The eBay Ventures team is building on the corporate’s three-decades-old market presence to find disruptive technologies that can make it the go-to platform for millennials and GenZ.
Thirty years ago, ecommerce platform eBay was the pioneer in consumer-to-consumer online selling. It was the platform of choice for anyone looking for a good bargain across a range of categories – clothing, electronics, home goods, collectibles.
But somewhere along the way, it stopped being “cool” to shop on eBay, especially with the rise of alternate ecommerce and recommerce platforms that provided a more focused customer experience. Consumers now have the option of platforms built for a specific purpose – Vinted for everyday second-hand fashion, StockX for authenticated sneakers, Reverb for musical equipment, Chrono24 for luxury watches. eBay, for many GenZers, was relegated to a forgotten part of the internet.
And yet, eBay has persisted.
“It’s because eBay has scale,” believes Henri Jaanimaegi, global head of the company’s investment arm, eBay Ventures. “We have around 2.4 billion listings on the platform, and a large share is in recommerce listings. That means preloved, refurbished, outlet inventory, returns inventory. We’ve spent time building trust and that’s made us last.”
Making eBay look beyond the immediate
Nevertheless, Jaanimaegi cofounded eBay Ventures in 2022 to help the parent company tap external ideas and remain current.
“I wanted to see if there were ways for us to move faster and take more daring decisions,” he explains.
“EBay has deep knowledge, experience, and global reach, yet there was a clear opportunity to engage more actively with innovation across the startup ecosystem and strengthen our visibility into important external signals and developments.”
“I wanted to see if there were ways for us to move faster and take more daring decisions.”
Additionally, the processes that existed within the corporate meant that it wasn’t nimble enough to act fast in the face of an opportunity.
“The idea of establishing a venture arm which could move faster, be more daring, more innovative was almost a no-brainer. The next step was ensuring the organisation aligned around this approach,” says Jaanimaegi.
The five-member team at eBay Ventures focuses on early-stage investments in marketplaces, ecommerce enablers and the future of commerce sectors. The unit has made 20 investments since its founding and had three exits.
Recent startup investments by eBay Ventures
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“At the start, it was about investing in marketplace adjacent businesses. For example, we invested in the Australian designer fashion rental marketplace The Volte,” says Jaanimaegi. But this style of investing changed once he realised there was trust in his team from eBay.
It meant they could look at startups that were creating technologies that would help them catch up with their competition. Speed became a critical component here.
“We try to move fast, and we’ve slightly loosened the need for commercial partnership as a prerequisite for investment,” says Jaanimaegi.
The CVC team also needed to maintain strategic alignment with the parent company. So, they started to look at innovation keeping customer experiences and commerce enablement in mind. Their investment in Volte, for example, was a way of looking at a solution that allowed the company to enhance its position within the market.
“The rental platform is another way of looking at ecommerce. If you resell an item, it will likely change hands just a few times, right? But if you rent a dress, it can go back and forth 20 to 30 times even. The scale and environmental impact is massive,” says Jaanimaegi.
He also mentions an investment into AI-powered hyperspectral imaging system Refiberd from earlier this year. “It allows us to identify the composition of the fabric and makes recycling and sorting inventory much more effective,” explains Jaanimaegi.
His team works with various teams within the corporate in a bid to identify the different elements within that particular vertical that could help unlock more of the market for eBay, not just in the present but also five to 10 years down the line.
Huge market for recommerce enablement
Technologies that help people resell items — that original mission of eBay — is still close to Jaanimaegi’s heart. Thirty years on he believes this market still has growth potential.
“eBay is a huge champion of recommerce. One of the biggest things we’ve done is normalising recommerce and making it into something that is cool and fashionable. And the ventures team can support by identifying innovative solutions that can enhance the customer experience and make it more efficient and scalable.”
One innovative way being used by Jaanimaegi’s team is to scout technologies that provide solutions for closet blindness.
“If you look at clothing, only around 10% of our wardrobe goes into recommerce. It means there’s another 90% that remains untouched. We’re looking for solutions that can help users unlock that section of their wardrobe. So, a solution that helps you digitise your wardrobe, tell you how much you’re using and assists you in putting the rest up for resale could be of use.”
For the eBay Ventures’ team, this means regularly engaging with founders who are completely reimagining sourcing within recommerce from a business-to-business level or finding new authentication solutions that are super effective and scalable or building AI-enhanced agentic experiences tailored to recommerce.
“There are companies that are taking this multibillion-dollar industry and completely reimagining the way you look at and authenticate this inventory. It’s very fascinating,” states Jaanimaegi.
“CVC can help by showing what else is out there to further accelerate the recommerce market.”
