Jawed Karim (বাংলাঃ জাওয়াদ করিম) (born October 28, 1979) is an American software engineer and Internet entrepreneur of Bangladeshi and German descent. He is a co-founder of

YouTube YouTube is a global online video sharing and social media platform headquartered in San Bruno, California. It was launched on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is owned by Google, and is the second mo ...

and the first person to upload a video to the site. This inaugural video, titled " Me at the zoo" and uploaded on April 23, 2005, has been viewed over 246 million times, . During Karim's time working at

PayPal PayPal Holdings, Inc. is an American multinational financial technology company operating an online payments system in the majority of countries that support online money transfers, and serves as an electronic alternative to traditional paper ...

, where he met the fellow YouTube co-founders Steven Chen and

Chad Hurley Chad Meredith Hurley (born January 24, 1977) is an American webmaster and businessman who serves as the advisor and former chief executive officer (CEO) of YouTube. He also co-founded MixBit. In June 2006, he was voted 28th on Business 2.0's "5 ...

, he had designed many of the core components including its real-time anti-Internet-fraud system.

Early life

Jawed Karim was born on October 28, 1979, in

Merseburg Merseburg () is a town in central Germany in southern Saxony-Anhalt, situated on the river Saale, and approximately 14 km south of Halle (Saale) and 30 km west of Leipzig. It is the capital of the Saalekreis district. It had a dioces ...

East Germany East Germany, officially the German Democratic Republic (GDR; german: Deutsche Demokratische Republik, , DDR, ), was a country that existed from its creation on 7 October 1949 until German reunification, its dissolution on 3 October 1990. In t ...

, to a Bangladeshi father and a German mother. His father Naimul Karim ( bn, নাইমুল করিম) is a Muslim Bangladeshi who works as a researcher at 3M, and his mother, Christine, is a German scientist of biochemistry at the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public land-grant research university in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint Paul, Minnesota, United States. ...

. He was the elder of two boys. He crossed the

inner German border The inner German border (german: Innerdeutsche Grenze or ; initially also ) was the border between the German Democratic Republic (GDR, East Germany) and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1990. Not including the ...

with his family in the early 1980s because of

xenophobia Xenophobia () is the fear or dislike of anything which is perceived as being foreign or strange. It is an expression of perceived conflict between an in-group and out-group and may manifest in suspicion by the one of the other's activities, a ...

, growing up in

Neuss Neuss (; spelled ''Neuß'' until 1968; li, Nüss ; la, Novaesium) is a city in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is located on the west bank of the Rhine opposite Düsseldorf. Neuss is the largest city within the Rhein-Kreis Neuss district. It ...

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 ...

. Experiencing xenophobia there as well, Karim moved with his family to

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (abbreviated St. Paul) is the capital of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County. Situated on high bluffs overlooking a bend in the Mississippi River, Saint Paul is a regional business hub and the center ...

, in 1992. He graduated from

Saint Paul Central High School Saint Paul Central High School is the oldest high school in the state of Minnesota, United States. Founded in 1866 in downtown Saint Paul, Central has educated many leaders in business, government, literature, arts, sciences, and education through ...

in 1997, and attended the

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Un ...

. He left campus prior to graduating to become an early employee at

; however, he continued his coursework, earning his bachelor's degree in computer science. He subsequently earned a master's degree in

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from

Stanford University Stanford University, officially Leland Stanford Junior University, is a private research university in Stanford, California. The campus occupies , among the largest in the United States, and enrolls over 17,000 students. Stanford is conside ...

. In addition to English, Jawed speaks German and Bengali.

Career

In university, Karim served an Internship at

Silicon Graphics Silicon Graphics, Inc. (stylized as SiliconGraphics before 1999, later rebranded SGI, historically known as Silicon Graphics Computer Systems or SGCS) was an American high-performance computing manufacturer, producing computer hardware and soft ...

, Inc., where he worked on 3D voxel data management for very large data sets for volume rendering, including the data for the

Visible Human Project The Visible Human Project is an effort to create a detailed data set of cross-sectional photographs of the human body, in order to facilitate anatomy visualization applications. It is used as a tool for the progression of medical findings, in which ...

. While working at PayPal in 2002, he met

and

Steve Chen Steve Chen (; born August 25, 1978) is a Taiwanese-American Internet entrepreneur who is one of the co-founders and previous chief technology officer of the video-sharing website YouTube. After having co-founded the company AVOS Systems, Inc ...

