Jawed Karim (born January 1, 1979) is a German-American Internet entrepreneur. He is best known for being the first person to upload a video on YouTube, as well as being the co-founder of said video-sharing website. Many of the core components of PayPal, including its real-time anti-fraud system, were also designed and implemented by Karim.
Studies
Karim was born in Merseburg, East Germany, but crossed the Inner German border in 1981 and grew up in Neuss, West Germany. He graduated from Central High School (Saint Paul, Minnesota) 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 Masters 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.YouTube's first video, Me at the zoo, was uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005.
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.
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.
