Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim in 2008
Born (1979-10-28) October 28, 1979
Merseburg, East Germany
Ethnicity Bangladeshi-German
Alma mater University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Stanford University
Known for Co-founder of YouTube
Net worth $140 million[1]
Religion Islam

Jawed Karim (born October 28, 1979) is a German-American internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is best known for being a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to upload a video on it. Many of the core components of PayPal, including its real-time anti-internet fraud system, were also designed and implemented by Karim.

Early life

Karim was born to a Bangladeshi father and German mother in Merseburg, East Germany, but crossed the inner German border with his family in 1981 and grew up in Neuss, West Germany. He graduated from Saint Paul Central High School and later attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Computer Science. He left campus prior to graduating to become an early employee at PayPal, but continued his coursework, earning his Bachelor of Science in computer science. He subsequently earned a master's degree in computer science from Stanford University.

Career

While working at PayPal, he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The three later founded the YouTube video sharing website in 2005.[2] YouTube's first-ever video, Me at the zoo, was uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005.[3]

After co-founding the company and developing the YouTube concept and website with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Karim enrolled as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University while acting as an advisor to YouTube. When YouTube was acquired by Google, Karim received 137,443 shares of stock, worth about $64 million based on Google's closing stock price at the time.[4]

In March 2008, Karim launched a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures, with the goal of helping current and former university students to develop and launch their business ideas.[5]

Family

Karim's father, Naimul Karim, is a researcher at 3M. His mother, Christine Karim, is a scientist and research associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.[6][7]

Response to Google+ integration

On November 6, 2013, YouTube began requiring that commenting on its videos be done via a Google+ account, a move that was widely opposed by the YouTube community. An online petition to revert the change garnered over 240,000 signatures.[8]

In response to Google requiring YouTube members to use Google+ for its comment system, Karim wrote on his YouTube account, "why the f**k do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?", and updated the video description on his first video titled 'Me at the zoo' to: I can't comment here anymore, since i don't want a google+ account.[9] In response to pressure from the YouTube community, Google publicly apologized for forcing Google+ users to use their real names, which was one of the reasons the Google+ integration was unpopular with YouTube users.[10] Google subsequently dropped its Google+ requirement across all products, beginning with YouTube.[11]

References

External links


This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Thursday, May 05, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.