Founding and initial growth (2005–2006)
YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. The trio were early employees of PayPal, which left them enriched after the company was bought by eBay.[14] Hurley had studied design at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania, and Chen and Karim studied computer science together at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.[15]
According to a story that has often been repeated in the media, Hurley and Chen developed the idea for YouTube during the early months of 2005, after they had experienced difficulty sharing videos that had been shot at a dinner party at Chen's apartment in San Francisco. Karim did not attend the party and denied that it had occurred, but Chen remarked that the idea that YouTube was founded after a dinner party "was probably very strengthened by marketing ideas around creating a story that was very digestible".[16]
Karim said the inspiration for YouTube came from the Super Bowl XXXVIII halftime show controversy when Janet Jackson's breast was briefly exposed by Justin Timberlake during the halftime show. Karim could not easily find video clips of the incident and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami online, which led to the idea of a video-sharing site.[17][18] Hurley and Chen said that the original idea for YouTube was a video version of an online dating service and had been influenced by the website Hot or Not.[16][19] They created posts on Craigslist asking attractive women to upload videos of themselves to YouTube in exchange for a $100 reward.[20] Difficulty in finding enough dating videos led to a change of plans, with the site's founders deciding to accept uploads of any video.[21]
YouTube began as a venture capital–funded technology startup. Between November 2005 and April 2006, the company raised money from various investors, with Sequoia Capital and Artis Capital Management being the largest two.[14][22] YouTube's early headquarters were situated above a pizzeria and a Japanese restaurant in San Mateo, California.[23] In February 2005, the company activated www.youtube.com.[24] The first video was uploaded on April 23, 2005. Titled "Me at the zoo", it shows co-founder Jawed Karim at the San Diego Zoo and can still be viewed on the site.[25][26] The same day, the company launched a public beta and by November, a Nike ad featuring Ronaldinho became the first video to reach one million total views.[27][28] The site launched officially on December 15, 2005, by which time the site was receiving 8 million views a day.[29][30] Clips at the time were limited to 100 megabytes, as little as 30 seconds of footage.[31]