Jawed Karim’s Net Worth, Biography and More

Jawed Karim’s Net Worth

Jawed Karim’s net worth is valued at $140 million. The programmer made his fortune mainly from the company he had helped found, YouTube. After being bought by Google, Karim got 137,443 Google shares at the time, which translated to $64 million, but with the company’s stock continuing to rise, his stake is now over $140 million.

For his part, Steven Chen had a $301 million stake in his 700,000 Google shares. Thanks to that, his Jawed Karim’s net worth is now $700 million, while the latest founding member of the video-sharing platform, Chad Hurley, got $334 million from the sale of the company.

Jawed Karim Biography

On October 28, 1979, Jawed Karim was born in Merseburg, Germany. While his mother, Christine Karim (biochemistry professor), is German, his father, Naimul Karim (chemist), is Bangladeshi. He raises alongside a brother, Ilia’s Karim.

He remained in Germany until 1992, when his family immigrated to Minnesota, where he obtained his education from Saint Paul Central High School. From now, she moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she studied computer science. She later headed to Stanford University, earning a master’s degree in the field.

The one who has continuously wanted to be in the background and not the centre of attention, not much is identified about the private life of the co-founder of YouTube. However, he has links to the British author, Kia Abdullah, author of the novels. Life, Love and Assimilation (Adlibbed, 2006) and Child’s Play (2009).

However, the two are no longer together as Abdullah is now dating photographer Peter Watson, who has been described as his partner. For his part, it is unknown if Jawed Karim has a wife or even a girlfriend.

The lesser-known co-founder of YouTube, Karim, worked with PayPal as one of its first employees while still in college. He met his coming business partners, Chad Hurley, who was involves in creating the PayPal logo, and Steve Chen.

In 2002, after eBay bought the payment service, Karim and the other two co-founders decided to create a database company.

Early life

Jawad Karim was born on October 28 1979, in Merseburg, East Germany. He is from Bangladesh. When he was two years old, Jawad crossed Germany’s east-west border with his family to escape communist xenophobia.

In 1992, the family moved to the US. His father, a researcher, got a job at 3M and his mother, a scientist, became a professor at the University of Minnesota.

PayPal

Two of Jawad’s PayPal employees remained Chad Hurley and Steve Chen.

In August 2002, eBay learnt PayPal for $1.5 billion in cash. Jawad made several million from the sale. His PayPal bosses, future billionaires Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, made $175 million and $60 million from the sale, respectively.

In early 2005, Jawad, Chad and Steve left PayPal. They started meeting at a homegrown coffee shop/deli, Max’s Opera Cafe, to brainstorm business ideas.

According to legend, Jawad started with the original idea of ​​a website where people could upload and share videos.

YouTube Jawad developed the YouTube concept and codified the first version of the site, launched in February 2005. He also has the difference of starring in the first video uploaded to YouTube. The video, titled “Me at the Zoo”, was filmed by a friend named Yakov Lapitsky during a trip to the San Diego Zoo. The 19-second video shows Jawed standing before a group of elephants and briefly describing elephant trunks. It was upload to YouTube on Saturday, April 23, 2005, at 20:27 under the username “Jawed”:

Google sale

Surprisingly, after co-founding YouTube, Jawed decided to leave the startup to enrol in graduate school at Stanford University. As a result, he accepted a smaller stake than his co-founders.

Chad Hurley and Steve Chen made YouTube the world-changing media empire we all know and use today.

Although Jawed left the company, Jawed still owned a significant percentage of YouTube when it was sold to Google in October 2006. Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock.

Jawed received 137,443 shares of Google worth $64 million on the day of the deal. Thanks to Google’s continued success and rising stock price, these shares are worth over $350 million before tax. Assuming you haven’t sold any shares.

Steve Chen and Chad Hurley each received approximately 700,000 shares of Google valued at $345 million on the closing date of the transaction. Those shares would be worth less than $2 billion if they never ended.

Other investments

In March 2008, Jawad, Keith Rabois, and Kevin Hartz launched a venture capital fund called Youniversity Ventures, also known as YVentures. Through YVentures, Jawad participated in Airbnb’s seed investment round in April 2009. His fund has also invested in Reddit, Eventbrite, and Palantir.

Conclusion

Jawed Karim’s work on YouTube has had a HUGE impact on the way people consume video content. Karim also credits helping to popularise video sharing as a means of communication. Karim’s story is inspiring and offers several important lessons for entrepreneurs and aspiring business leaders.