YouTube’s founders split over $650 million when they sold to Google in 2006—had they held out, they could have taken a slice of $550 billion

YouTube sold to Google in 2006 for $1.65 billion, with cofounders Chad Hurley and Steven Chen splitting over $650 million worth of stock shares. And while their wealth increased exponentially with the acquisition, estimates put today’s value of YouTube at $550 billion—a 333x increase. Few could imagine YouTube’s eventual media dominance at the time, making it a classic example of the high-stakes decisions founders must weigh. 

YouTube may have started as a site to share home videos, but now it’s one of the most powerful platforms in the world: From entertainment to advertising, it’s spawned billion-dollar careers and birthed a global creator economy, turning individuals like MrBeast into household names.

But when its founders sold the popular video platform to Google for $1.65 billion in fall 2006, not even they could have predicted just how massive it would become—or how much more they could have made.

At the time of sale, each cofounder—Chad Hurley, Steven Chen, and Jawed Karim—received millions of dollars worth of stock: Hurley, YouTube’s CEO at the time, received shares worth........

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