Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2010. It presents the Google acquisition as recent (“not long ago”), although Google announced the purchase in October 2006, for about $1.65 billion in stock.
Is it possible to make so many millions in three years? It certainly is: this is a true, current story we all know. It’s the story of three young men who one day had an idea. They thought something was still missing from the internet: a simple way for any of us to upload a video and have it seen by millions of users around the world.
They called it YouTube. Not long ago, given its success, the internet giant decided to buy this small company for $1.648 billion.
YouTube’s early days
Three young men with computer skills decided to get together in a garage at home to give shape to the project. They invested all their savings and much of their time working out how to do it, until they succeeded. But they had to rely on third parties for their videos to be uploaded and downloaded.
Every time someone uploaded a video to YouTube, it cost these young men money. They talked to companies about placing advertising on their network to offset the cost of the uploads. But they hadn’t counted on uploads running into the millions every day, and they came close to throwing in the towel.
That was when an American company decided to back the three young men’s project and lent them $2 million so they could carry on. But they were already at around 100 million visits a month, so in less than two months they received a further 8 million euros to keep them from giving up.
That was when Google studied this new form of communication and bought the company from these three former PayPal employees for $1.648 billion.
Once again, we have an example of how persistence, a positive mindset and a very clear idea of where you want to go are the factors that, in the end, get us to our goal.
Further reading
