The most important decision a startup makes is to choose your customer definition.<p>It looks to me like you have chosen "anyone who sells anything on ebay" as your customer. The problem is, even if you could personally meet with each one of them, they'd probably still choose to list items on ebay because there are more buyers on ebay and they are likely to get a higher price.<p>There are lots of ways you can go. None of these are particularly good ideas, but hopefully they can help you think of a great idea based on your strenghts:<p>- You could choose a specific category that Ebay does poorly. Ebay has vacation lodging, but AirBNB is kicking their ass in that area. Ebay has arts and crafts, but Etsy is doing crazy well.<p>- If your advantage is an easier UI, maybe you can build an easier-to-use front end to list or find items on Ebay. Even for this, you might choose some specific target customer. Maybe old people who are nontechnical. Maybe young people who think Ebay is uncool.<p>- Here's a question, how can sites like policeauctions.com and propertyroom.com exist? wouldn't it be smarter to list all those items on ebay where you can get a higher price? Steal their customers and do something easier, list the items on ebay.<p>Whatever you do, dont try to compete head-on with Ebay. Ebay will always be a better Ebay than you. Choose one thing they are doing poorly, and do it great. Imagine if Etsy or Airbnb tried to expand to do everything ebay did. That would obviously suck. So be more like them.<p>Happy to brainstorm.