Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim founded YouTube in 2005 while working together at PayPal. Their idea transformed online video sharing and helped create one of the world’s largest digital platforms.
Chad Hurley is an American entrepreneur and designer best known as the co-founder and former CEO of YouTube. Before launching YouTube, he worked at PayPal, where he helped design the company’s original logo. Hurley focused heavily on YouTube’s user experience, video-sharing features, and overall platform design. In 2006, he helped lead the sale of YouTube to Google for $1.65 billion.
Steve Chen is a Taiwanese-American software engineer and internet entrepreneur. He co-founded YouTube alongside Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim after working with them at PayPal. Chen played a major role in the technical development of the platform and served as YouTube’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO). His engineering expertise helped YouTube scale rapidly during its early growth years.
Jawed Karim is a German-American software engineer and entrepreneur who co-founded YouTube in 2005. He is widely recognized for uploading the first video ever posted on YouTube, titled “Me at the zoo.” Karim contributed to the original concept and early development of the platform while also pursuing graduate studies at Stanford University. After YouTube’s success, he became an early investor in several major technology companies.
The three founders met while working at PayPal and noticed how difficult it was to upload and share videos online. They created YouTube to make video sharing simple, fast, and accessible to everyone. The platform officially launched in 2005 and quickly became one of the most visited websites in the world. Google acquired YouTube in 2006, helping it grow into the global platform it is today.