Rodrigo R. Sales is driven by a passion
to succeed. As an MBA student at
Stanford University, he co-founded
AuctionWatch as a comparison shopping
site that pulled information from eBay,
Amazon, Yahoo and hundreds of other
auction sites. While still a student, he was
able to secure two rounds of venture capital.
The company prospered, but it later
faced problems when eBay tried to block
providers like AuctionWatch from displaying its items in their searches. Enraged,
Sales took out a full-page ad in the Wall
Street Journal chastising eBay for its anti-consumer tactics. This propelled the company into the spotlight and gained it a reputation as being a David fighting the industry’s Goliath and raising the bar for competition.
As the market changed in 2001, and
eBay emerged as the dominant online
auction site, Sales knew his site wasn’t
as valuable as it once was. Instead of
accepting defeat, he decided to cater to
these online merchants, so AuctionWatch
evolved into Vendio Services Inc., which
provides sales management solutions for
online merchants.
Today, this chairman and CEO’s business
provides a suite of products and services
designed to help online merchants establish, manage and scale their businesses. By
seeing the changing market, Sales was
able to capitalize on a new opportunity
instead of fold, and now, Vendio has seen
profitable growth for the past five years.
On top of that, Sales was able to purchase
one of Vendio’s largest competitors in
2006, and he has high hopes for continued
growth in the future.
HOW TO REACH: Vendio Services Inc., (650) 293-3510, (877)
258-8488 or www.vendio.com