Jawed Karim born on January 1, 1979 is an American internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi-German origin. He is best known for being the co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube. Karim’s father, Naimul Karim, is a Bangladeshi American researcher at 3M. His mother, Christine Karim, is a German scientist and research associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.
Karim was born in Merseburg, East Germany. He moved to the United States with his family in 1992, two years after German reunification. He graduated from Central High School in Minnesota and later attended the University 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
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. 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.
More than eight years after uploading the first video on YouTube, in response to YouTube’s change to using Google+ for its comment system, Karim returned to his original YouTube account on November 7, 2013 and posted on his channel asking “why the fuck do i need a google+ account to comment on a video?” Due to him getting frustrated after YouTube’s widely hated forced integration with Google+.
Screenshot of Karim’s YouTube profile page:
Watch the First YouTube Video “Me at the zoo” By Jawed Karim, YouTube Co-Founder.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNQXAC9IVRw