Cyberposium-15: Keynote - Chad Hurley CEO of Youtube

Chad Hurley, CEO and Co-Founder of YouTube, gave the afternoon keynote at Cyberposium-15, in an interview format with HBS entrepreneurial finance professor Joseph P. Lassiter.

The interview covered Hurley's startup track record beginning at PayPal, where he was a UI designer and designed the original company logo.

Hurley does not have a technical background (majoring in Fine Arts) nor an MBA, yet he and his co-founder built a 70 person company and sold it to Google for $1.65B.

He admits that during the "shopping period" when he went looking for buyers, if a suitable deal wasn't met they would have had to change their model in order to stay afloat.  Since they are now backed by Google, Youtube as a business unit does not meet the same levels of profitability as it would have being an independent startup or even if they filed an IPO.  Youtube is a 5-10 year project for Google, to own the conduit for the largest demographic and format for video consumption in the years ahead.

This long range thinking makes a lot of sense when you think about TVs of the future coming equipped with WiFi, and thinking about YouTube less as a website and more of the new standard for video content.

Excellent article on YouTube's mantra:  Find, Follow, Feed.

Hurley discussed upcoming projects we may see soon:

• Micropayment gateways for premium content (on-site transactions)
• Movie rentals
• Additional development on Youtube XL - A large format UI for watching videos on a large screen TV.

As interested as I was in the story of the early days of YouTube, I found myself incredibly sleepy and fell into a soothing hypnotic trance listening to these two seated gentlemen converse on stage.

It must have been the combination of dim lighting in the auditorium, coupled with the after-lunch sleepy effects of my turkey sandwich, and the detached, soothing, unemotional vocal style of Chad Hurley that did it for me.

From my profile-view vantage point, Joe Lassiter looked and sounded exactly like Phil Donahue.  What do you think?


Even more bizarre than seeing Chad Hurley get interviewed on stage at Harvard by Phil Donahue, was the fact that Chad Hurley sounds exactly like Marilyn Manson.

I may be way off base here but see for yourself. The following clip is Chad Hurley.

Press play and the clip will start a few minutes in, then press pause after a few seconds and listen to the next clip.



...here is the Marilyn Manson clip I was thinking of (interview with Bill O'Reilly). Press play to jump ahead to Marilyn speaking.



Is Chad Hurley leading a double life as an animated lead singer of a popular industrial-metal gothic rock band, or is Marilyn Manson really the man behind YouTube?

Let me know what you think in the comments.


This is part 3 of 3 in a series on Harvard Business School's Cyberposium-15, held on November 21st.  Check out parts 1 and 2 below:

Part 1: Keynote with Jim Basillie, Co-CEO of RIM
Part 2: Startup Panel - Moderated by Don Dodge of Google