News: In Surprise! There’s a third You-Tube co-founder, USA Today fills in the history of YouTube that thus far has remained little publicized. We know much already about the two former PayPal employees Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, who came up with the idea for YouTube after a party left them puzzling over how to share video of the party among friends. But we hardly know the third co-founder of YouTube, Jawed Karim, who also worked at PayPal, but returned to Stanford to continue his graduate work in computer sciences. In between, Jawed helped develop the idea for YouTube.
The most interesting revelation: What sparked Jawed to come up with the idea for YouTube was the now infamous halftime performance by Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake, in which Justin exposed Janet’s breast. Apparently, Jawed was having difficulty finding video of the clip. As USAToday explains:
“Then, early last year, Karim recalled the difficulty involved in finding and watching videos online of Jackson accidentally baring her breast during the Super Bowl show. The same was true with the many amateur videos made of that winter’s devastating tsunami. Karim says he proposed to Hurley and Chen that they create a video-sharing site. ‘I thought it was a good idea,’ Karim says. The three agreed within a few days in February, then divided work based on skills: Hurley designed the site’s interface and logo. Chen and Karim split technical duties making the site work.”
Analysis: According to the New York Times, Jawed owns fewer shares of YouTube than the other co-founders, but still has plenty enough to be worth hundreds of millions from the sale to Google. In hindsight, I wonder if this guy would’ve stayed at YouTube if he had to do it all over again. Dropping out of Stanford grad school is not such a bad thing. Ask Larry Page and Sergei Brin of Google.
