AGILEVC My idle thoughts on tech startups

August 28, 2006

I just want to take a moment to take my hat off to Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim. Chad & Steve run YouTube and Jawed was also part of the early days. Back at PayPal we all worked together and I’ve had the good fortune of knowing them and even playing the occasional soccer game together.

Just about a year ago, these guys had put together and quietly launched their video sharing service. I remember when Jawed forwarded me one of the early videos that caught his eye. There was some interest from both top notch individual investors and VCs, those that still had day jobs left them, and of course the rest is history. It still boggles my mind that in this timespan they’ve built one of the largest properties on the web, spawned imitators, and generally solidified a place in our pop culture. I know there’s controversy out there about copyright issues, and the big bandwidth bill each month, and the like. But when even one of your very distant competitors gets bought for $65 million, I think you can safely say you’re on to something.

At any rate, kudos to you guys and keep up the good work. If the next twelve months go anything like the previous twelve, I think we’ll all be working for you :)