Meg Whitman

"I remember sitting at my computer saying, I can't believe I'm about to fly across the country to look at a black-and-white auction classified site," she recalled to Fishman.

Whitman showed up at 4 A.M. and, as she told Atoosa Rubenstein in a CosmoGirl! interview, "moved in with the engineers for three months and effectively ran the technology division. I didn't know very much about technology, and it was a bit like being in France—everyone is speaking French, and I don't!"

Her father was a businessman and her mother was a homemaker, whom Whitman later described as a free-spirited and adventurous soul.

"When my mother came home after this great adventure," Whitman recalled in an interview with Christian Science Monitor journalist Patrick Dillon, "she told me what this experience taught her. She realized she could do anything she wanted and she wanted me to recognize that I could do the same."

My 16-year-old was very anxious to learn. He loved it, and he said, "Mom, you are going to love this." We go five or six times a year.