. Three years later, in 2005, they founded the video-sharing website YouTube.Video websites pop up, invite postings
''USA Today'', November 21, 2005 Karim created the first channel on YouTube, "jawed", on April 23, 2005 PDT (April 24, 2005 UTC), and uploaded the website's first video, " Me at the zoo", the same day. After co-founding the company and developing the YouTube concept and website with

and

, Karim enrolled as a graduate student in computer science at Stanford University while acting as an adviser to YouTube. When the site was introduced in February 2005, Karim agreed not to be an employee and simply be an informal adviser, and that he was focusing on his studies. As a result, he took a much lower share in the company compared to Hurley and Chen. Because of his smaller role in the company, Karim was mostly unknown to the public as the third founder until

was acquired by Google in 2006. Despite his lower share in the company, the purchase was still large enough that he received 137,443 shares of stock, worth about $64 million based on Google's closing stock price at the time. In October 2006, Karim gave a lecture about the history of YouTube at the

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Uni ...

annual ACM Conference entitled ''YouTube From Concept to Hyper growth''. Karim returned again to the

in May 2008 as the 136th and youngest Commencement Speaker in the school's history.

Investments

In March 2008, Karim launched a venture fund called Youniversity Ventures (now known as YVentures) with partners Keith Rabois and

Kevin Hartz Kevin Hartz is an American businessman in the technology industry. He is the co-founder of Xoom, of which he was the CEO from 2001 to 2005. Biography Hartz was born in Berkeley, California, and raised in Orinda, California. His high school was ...

. Karim is one of

Airbnb Airbnb, Inc. ( ), based in San Francisco, California, operates an online marketplace focused on short-term homestays and experiences. The company acts as a broker and charges a commission from each booking. The company was founded in 2008 b ...

's first investors, investing in the company's initial seed round in April 2009. Y Ventures has also invested in Palantir,

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

and Eventbrite.

Responses to YouTube

Occasionally Karim has updated the video description of "Me at the zoo" to criticize decisions made by YouTube. On November 6, 2013, YouTube began requiring that commenting on its videos be done via a

Google+ Google+ (pronounced and sometimes written as Google Plus; sometimes called G+) was a social network owned and operated by Google. The network was launched on June 28, 2011, in an attempt to challenge other social networks, linking other Google p ...

account, a move that was widely opposed by the YouTube community. An online petition to revert the change garnered over 240,000 signatures. In response to Google requiring YouTube members to use Google+ for its comment system, Karim wrote on his YouTube account, "why the fuck do i need a Google+ account to comment on a video", and updated the video description on his first video titled "Me at the zoo" to "I can't comment here anymore, since i don't want a Google+ account". In response to pressure from the YouTube community,

Google Google LLC () is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company focusing on Search Engine, search engine technology, online advertising, cloud computing, software, computer software, quantum computing, e-commerce, ar ...

publicly apologized for forcing Google+ users to use their real names, which was one of the reasons the Google+ integration was unpopular with YouTube users. Google subsequently dropped its Google+ requirement across all products, beginning with YouTube. Google announced in October 2018 its intention to permanently shut down Google+, as it had failed to achieve broad consumer or developer adoption, and because of a vulnerability. Google+ was closed for personal accounts on April 2, 2019. In November 2021, Jawed updated the description of "Me at the zoo" to include "When every YouTuber agrees that removing dislikes is a stupid idea, it probably is. Try again, YouTube🤦‍♂️". A few days later, Karim updated the description again to a more detailed condemnation of YouTube's decision.

Notes

References

External links

Jawed Karim's Personal Website

Jawed Karim's YouTube Profile

Cache of Jawed Karim's YouTube Profile in 2008

Youniversity Ventures"He went off to college to make his fortune"
– ''The News-Gazette'' (October 16, 2006) {{DEFAULTSORT:Karim, Jawed 1979 births 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American scientists 21st-century German businesspeople 21st-century German scientists American computer businesspeople American computer programmers American computer scientists American Muslims American people of Bangladeshi descent American people of German descent American technology chief executives American technology company founders American YouTubers Businesspeople from Saint Paul, Minnesota East German emigrants to the United States East German emigrants to West Germany East German scientists German computer programmers German computer scientists German emigrants to the United States German people of Bangladeshi descent German YouTubers Internet pioneers Living people YouTube YouTube channels launched in 2005 American male YouTubers PayPal people People from Merseburg People with acquired American citizenship Grainger College of Engineering alumni West German emigrants 20th-century Bengalis 21st-century Bengalis