I was fascinated by the first ever video on YouTube and its history.
Little would the 25-year old subject of the first YouTube video (Jawed Karim below) know that this 19 second clip would make him $64 million just 18 months later.
It’s an amazing story if it stopped there.
But, then, Karim plucked down$10,000 into an even crazier idea that made him even more money.
The First YouTube Video Ever: “Me at the Zoo”
The First YouTube Video (Answers to Common Questions)
I want to document a few key parts of the story so I did a Q&A with ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini A.I. tools (I figured Gemini should know since Google bought YouTube!) to help answer basic questions. t
What was the first YouTube video?
The first YouTube video is titled “Me at the Zoo”. The subject 19-second clip of Jawed Karim (pictured above) describing elephants behind him at the San Diego Zoo.
Who made the first video on YouTube?
Jawed Karim’s high school friend Yakov Lapitsky filmed Karim.
What was the subject of the first YouTube video?
The first video, “Me at the Zoo,” is about Karim’s visit to the San Diego Zoo. He briefly discusses elephants and comments on their long trunks in a casual, conversational tone, which underscored the authentic/raw spirit of YouTube’s early content.
When was it uploaded?
It was uploaded on April 23, 2005 at 8:27pm PT. (I found the exact time on Google’s Gemini A.I. tool — ChatGPT didn’t have it!). Makes sense, huh? Google owns YouTube.
How many views does the first YouTube video have?
“Me at the Zoo” has gotten 338 million views (as of October 31, 2024, the last time I checked).
What is Jawed Karim’s net worth?
$300 to $310 million is the range as of October 31, 2024, according to my query of Perplexity.ai
But that estimate was simply based on 4 Celebrity Net Worth sites.
I did a bit more digging and found this:
Wikipedia reports that Karim made $64 million when he sold the 137,443 shares that he owned in YouTube to Google (which bought YouTube in 2006).
Karim made more money after YouTube from a $10K investment
After Karim sold to Google, he launched a venture capital fund called Y Ventures that, according to https://www.yventures.com/#startups, made early investments in such startups as
- TrueBill
- Qwiki
- Alpha Vantage
- Palantir
- The Org
- Socket
- Eventbrite
- Milo
- FutureAdvisor
- Skybox
- PagerDuty
- Field Materials
- Opendoor
- Airbnb
- Postmates
- Gusto
- Counsyl
- DataFox
- TokBox
- HelloSign
- Etacts
Many of those investments did quite well.
But one was a real whopper, in my opinion.
Jawed’s Investment in Airbnb!
Karim was one of just 3 seed investment groups in Airbnb in 2009, according to Wikipedia ).
The total amount of that seed round was $620,000, but $20,000 of it was Y Combinator. The post-money valuation was just $2.4 million.
The rest of the $600K was split up by:
- $585,000 from Sequoia Capital
- $30,000 from Youniversity Ventures (which had 3 partners: Jawed Karim, Keith Rabois and Kevin Hartz (Kevin and I shared a cleaning person back in the day!) in a seed round valuing the company at $2.4 million.
So, for fun, let’s assume that Karim put $10,000 into Airbnb.
Jawed Karim’s $94.4 Million Gain on Airbnb
Here’s how the math might have worked for Karim using typical dilution (I asked ChatGPT to do all this for me):
- Initial Seed Investment: At a $2.4 million valuation, $10,000 represents about 0.4167% of the company.
- Series A-F Dilution: If we assume six rounds of 20% dilution per round:(1−0.2)6=0.262(1 – 0.2)^6 = 0.262(1−0.2)6=0.262By the end of Series F, the initial stake of 0.4167% would dilute to about 0.1093%.
- Current Value: With Airbnb’s current valuation around $86.35 billion:0.001093 \times 86.35 \text{ billion} = \text{about } $94.4 \text{ million}
So, the $10,000 seed investment, following standard dilution, would now be worth approximately $94.4 million.
I’m real sorry if I messed up any of the math. It’s just an estimate.
What an amazing story.
And it all started with 19 seconds of “Me at the Zoo”.
Thanks for reading!
Rob Kelly
Chief Maniac, Daily Doc