Tensions over YouTube
A Time cover story says Jawed Karim feels left out of the YouTube acquisition publicity, though several $tens of million are a pretty good salve:
 |
|
Step off |
Karim, 27, enrolled at Stanford last year to pursue a master’s in computer science, and today there’s some tension between him and the other founders, who have become famous while he toils in a small, modestly furnished dorm room. Although Karim is named on YouTube’s site as a co-founder, Chad and Steve have promoted a highly simplified history of the company’s founding that largely excludes him. In the stripped-down version–repeated in dozens of news accounts–Chad and Steve got the idea in the winter of 2005, after they had trouble sharing videos online that had been shot at a dinner party at Steve’s San Francisco apartment. Karim says the dinner party never happened and that the seed idea of video sharing was his–although he is quick to say its realization in YouTube required “the equal efforts of all three of us.”
Chad and Steve both say that the party did occur but that Karim wasn’t there. “Chad and I are pretty modest, and Jawed has tried to seize every opportunity to take credit,” Steve told me. But he also acknowledged that the notion that YouTube was founded after a dinner “was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible.”
No company, of course, is ever founded in a single moment, and YouTube evolved over several months. Chad and Steve agree that Karim deserves credit for the early idea… [Link]
Cofounder Chad Hurley is married to a woman seven years his senior, the daughter of Netscape’s Jim Clark:
Chad was also lucky to meet his future wife, Kathy Clark, at a party in 2000… She also turned out to be the daughter of James Clark, the legendary Silicon Valley entrepreneur who founded or co-founded three billion-dollar-plus companies: Silicon Graphics, Netscape and Healtheon. His daughter, 36, is an intensely private person… [Link]
The founders say one of the original ideas for YouTube was to build a video version of Hot or Not:
… “the original goal that we were working toward in the very beginning”: a video version of HOTorNOT.com. [Link]
I bet Jim and James kicked themselves when they heard this 
on Monday, December 18th, 2006, 4:27 am in Business, Profiles, Tech › 
Email this
› 
Facebook this
› 
Reddit this
› Link
› Reader links
According to what I’ve read, all three of the founders are worth more than they could’ve ever imagined. My guess is they’re busy counting their new millions, not worrying about much else these days.
Congrats once again and hats off to these three guys… truly amazing. Some are saying Facebook will top YouTube’s acquisition, but somehow I doubt it.
it’s cha-ching either way.
stop complaining
and roll in your dough karim.
I think some of the Jawed Karim quotes in the TIME article are from this talk he gave here at the U of IL :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nssfmTo7SZg.
He spends time talking about the “killer-apps” of the internet era and how they’re connected to each other.
Chen’s also from the U of IL, of course. Did I mention that the U of IL is the source of netscape and paypal, also ? :)