Near to Grove City College, Chad Hurley was born in Reading, Pennsylvania. Being the middle child in a family of three, Hurley always loved art. It wasn’t until high school that Hurley became interested in computers and technology. Hurley was also great at competing, as Hurley would later do in an industry standpoint later in life. He graduated from Twin Valley High School in 1996 and graduated from IUP or Indiana University of Pennsylvania in 1999.
The large turning point of his seemingly ordinary life was marriage to Kathy Clark. Kathy Clark is the child of James H. Clark, a very famous and impactful Silicon Valley serial entrepreneur. Hence the importance of having a good mentor.
In 2005, Hurley had the opportunity to team up with Steve Chen and Jawed Karim as a co-founder to what now is YouTube. With a venture capitalist investment total of $11.5 million, YouTube began very solid with its first video being “Me at the zoo”, starring co-founder Karim himself. Nowadays, Youtube has 300 hours of videos uploaded every hour by users all around the world.
Hurley’s most recent entrepreneurial venture is MixBit, which he launched with Steve Chen in August 2013. MixBit is a video-editing service with smartphones.
It is great to see someone who is close to us who has done something so great. This is a great example of how entrepreneurs have many different skills and hobbies.
This is such a cool post! I never knew the background of YouTube so this is very informing. I’m also impressed that Chad is from Reading PA which is so close to GCC. (My hometown of Wheeling is a rival in hockey against Reading.) But anyways, I’m a big fan of YouTube. It’s my main source of entertainment whenever I want to destress. I like the emphasis of mentorship. It shows that the people you surround yourself with can really influence your success.
It’s always weird to think that a lot of the websites and technology we take for granted were recent innovations. The inventors of Youtube are inspiring to me because they found a way to organize videos that was functional and useful.
Is it okay if I ask you to add some more detail? Perhaps show an additional example? Thanks 🙂