How a Failed Dating Site Became YouTube ($1.65 BILLION)

In 2005, three young engineers launched a dating website. Nobody used it. Less than two years later, Google paid $1.65 BILLION for what they built instead: YouTube. This is the full story of how three ex-PayPal workers turned a failed dating site into the biggest video platform on Earth, why they almost ran out of money, and how Google beat Yahoo and Microsoft to the deal. 👉 Subscribe to Zero to Acquired for more stories of companies that went from nothing to acquired. ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ⏱ CHAPTERS 0:00 A dating site nobody used 0:20 Meet the founders: Hurley, Chen and Karim 0:56 The problem: you couldn't share a video 1:29 "Tune In, Hook Up": the dating site 2:00 The pivot: "Me at the zoo" 2:40 The rise: 100 million views a day 3:25 The deal: Google pays $1.65 billion 4:10 What happened next 4:52 3 lessons for founders today ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 📖 WHAT YOU WILL LEARN How three early PayPal workers (Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, Jawed Karim) started YouTube Why Jawed Karim couldn't find a video of the 2004 tsunami online Why YouTube started as a dating site on Valentine's Day 2005 ("Tune In, Hook Up") The story of "Me at the zoo", the very first YouTube video How users turned a dating site into a home for every video Why fast growth almost broke YouTube (costs and copyright) How Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in October 2006 Why Viacom sued YouTube for $1 billion ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ 💡 3 LESSONS FROM THE YOUTUBE STORY 1. Start with your own problem. Karim couldn't find a video. Millions had the same problem. 2. Follow your users, not your plan. The founders built a dating site. Their users built YouTube. 3. First is not always best. Google Video launched first, with more money. YouTube won because it was simpler. Which lesson hit you the hardest? Tell me in the comments 👇 And which company should I cover next? ━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━ ℹ️ ABOUT THIS VIDEO Zero to Acquired tells the stories of startups and the deals that changed them, with simple hand-drawn animation. Narration uses an AI voice. All animation is original. Company names are used only to tell the story. This channel is not affiliated with YouTube, Google, PayPal, eBay, Viacom or any company mentioned. This video is for education and entertainment, not financial advice. #YouTube #StartupStory #BusinessStory