The founders of YouTube worked for PayPal before starting YouTube. Chad Hurley, Steve Chen, and Jawed Karim were early PayPal employees who later became the video platform’s three co-founders.
Hurley worked in design, while Chen and Karim studied computer science. Their experience at PayPal gave them useful technical, product, and startup connections. After eBay acquired PayPal in 2002, the founders had the resources and confidence to pursue a new company.
YouTube was founded in 2005, and the first video, “Me at the zoo,” was uploaded by Jawed Karim on April 23 of that year. The site made it unusually simple for ordinary users to upload, watch, and share video online, helping it grow rapidly.
A commonly repeated origin story says the idea came from difficulty sharing videos from a dinner party. Steve Chen later acknowledged that this story was simplified for marketing, and Karim disputed parts of it. That uncertainty does not change the answer: all three founders had worked at PayPal.