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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Chad Meredith Hurley : Co-founder of Youtube.com


Chad Meredith Hurley was born in 1976 and is Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer of the world's largest video sharing site: Youtube.com

Place of birth: Birdsboro, Pennsylvania, United States of America
Gender: Male
Places lived: Pennsylvania

He co-founded the company Youtube in February 2005 with fellow Paypal colleagues Steve Chen and Jawed Karim. Chad was born in Birdsboro Pensylvania by Don and Joann Hurley, He's three siblings, an older sister (Heather) as well as a more youthful brother (Brent). Since childhood, Chad showed interest in the arts and became interested in computers electronic media in the work of high school.Chad graduated from Twin Valley High School, Elverson in 1995, received his bachelor's degree in Fine Art at Michigan University of Pennsylvania 1999.

When he was about to graduate from college, he heard of PayPal( Chad Hurley sent his resume and received a job interview. After flying to Los angeles, he was asked to design a logo to show his skills and created what was Paypal's logo for many years.

It was in the work of his days at PayPal that he met Steve Chen and Jawed Karim,They worked together for 3 years until auctioneers eBay bought Paypal in October 2002 for $1.54 billion. Hurley recieved a Bonus, left the company and worked as a design consultant in Silicon valley for several companies, though Steve Chen stayed on another three years to help with PayPal's launch in China, all of them remained friends from then.

On October 16, 2006, Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim sold YouTube to Google, Inc. for $1.65 billion. It was reported in the Wall Street Journal that Chad Hurley's share in the $1.65Billion sale of Youtube.com was $345.6M at Google's Feb. 7, 2007 closing stock cost of $470.01. He received 694,087 Google shares directly and another 41,232 shares in a trust. His other three co-founders, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, received 625,366 shares and 137,443 shares respectively valued at $326.2M and $64.6M.

The idea for YouTube sprang up from the experience they have when at a dinner party hosted by Chen in January 2005 in San Francisco. Steve Chen and Chad Hurley where trying to send videos of the night by email to Jawed Karim who did not attend the party and denied that it ever took place but the videos were  massive for the email programs. Posting videos online was as well as a headache from there they got the idea that other people might be having the same issue. So they thought of having a site with a software that would make uploading videos feasible.

They latter got to work and the effect is what all of us now know as YouTube.com ( 10th most popular site online  a year after its launch ) they made it easy for visitors to view clips without registration, People could post anything they like in a matter of minutes, they fundamentally created a community around video uploading. By may 2005 they uploaded the preview of the site YouTube and in December same year, it was officially launched.

At first they got in to financial issue of having to pay for more Bandwidth for the thousands of visitors to the site so that it won't crash, but they were later bailed out by there former Boss Roelof Botha the former PayPal Chief Financial Officer who put them through to Sequoia Capital who agreed to fund their Idea with a $3.5 million check. Latter followed by another $8 million in April 2006.

Their marketing was at its best without spending anything on commercial at the preliminary stage but by making the easy and inspiring for the visitors to tell a mate, email links video voting and allowing videos to be simply embedded in profiles of social network site and site linking.

They struggled to keep the site walking effectively  on the financial aspect since the site was free to make use of users do not must drop their email address, they resort to selling of commercial space and their first commercial was uploaded in January 2006, elementary text including an apology from Hurley and Chen explaining they were short on funds.

The first YouTubevideo uploaded was Me at the Zoo on April 23, 2005 which shows founder Jawed Karim at San Diego Zoo (which can still be viewed on the site ). The site soon become one of the most Popular site online with Members being able to set up their channels on YouTube and can comment on videos. within a short period from startup they were getting tens of thousands videos upload a day, they seldom thought there would be such a immense acceptance. It goes on to show that when you can come up with an idea that solves a necessity and right marketing skills you have no were to go than the top when you have the
persistence to go on even when you get discouraged on your journey

Remember when the going get toughs the toughs get going.

That's among what makes them successfull entrepreneurs. By July 2006 the company announced they were recieving 100 million video views per day and over 65,000 new videos being uploaded everyday.It was a massive step for the Young entrepreneurs.

We seldom anticipated when they started this site they would have such a profound effect on popular culture or the political races, that   by unlocking this video solution and generating this global audience behind what they were doing, were  enabling so many more people to express their views, not only their talents, but to receive a message out there, and that's what  drives us.

YouTube has been awarded the Best Invention of the Year by Time Journal, the first Web-site to obtain the Entertainer of the Year by Entertainment Every week. Many of its most popular users have found success beyond YouTube. Both Chad and Steve have received several prestigious honors and acknowledgementsfrom the business and entertainment communities including: Business 2.0
50 Most Influential People, GQ's Man of the Year in 2006

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