Business Super Hero of the Month: Chad Hurley
30 Jul 2015
Ten years since it was founded, it’s difficult to think of another innovation that’s created as big a revolution in technology as YouTube.
As one of the three founders, and later its CEO and adviser, Chad Hurley became an overnight millionaire and a #BusinessSuperhero when YouTube went viral in 2005. It was a phenomenon and no one was surprised when it was then bought by Google a year later for a staggering $1.65 billion.
Beginning as a solution to a personal problem of sharing videos with friends and family, YouTube now heralds a diverse video archive and has become a global venue of expression. Achieving video views of more than four billion a day, YouTube is the world’s third most visited website and earns $4 billion a year in revenue.
But YouTube isn’t the only impact our #BusinessSuperhero has made in the tech world – before the revolution that was YouTube, Hurley worked at eBay and helped co-found the internet payment service, PayPal. He’s even responsible for designing PayPal’s logo!
His other ventures include a fashion line, Hlaska, the website Zeen which enables people to produce their own magazines online, and MixBit. Started with fellow YouTube founder Steve Chen in 2013, MixBit is a video-sharing and editing service for mobile devices, which hopes to rival Vine and Instagram.
A busy man, then.
Estimated to be worth about $355 million, Hurley’s insurmountable success and influence is phenomenal. We can’t wait to see where his ventures go next.
Before I got my start in the tech industry as part of Apple’s UK Mac launch team, I was a professional drummer (notice I didn’t say musician). But once I got in, I was hooked and I’ve been involved in the tech industry, primarily software development, for over 35 years. I founded this company and I now have the enviable title of System Architect (as well as Managing Director) here at OpenCRM.