Jawed Karim, born on the 28th October 1979, is a German-American entrepreneur famously known as one of the co-founders of the website “YouTube”.
So how much is Karim’s net worth? As of early 2016 it is reported to be $140 million, gained mostly from his shares in Youtube, and his company Youniversity Ventures.
Jawed Karim Net Worth $140 Million
Karim is the son of Naimul Karim, a Bagladeshi researcher, and Christine Karim, a German scientist and professor. The family was living in Merseburg, East Germany where Karim was born, but decided to cross to and live in Neuss, West Germany in 1981. After 11 years, in 1992 the family migrated to the United States where Karim got his high school and college education.
Karim attended Central High School located in Saint Paul, Minnesota and later commenced his college degree in computer sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. However, because of an offer from PayPal, he moved to California and decided to continue his coursework away from the University to finish his degree, which he did in 2004. He subsequently gained his masters degree in computer science from Stanford University.
During his stay in PayPal, one of the major contributions he made in the company was his design and implementation of their real-time anti-fraud system, but probably his major success while at the company was when he met friends Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, and the three got the idea for Youtube when Karim wanted to watch Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction in the 2004 Super Bowl. He tried searching for a video clip of it on the internet but couldn’t find any, so the three then decided to create a website where people can share videos easily, thus the birth of Youtube.
In February 2005, the domain www.youtube.com went live, and by April of the same year, Karim’s video “Me at the Zoo” was the first video uploaded onto the site. After setting up the site, Karim decided to leave the management of the company and to just serve as an advisor, because he wanted to pursue his graduate studies in computer science at Stanford University.
Being the first of its kind, the people on the internet fell in love of the sharing capabilities of YouTube and it became an immediate success. In October of 2006, just over a year after its conception, Google bought the company for $1.65 billion, with 137,443 of its shares belonging to Karim – in total, he made $64 million in the sale. Today the worth of his stocks is about $140 million, which comprises most of his net worth.
Aside from Youtube, Karim also started a venture called “Youniversity Ventures” alongside Kevin Hartz, co-founder of Eventbrite, a popular event registration service, and Xoom Corporation, an international money transfer company, and Keith Rabois, who worked with Slide and LinkedIn. The purpose of the venture is to empower and work with university students to launch their first company, focusing primarily on current and former students of Stanford University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
In his personal life, Karim is still single, and actively working on Youniversity Ventures.
