David and Tom Gardner recently interviewed eBay CEO Meg Whitman on The Motley Fool Radio Show on NPR. This is the fourth of five parts.

TMF: Meg, let's talk about your role at the company. In a recent Fortune article on eBay(Nasdaq: EBAY), we read that there is a strong sense among eBay's management that eBay in many ways runs itself. I often think of Warren Buffett saying, "The great investments and the great companies can be run by monkeys." In fact, in that article the exact quote was: "A monkey could drive this train." Now, Meg, does that understate your role?

Whitman: Well, you know what? This is a company that has been built by the users. We provide the trading platform but the users list the items, sell the items, answer their own customer support, and create the vibrancy of the marketplace. They are also pioneering new categories for us.

If you go back to 1998, it was almost entirely a collectibles website. It was the users who took us into consumer electronics, computers, used cars, parts and accessories, sporting goods, clothing and accessories and now restaurant equipment, construction equipment, maintenance, repair and operations equipment.

So while we provide the trading platform, there is no question that the sellers and the buyers have really helped to build this company. So, in that sense, if we help manage the marketplace, the users really create a tremendous amount of value.

TMF: Was there a moment, looking back on your tenure as CEO or maybe it even occurred before you got there, Meg. Was there a specific moment, a tipping-point moment where you and the rest of management thought, you know, it is going to all happen now. We have made it. Was there a key moment there?

Whitman: I think it was potentially after the site outage in June of 1999. You might recall the site was down for about 22 hours on June 10, 1999. Then the site, we were able to bring it back up for about eight hours. It was back down for another several hours, then back up. It was rather intermittent through most of that next weekend. When we finally got the site stabilized that next Monday, we had credited all the seller's fees for any auction in process but we were not sure that the sellers and the buyers were going to come back.

By Wednesday we had the same number of items on the site, the same number of active registered users. I said, you know what? This, I think we have actually come through a tipping point, if you will. People know eBay, they love eBay. We were incredibly up front with what we did wrong and why the site had to have its difficulties. You know what? They all came back. I was incredibly grateful, incredibly humbled. But I think that was the time when I said you know what? This really has its own momentum now.

TMF: Meg, does the tremendous success at eBay under your leadership take pressure off you as CEO, or does that success create even more pressure as your own expectations and the expectations of the market get ratcheted up?

Whitman: I think the opportunity in front of this company is very, very big. So we have an obligation, I believe, to employees, to shareholders, but also perhaps, most importantly, to our users to help create the largest and most vibrant trading community in the world.

So, in some ways I think it increases the pressure, but it is also exhilarating and great fun because we continue to pioneer a whole new space, "break new snow" as we like to say. So, it is somewhat more pressure, but it is also great fun and incredibly interesting because you don't actually know what is going to be around the next bend in the river.

Tomorrow: Great leaders and Internet taxes.