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October 9, 2006
YouTube Founders Do YouTube Video About Being GooTube
Chad and Steven, the YouTube founders, have made a video on YouTube about being bought by Google. The 1:36 minute video is, in its rank amateurishness, awkward pacing, and crack-up ending, worlds better and more human than the scripted stuff they spouted on today's post-acquisition conference call. (As an aside, where was this filmed? It looks like it's outside Sequoia's offices.)
I have to say, however, Chad and Steven's frat-boy fuzziness somehow accomplishes the impossible: They make Google founders Larry and Sergey seem like buttoned-down refugees from GE's executive row. While we don't yet have the makings of a culture clash, you can begin to see the cause of the non-existent founder-to-founder chemistry on today's Google/YouTube conference call.
Two kings, indeed.
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I think you are right on about the culture clash - it seems like a generation separates the two sets of founders - but it may be a good thing.
The Google founders are like the older internet users who abhor the idea of putting everything out in public. Secrecy is their bag, baby.
The YouTube founders are the next gen - they put everything out there. Intellectuals they are not.
I think Google did a good deal, and they just might learn a bit about the myspace / youtube demographic from the younger kings...
That is hilarious. I'm sure a marketing person would (and probably did) argue that the video should have been properly scripted, and that they cut the filming before the two founders cracked up, I think the clip as it is stays totally true to the YouTube brand, as it were. Thank God they didn't do the Numa Numa dance though :-)
I think that that's a Friday's in san bruno, ca.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/10/10/technology/10deal.html
They say:
"The setting was classic Silicon Valley start-up: a booth at Denny’s near YouTube’s headquarters in San Bruno, Calif. The Google executives threw out an offer of $1.6 billion and autonomy to continue running the business."
My guess is that the NYT got it wrong: it actually happened at a Fridays, and that video was actually shot right after they signed the papers.
Wild.
That was fun.
This moment is priceless.
Wait, I mean $1.65B in price.
Great job to all ...
The "Two kings" comment was a joke. YouTube just signed a deal with Burger King and P. Diddy (hip-hop mogul), where Diddy proclaims that the partnership of him and Burger King is like 2 kings coming together.
So it was an inside joke, but without knowing the background of the deal it does come off as a bit cocky.
Anyway, good for them, a true entreprenurial success story.
The Diddy/Burger King video...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XLcPIolG_8E
You have to love the way they can't stop smiling. You can almost smell the endorphins.
What I want to know is whether the king of video and the king of search can between them come up with a half-decent video search offering. MSN just did a deal with Blinkx, which seems to be the most interesting player in the space, but Blinkx's proposition is still pretty woeful.