Wednesday, October 11, 2006
You Tube and Smarter Agent 1.5 billion degrees of separation
Guess what I started using YouTube for:
When I open my laptop, my 2 year old comes running over and says: "Rocket Ship" or Trains" or "Jet Plane". I type those terms into YouTube and he delights in watching the 50 sec to 5 minute clips of rocket ships blasting off, jet planes zooming by, or other folks experiencing Thomas the Train. He stares at those clips and shouts "there it goes" when the rockets launch and get's engaged far more than those hollywood videos we watch.
Interesting, but I get a lot less work done on the sofa these days.
Then I am talking to one of our broker partners in the Reading PA area, and he tells me one of the founders is from Berks County. Damn, the local Philly press did not even report that!
Of course we talk to Sequoia Capital from time to time, and have met with Roelof who made the YouTube investment...We understand from reports the investment was $5 with a $15 million pre-money valuation (which means they owned 25%) and then Sequoia did another $8 million for +/- 5-10% additional equity. That's how a good VC does it, keeping it clean, going for good ideas at an early stage, and leaving room for founders to go for it. Sequoia also did the Google Investment. They are a great group. I hope they come around for our 2nd round.
Here's some background on how You Tube came together from a prior Business Week article:
Hurley, 29, and Chen, 27, feel at home in turbulent times. They got their start in the business world during the dot-com bubble and the bust that followed. They were among the first 20 hires at online payment service PayPal Inc. (EBAY ), joining during the second half of 1999. They got to know each other well during the lean years, becoming part of a tight-knit PayPal mafia that remains close today. Their venture money came in part through their connection to Roelof Botha, a Sequoia Capital partner who had been PayPal's CFO.A key lesson Hurley and Chen learned from the PayPal days is flexibility. PayPal's founders started out providing security software for handhelds and then tried several other fields. Only later did they hit on the idea for their online payment system, a business that eventually was sold to eBay (EBAY ) Inc. for $1.5 billion in 2002.Hurley had an entrepreneurial streak from the start. He grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and as a 5-year-old tried to sell paintings from his front yard. He studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and landed at PayPal after reading about it in Wired magazine and sending an e-mail inquiry about a job. During his interview he designed a new logo for PayPal, one that executives liked so much they still use it today. He left after the eBay deal, working with a few companies as a design consultant.
When I open my laptop, my 2 year old comes running over and says: "Rocket Ship" or Trains" or "Jet Plane". I type those terms into YouTube and he delights in watching the 50 sec to 5 minute clips of rocket ships blasting off, jet planes zooming by, or other folks experiencing Thomas the Train. He stares at those clips and shouts "there it goes" when the rockets launch and get's engaged far more than those hollywood videos we watch.
Interesting, but I get a lot less work done on the sofa these days.
Then I am talking to one of our broker partners in the Reading PA area, and he tells me one of the founders is from Berks County. Damn, the local Philly press did not even report that!
Of course we talk to Sequoia Capital from time to time, and have met with Roelof who made the YouTube investment...We understand from reports the investment was $5 with a $15 million pre-money valuation (which means they owned 25%) and then Sequoia did another $8 million for +/- 5-10% additional equity. That's how a good VC does it, keeping it clean, going for good ideas at an early stage, and leaving room for founders to go for it. Sequoia also did the Google Investment. They are a great group. I hope they come around for our 2nd round.
Here's some background on how You Tube came together from a prior Business Week article:
Hurley, 29, and Chen, 27, feel at home in turbulent times. They got their start in the business world during the dot-com bubble and the bust that followed. They were among the first 20 hires at online payment service PayPal Inc. (EBAY ), joining during the second half of 1999. They got to know each other well during the lean years, becoming part of a tight-knit PayPal mafia that remains close today. Their venture money came in part through their connection to Roelof Botha, a Sequoia Capital partner who had been PayPal's CFO.A key lesson Hurley and Chen learned from the PayPal days is flexibility. PayPal's founders started out providing security software for handhelds and then tried several other fields. Only later did they hit on the idea for their online payment system, a business that eventually was sold to eBay (EBAY ) Inc. for $1.5 billion in 2002.Hurley had an entrepreneurial streak from the start. He grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs and as a 5-year-old tried to sell paintings from his front yard. He studied design at Indiana University of Pennsylvania and landed at PayPal after reading about it in Wired magazine and sending an e-mail inquiry about a job. During his interview he designed a new logo for PayPal, one that executives liked so much they still use it today. He left after the eBay deal, working with a few companies as a design consultant.
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