In January I moved over to YouTube to help them out post-acquisition. It’s been a great change of pace from spending the last 3+ years at Google to a younger, smaller organization. At the same time, my relationships and knowledge of the ‘Plex has helped us figure out how to navigate our new parent.
Personally it’s been interesting to get and know Steve and Chad. Over the past seven years I’ve gotten to know Philip Rosedale at Second Life, Larry and Sergey at Google and now the YouTube founders. All very successful folks but very different people. It’s fun to look at them and understand what makes ’em tick.
But the YouTube story doesn’t end at Chad and Steve. In fact, one of the underreported factors in their success is the product, design and engineering team they assembled. Almost all of the original team worked together at Paypal/eBay. As YouTube grew incredibly quickly they were able to sound the bell and keep bringing on more former colleagues. All folks who were vetted, trusted by one another, etc. Imagine the time, hiring risk and integration friction they saved — the ability to “get the band back together” was without a doubt a reason that YouTube scaled.