Chad Hurley

Cofounder and former CEO of YouTube and Mixbit

• Born: January 1, 1977
• Place of Birth: Birdsboro, Pennsylvania

Primary Company/Organization: YouTube

Introduction

Chad Hurley cofounded the popular website YouTube, which revolutionized the way many viewed video by allowing users to share their creations online. Although YouTube does not charge users a fee to upload or view videos, it does sell advertising, making it highly profitable. After selling YouTube to Google in 2006, Hurley stayed on as chief executive officer (CEO) through 2010 and has continued to serve as an adviser to the company. He went on to cofound and direct Mixbit.

Early Life

Chad Meredith Hurley was born in 1977 and grew up near Birdsboro, Pennsylvania. Early on, Hurley demonstrated a keen interest in the fine arts, especially painting and sculpture. Hurley's entrepreneurial spirit also emerged at an early age: He set up a stand in his parents' front yard to sell his artwork to passersby. As he grew older, Hurley became interested in technology and computers. While a student at Twin Valley High School in Elverson, Pennsylvania, he was a member of the Technology Student Association and built an amplifier that won third place in a national electronics competition. He attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania and initially majored in computer science, although he later decided that this field was too technical and mechanical for his tastes. Wanting to explore a more creative field, Hurley changed his emphasis of study to graphic design and printmaking.

As graduation neared, Hurley became aware of a new company, PayPal, that was attempting to allow individuals using personal data (or digital) assistants (PDAs) to transfer money to other PDA users. He interviewed for a position with the company and was asked to design a logo for PayPal as part of the interview process. He did so, creating a logo that PayPal would continue to use through 2012, and was offered a job as PayPal's first designer. Within three years, PayPal was purchased by eBay for more than $1.5 billion. As an early employee of PayPal, Hurley received stock options that provided him enough money to consider starting his own Internet business. In the interim, Hurley engaged in other activities, such as designing a series of messenger bags. Hurley also worked as a designer for the 2005 film Thank You for Smoking, which was produced by PayPal founder Max Levchin.

Life's Work

Perhaps the most significant developments that resulted from Hurley's employment at PayPal were his friendships with Steven Chen and Jawed Karim, two software engineers. During the winter of 2005, the three began to discuss the problems they had experienced sharing videos online.

According to company lore, the idea of YouTube originated during an after-dinner discussion between Chen and Hurley regarding the difficulty of posting video online. The YouTube website was activated on February 14, 2005, and development continued on the project over the following months. This development was funded by an $11.5 million investment by venture capital firm Sequoia Capital. Sequoia Capital has played a significant role in funding a variety of technology start-ups, including Apple, Cisco Systems, Electronic Arts, Google, and Yahoo! Pierre Lamond, a partner at Sequoia Capital from 1981 through 2009 and one of the founders of National Semiconductor, worked with Hurley and Chen to develop YouTube (Karim had returned to Stanford University to pursue graduate study). Hurley became CEO of YouTube, while Chen served as its chief technology officer (CTO). Lamond was immediately impressed by Hurley and Chen as they developed YouTube, particularly admiring their responsible approach to the financial aspects of the business. Unlike many start-up companies that moved into expensive quarters, YouTube was more frugal: Its original offices were located in San Mateo, above a pizza parlor and a Japanese restaurant.

The first video was uploaded on YouTube on April 23, 2005. Entitled “Me at the Zoo,” the nineteen-second-long video featured Karim standing in front of some elephants at the San Diego Zoo. Although the site officially launched in November, a beta version was available to the public in May. In July 2006, YouTube reported that more than sixty-five thousand new videos were being uploaded to the website and more than one hundred million videos were being viewed each day. The ease of using YouTube was such that many videos became very popular, with viewers who enjoyed a video sending links to it to friends and family members. The widespread sharing of video through e-mail, websites, and social media became known as a clip “going viral,” a phenomenon that coincided with the proliferation of cameras as a feature of cellular telephones.

YouTube became so popular so quickly for a variety of reasons. First, few other options for sharing video were available at the time of YouTube's launch. Second, YouTube was relatively easy to use and accepted a variety of formats that were then displayed using the Adobe Flash player plug-in, which can be found on nearly 80 percent of all computers. Third, all YouTube content was uploaded by the public, changing the traditional model of programming in that all of the content was provided without cost by the users rather than the company. Finally, YouTube was free to users and used advertising revenue to generate income. Although investors suggested that advertisements be played before a video could be viewed, Hurley resisted this during his tenure as CEO. YouTube proved increasingly popular because of the wide variety of videos that it made available, including clips from films, television programs, and music videos as well as video blogs and other original content made by users.

The presence of commercial works on YouTube prompted the copyright owners of those works to threaten YouTube with lawsuits for enabling the public to steal their intellectual property. Hurley and YouTube's legal counsel maintained that federal copyright law required them to remove videos if and when the copyright holder informed them of the problem, not to proactively monitor new content for possible violations. Aware of the fate that befell file-sharing service Napster, however, Hurley guided YouTube to work with content providers such as NBC Universal, CBS, and the BBC to make agreements that permitted the site to host clips from their programming. Threats of potential liability perhaps in part influenced Hurley's and Chen's decision to accept a buyout offer from Google in November 2006, an agreement that allowed Hurley to maintain his position of CEO. Hurley's share of the Google buyout amounted to approximately $350 million.

