action and
played an instrumental role in bringing together Silicon Valley, the CDC,
the WHO, the UN and the White House to fight this disease and
I was really touched today to read the New York Times to hear that
in Liberia, they believe they've had their last case of Ebola.
[APPLAUSE] I was greeted very enthusiastically,
with the Sam Goldwyn line.
If you wanna send a message, use Western Union.
[LAUGH] Or, the surest way to become a millionaire is start by being
a billionaire and go into the film business.
[LAUGH] But I then asked everyone, writers, actors,
directors, studio heads, agents, what they were proudest of in their career.
Invariably, each person named a film that addressed an issue that they cared about.
Be it genocide, AIDS or the rainforest.
>> When I asked them if they would be supportive of a company that made
more films along these lines, the answer was a resounding yes.
So I founded Participant Media in 2004 to tell stories that would compel and
inspire social change.
At the end of the day, return on investment isn't worth much
if it causes more harm to the world than it helps it.
And social progress is not sustainable without a financial model
that supports it.
For all of us at the Jeff Skool Group,
this is the crucial balance that we address every day.
I'm confident that there are some GSV students or alumni
in this room who will be at the podium one day teaching us how to do this better.
Together we can achieve a sustainable world of peace and prosperity.
Thanks again for this wonderful award.
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