YouTube almost didn’t make it.

It started as a dating site. That flopped.

The founders then pivoted to general video sharing. Still, nobody cared.

Here’s Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, sitting around, “depressed” that YouTube had only 40 videos and wasn’t catching on.

The hardest part of any marketplace or social platform is getting the flywheel to spin.

So how did YouTube do it?

They got creative. They seeded the platform with content, embedded videos on MySpace (viral fuel back then), and eventually, one key video caught fire.

By the time Google acquired YouTube for $1.65B, it was obvious.

But in the early days even the founders weren’t sure it would work.

Building something new is slow and painful…until it isn’t. 💙

Author

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