Although Google purchased YouTube, it permitted a high degree of independence, valuing the separate culture and contributions of that organization. Hurley continued to work with content providers to lessen the threat of legal action for copyright violation while increasing the availability of certain content. To that end, YouTube entered into a revenue-sharing arrangement with VEVO, a consortium that includes three of the four largest music companies, Sony Music Entertainment, Universal Music Group, and EMI Group. (It established an agreement with Warner Music Group in 2016.) VEVO made more than forty-five thousand music videos available and generates income by splitting advertising revenue with YouTube. Despite agreements such as these, entertainment companies such as Viacom and Mediaset have filed lawsuits against YouTube.

In November 2008, Hurley announced an agreement with several production companies, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM) and CBS, that would allow YouTube to stream full-length motion pictures and television programs to audiences. YouTube originally intended to compete with rival websites such as Hulu, which features programming from NBC, Fox Broadcasting Company, and the Walt Disney Company. As the streaming service evolved, however, YouTube expanded its offerings to include online film rentals. In March 2010, YouTube began to stream live sporting events with cricket matches from the Indian Premier League.

To assist in reducing abuse of the site's features, Hurley helped YouTube to establish community guidelines that govern users' behavior. YouTube's community guidelines prohibit certain types of behavior and conduct, such as posting videos that infringe on copyrights and those containing animal abuse, hate speech, sexually explicit content, spam, or extreme violence. Users are provided with a means to tag videos or comments as inappropriate, and material tagged as inappropriate is examined by a team of YouTube employees who work around the clock. Nevertheless, Hurley faced tremendous criticism from those who believed the company did not do enough to protect the public. The fact that most videos permit users to leave comments has allowed users to build a sense of community and collaboration that is different from many other web experiences. The users' comments are frequently criticized, however, for including racist, homophobic, sexist, and vulgar language. Although Hurley has acknowledged that such comments are inappropriate, he has defended the rights of those using YouTube to maintain free speech and do so without interference from the company.

Since handing over the powers of CEO in November 2010, Hurley has continued to serve as an adviser to its management. With Chen, Hurley also helped to found AVOS Systems, an Internet-based company headquartered in San Mateo, California. Among AVOS's products were the social bookmarking web service Delicious, which was purchased from Yahoo! in 2011 and sold off in 2014, and the short-lived Zeen.com.au, which provided web-based software that assists in magazine design. Hurley described AVOS as a “sandbox” that permitted a team of designers and programmers to develop new products quickly using a common set of tools.

Hurley also funded US F1 Team, a proposed Formula One racing team that was granted permission to enter the 2010 season. Based in Charlotte, North Carolina, US F1 Team secured a base for operations, announced conditional deals with drivers, and launched its own official YouTube channel. Despite this, the team soon dismissed all employees and revealed that it would not be participating in the 2010 Formula One season.

Chen and Hurley began transitioning AVOS into a new company, called MixBit, in 2013. This app allows users to collaborate on creating and editing videos on their mobile devices. While Chen left to work on Google Ventures in 2014, Hurley continued championing MixBit. However, after leaking a video of rapper Kanye West proposing to socialite Kim Kardashian on the site in late 2013, Hurley faced a lawsuit that ended in a reported $440,000 settlement in 2015. Hurley sold Mixbit to BlueJeans in 2018.

In 2019 Hurley cofounded a live fantasy-sports company called GreenPark Sports with Zappos cofounder Nick Swinmurn and marketer Ken Martin.

Hurley has also worked in the entertainment industry. He has appeared in television series including Entourage and produced several episodes of the animated YouTube series Charlie the Unicorn.

For his and Chen's contributions to video distribution, the pair were given the Emmy Award for Lifetime Achievement in 2019. They had previously been named GQ's Men of the Year, ranked among Fortune's Most Powerful People in Business and Time's Most Influential People of 2007, and won the 2007 Webby Person of the Year.

Personal Life

Shortly after joining PayPal, Hurley met Kathy Clark, the daughter of James H. Clark, the founder of Silicon Graphics, Netscape Communications Corporation, and Healtheon. Hurley and Clark were married in 2000 and later had two children.

Hurley has long enjoyed athletics and sports, both as a participant and as an observer. When he was enrolled at Twin Valley High School, his cross-country team was the Pennsylvania Interscholastic Athletic Association (PIAA) champion. Hurley continued to run competitively as a member of the Indiana University of Pennsylvania cross-country team. A longtime fan of Formula One racing, Hurley invested briefly in a proposed team, and rumors persist that he will soon become more involved in the sport. He also became a part owner of the Golden State Warriors basketball team and Los Angeles Football Club professional soccer team.

Hurley's love of design has him involved in numerous projects, including Hlaska, a clothing firm that specializes in shirts, jackets, and bags. Anthony Mazzei founded Hlaska with Hurley, and the two eventually sold the company to Guideboat in 2012.

Bibliography

Andrews, L. I Know Who You Are and I Saw What You Did: Social Networks and the Death of Privacy. New York: Free, 2011. Print.

"Chad Hurley." Internet Movie Database, 2021, www.imdb.com/name/nm2624680/. Accessed 6 Mar. 2024.

Chayko, M. Portable Communities: The Social Dynamics of Online and Mobile Communications. Albany: State U of New York P, 2008. Print.

Christakis, N. A., and J. H. Fowler. Connected: The Surprising Power of Our Social Networks and How They Shape Our Lives. Boston: Little, 2009. Print.

Kelsy, T. Social Networking Spaces: From Facebook to Twitter and Everything in Between. New York: Apress, 2010. Print.

Kessler, Sarah. "MixBit, the New App from Youtube's Founders, Aims to Turn Everyone into a Filmmaker." Fast Company. Mansueto Ventures, 8 Aug. 2013. Web. 28 Sept. 2015.

Turow, J. The Daily You: How the New Advertising Industry Is Defining Your Identity and Your Worth. New Haven: Yale UP, 2011. Print.