Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim
Jawed Karim in 2008
Born	1979 (age 31–32) Merseburg, East Germany
Ethnicity	German American/ Bangladeshi American
Alma mater	University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Stanford University
Known for	co-founder of YouTube
Website
www.jawed.com

Jawed Karim (Bangla: জাওয়েদ করিম, born in 1979, East Germany) is a Bangladeshi German American technologist and co-founder of the popular video sharing website YouTube. Many of the core components of PayPal, including its real-time anti-fraud system, were also designed and implemented by Karim.

Career

Karim was born in East Germany, but crossed the Berlin Wall and grew up in West 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 he attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[1] 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 in 2004.

While working at PayPal, he met Chad Hurley and Steve Chen. The three later founded the YouTube video sharing website in 2005.^[2] YouTube's first video, Me at the zoo, was uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005.^[3]

After co-founding the company and developing the YouTube concept and website with Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, Karim enrolled as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University while acting as an advisor to YouTube.^[4] 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.^[5]

In October 2006, Karim gave a lecture about the history of YouTube at the University of Illinois' annual ACM Conference entitled YouTube: From Concept to Hyper-growth.^[6] The lecture material also contained pictures and videos of Karim, Hurley, and Chen from the garage days of YouTube. Karim returned again to the University of Illinois in May 2007 as the speaker at the university's 136th commencement, at which he explained his career path.^[7]

More recently, Karim has launched a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures, with the goal of helping current and former university students to develop and launch their business ideas.

Personal life

Karim was born in Merseburg, East Germany, in 1979 and moved to West Germany in 1980. His father, Naimul Karim, is a Bangladeshi researcher at 3M. His mother, Christine Karim, is a German scientist and research associate professor of biochemistry at the University of Minnesota.^[8][9] The name "Jawed" is of Old Persian origin meaning "eternal".^{[10][11][12][13]}

References

1. ^ YouTube: OurGuys, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign Department of Computer Science
2. ^ Video websites pop up, invite postings, USA Today, November 21, 2005
3. ^ YouTube's first video
4. ^ YouTube Founders, YouTube.com
5. ^ New York Times: YouTube’s Payoff: Hundreds of Millions for the Founders, The New York Times, February 7, 2007.
6. ^ [1]
7. ^ http://news.illinois.edu/news/07/0327karim.html
8. ^ With YouTube, Student Hits Jackpot Again, The New York Times, October 12, 2006.
9. ^ Surprise! There's a third YouTube co-founder, USA Today, October 11, 2006.
10. ^ Name History and Origin for Javed
11. ^ http://www.meaning-of-names.com/persian-names/javed.asp
12. ^ Zodiac Baby Names, Russel Grant
13. ^ Persian name derived from the word jawid

External links

• Jawed Karim's Personal Website
• Jawed's YouTube Profile
• Youniversity Ventures
• With YouTube, Grad Student Hits Jackpot Again - New York Times (Oct 12, 2006)
• Surprise! There's a third YouTube co-founder - USA TODAY (Oct 12, 2006)
• Whiz Kid: Jawed Karim, a graduate of St. Paul Central - Star Tribune (Oct 13, 2006)
• He went off to college to make his fortune - The News-Gazette (Oct 16, 2006)

Persondata
Name	Karim, Jawed
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1979
Place of birth	Merseburg, East Germany
Date of death
Place of death