What was your worst moment at eBay? The site outage in 1999, when the engineer said, “I’m not sure we can bring this back up.” I moved into the site operations center. I literally camped out there. I said, “Go get cots, sleeping bags, pillows, toothbrushes...”

You really slept on a cot? Oh, yeah. For multiple nights.

Your successor, John Donahoe, faces big challenges in keeping eBay competitive. Were you better equipped to grow the company than to run it after it grew? I’d put this record up against anyone’s: In 10 years, eBay went from 300,000 users to 250 million and from $4 million in annual revenue to $8 billion. But ours is a business where the pace of change is dramatic. And you do need a fresh set of eyes, someone who will have the same energy as I had for the first 10 years.

You spent $2.6 billion in 2005 to buy internet phone company Skype. Critics scoffed. Will it ever pay off? Skype is bigger after four years than eBay was, than PayPal was, than Yahoo was. It’s profitable. I think we will be proven right. I think it will become part of daily life and will justify the price we paid.

What sacrifices have you made as a wife and mother? I have a lovely home, but it doesn’t necessarily look like Martha Stewart just left. My husband deserves a lot of credit. He’s a neurosurgeon, but he took on a lot of responsibility for running the household. The boys—they’re now 19 and 22—got used to the fact that Mom would, from time to time, be interrupted. Once, we were all set to go to Yosemite, and I was in the process of finding a new chief technology officer. So I said, “Okay, we’re going to get in the car and drive to the San Jose airport. I’m going to interview a job candidate for 45 minutes, then we’re going to keep driving to Yosemite.”

Your sons will probably marry very strong women.
Or the opposite!

Will you run for California governor? I’ve heard the rumors too. But my focus now is on the transition at eBay and on our family foundation.

If you were California’s governor, what would your big priority be? I appreciate the flattery underlying that question, but I’m not going to go there.

So what will you do first? Is there a closet you need to clean? The other day I came down for breakfast and there was a to-do list my husband had left for me.

What was on it? “The pool cover is broken. Could you call the pool-cover guy?”