Youtube

Everybody aspires to be a star.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

In February, we started developing the product. In May, we had our first public preview. And in December, we officially launched YouTube. By that time we were serving over three million videos a day.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We’re three to four times larger than Google Video or Yahoo Video Search. And growing much faster too. It’s a side project for them.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

When we started this company a few years ago, we never expected to be here. It’s interesting how this simple idea, improving our own video experience online, turned into this.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

I see our service as one that’s been needed for a long time. The pieces to make it all happen just weren’t in place until we came around.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We needed it to be a no-brainer.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We allowed the community to tell us what was entertaining them.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We operate under the law. We have from day one.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

What our users want to watch is themselves. They don’t want to watch professionally produced content. There are so many people with cameras that have the opportunity to create their own content and so many more people with editing tools to tell their stories.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We feel this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

If we wanted to, we could instantly turn this into $10 million in revenue per month by running pre-rolls [short video ads] on the videos. But at the same time, we’re going to make sure that whatever revenue model we’ve built is going to be something that’s accepted by the users.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We’re building relationships with studios, networks, and labels because they’re looking for ways to reach new audiences, and we have a great platform and a great stage to make that happen.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We are building a community, and we don’t want to bombard people with advertising.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We’re really trying to develop something that works for our community.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

This isn’t just about music videos.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We want to entertain, inform and empower people with video around the world.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

It’s about creating new market opportunities. Giving users new ways to be creative…We see our technology as a platform for other things.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We’ve been around for awhile, so it’s been a very long month for us.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen

We’re not in a hurry. We’re interested in building our community. We’re trying to improve discovery. We’re trying to improve the experience for people on our site.

Chad Hurley & Steve Chen