Alex Kilka

I didn't realize such arbitrage opportunities existed between these two marketplaces.

So we kind of talked about it and thought, well, this could be an easy way to make some money.

You know, let's find a way to write a script to identify these opportunities and then somehow automatically execute on them.

Well, I mean...

I'm not sure how much of a needle in a haystack it was.

I think he was lucky to find such a big discrepancy at that moment in time.

And this was like three, four years ago.

So perhaps the markets are a little more efficient since then.

But I think there are still opportunities like that across the board if you know how to look for them, especially if you're able to programmatically look for them.

Well, some of the assumptions... Oh, gosh.

I think we assume that an item on eBay, an item on Amazon, if it's the same listing, it's going to be the same item.

Wait, what do you mean by that?

Well, for example...

You know, some items have product numbers.

Some items have very specific product numbers.

So if you go to an Apple store and you look at the back of the box, you know, there might be a UPC code or there might be, you know, some detailed SKU that you can use.

But there are actually a lot of products where it's not very clear on the listings if it's the exact same product.

It might look identical, but maybe the color is slightly different or maybe it's from an old lot and they're selling a new lot.

Or maybe somewhere buried in the page says it's refurbished or it's missing a box.

So one challenge is trying to find exact one-to-one match so that we knew we were actually arbitraging the same item