Not a bad payout – $325 million each – for YouTube founders Steve Chen and Chad Hurley.

But that’s not the full story.

What about YouTube’s third cofounder, Jawed Karim?

Come on – I know most of you are like me – you didn’t even know he existed – Right?

Believe it or not, Jawed Karim helped Steve and Chad cofound YouTube in early 2005. However, shortly after the company was founded Jawed backed out and returned to Stanford University to work on a graduate degree in computer science.

Sounds crazy – right!

Not really because according to public records (remember- GOOG is public) Mr. Karim received a payout valued at $64.6 million!

The three co-founders had met while working together at online payments company PayPal.

So, did Jawed get boned or was he thrown a bone? He certainly hasn’t gotten the press attention that Steve and Chad has, but a $65 million payout for doing almost nothing is unbelievable.

The reality is that it has been the Chad and Steve show since Google purchased YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006.

$325 a piece is a monster payout, but $65 million for being in the right place at the right time – no that’s brilliant.

By the way – according to CNN Money – at least two dozen YouTuber’s received a million or more.

Also, Sequoia Capital, the venture capital firm that was the only VC to back YouTube, ended up with about $442 million.

According to Wikipedia, YouTube has almost 100 employees, the company was named TIME magazine’s “Invention of the Year” for 2006.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 8th, 2007 at 11:57 am and is filed under Uncategorized, internet marketing, marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.