Jawed Karim

About

Jawed Karim is a German-American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur best known as a co-founder of YouTube and the first person to upload a video to the platform. Born in Merseburg, East Germany, Karim moved with his family to Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1992. He studied computer science at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign before leaving campus in 2000 to become an early engineer at PayPal, where he designed core components including its real-time anti-fraud system. At PayPal, Karim met fellow co-founders Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, with whom he launched YouTube in February 2005. Karim uploaded the platform's inaugural video, 'Me at the zoo', on April 23, 2005. Choosing to act as an informal advisor rather than an employee so he could pursue a master's degree in computer science at Stanford University, Karim held a smaller stake when Google acquired YouTube for $1.65 billion in 2006. In 2008, he co-founded Youniversity Ventures, a venture capital fund dedicated to helping student and alumni entrepreneurs launch startups.

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