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 YouTube: another valley garage-to-riches story (ZT) |
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costco
头衔: 海归准将
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作者：costco 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
YouTube: another valley garage-to-riches story
By Constance Loizos
Mercury News
Monday's purchase of YouTube turns the popular video-sharing site's two co-founders, Chad Hurley, 29, and Steve Chen, 27, into the latest Silicon Valley superstars, and both stand to realize tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars from the deal.
Though Hurley and Chen have been on a surreal ride since February 2005, when they started the company in the garage of Hurley's Menlo Park home, this $1.65 billion deal for an unprofitable, 67-employee company takes them to an entirely new level.
It might be a strange fit for people whom friends characterize as ``humble'' and ``low key.'' Then again, their entire story is decidedly short on flash.
Hurley, a native of suburban Philadelphia who studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania, first crossed paths with Chen, a self-described math geek, at the payments processing start-up PayPal in 1999.
Chen had been studying computer science at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign when Max Levchin, a PayPal co-founder and former classmate, recruited him. Meanwhile, Hurley landed a job soon after e-mailing the company a job application. Neither had senior roles at PayPal, but they stayed in touch after the company was acquired by eBay in July 2002. (Chen stayed on; Hurley left to become an independent consultant.)
Fast-forward to an informal dinner early last year, one attended by a number of PayPal alumni. When their friend Jawed Karim noted that he couldn't easily share his video footage of the evening, a light went off for both Hurley and Chen. A company was born; Karim was made an adviser.
``It only took them a few hours to come up with their architecture, which is something they still use,'' said Tom McInerney, chief executive of video-sharing service Guba and a friend of Chen. ``The whole idea was just to do something really simple and elegant; it was very commonsensical.''
McInerney, who used to play poker with Chen and various other Web 2.0 entrepreneurs ``before YouTube blew up'' and Chen's schedule rendered regular get-togethers impossible, calls Chen both ``extremely low-key'' and ``very smart,'' although he adds that ``I think I beat him (at poker) the last time we played.''
Serial entrepreneur Josh Felser, who recently sold his video-sharing service, Grouper, to America Online for $65 million, credits Hurley with being more than a pretty face, too. (Hurley's curtain of shoulder-length hair has attracted almost as much media attention as YouTube's ever-skyrocketing traffic numbers.)
Though the two aren't close friends, Felser -- a peer in the same, highly competitive space -- says Hurley has ``always been open and humble. Despite YouTube's success, he has always invited interaction and conversation.''
Adds Felser, ``He's also just very nice.''
Of course, the acquisition means much more than an elevated profile for the two. It also means that Hurley and Chen -- respectively the designer and the engineering brains behind the company -- are about to become extraordinarily wealthy.
The math isn't hard to figure. Neither YouTube nor its sole venture capital backer, the renowned firm Sequoia Capital, has ever disclosed how much of the company Hurley and Chen own. But Sequoia has given YouTube just $11.5 million over its 18-month life.
Assuming standard venture capital terms, Sequoia received anywhere from 10 percent to 40 percent of the company for its millions. To attract talent, YouTube also probably dedicated 15 to 20 percent of its shares to an employee options pool. Finally, YouTube's board, its key advisers and its earliest employees probably own a collective 2 percent to 3 percent of the company.
Unless YouTube accepted more exotic terms from Sequoia, Hurley and Chen now own a minimum of about 40 percent of the company -- or several hundred million dollars in Google stock.
Not bad for 20 months' work.
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Hurley & Chen |
作者：costco 在 海归商务 发贴, 来自【海归网】 http://www.haiguinet.com
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 YouTube: another valley garage-to-riches story (ZT) -- costco - (4001 Byte) 2006-10-11 周三, 05:37 (2373 reads)
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