This Week in Startups · Thursday, September 10, 2026
The discussion uses the example of Jawed Karim, a co-founder of YouTube, whose vesting schedule significantly impacted his payout when Google acquired the company for $1.6 billion in 2006. Karim, having left early to return to school, only received 1/5th of his founding shares, resulting in a $64 million payout instead of a potential $2 billion if he had fully vested.
“There were three founders of YouTube. Most people say, oh, yeah, you know, I remember Chad Hurley and then there was Steve, uh, who's the third? And it was a really smart, um, gentleman named, uh, Jawed Karim. I've met him a bunch of times, really smart, really thoughtful.”
“And, uh, when this was 2006, 2007, uh, he went back to school. He wanted to go back to Stanford and finish up. Okay, so he only got 1/5th of his founding shares. And the company was bought like a year or two later by Google famously for $1.6 billion in stock. In Google stock.”
“And so Chad and Steve got $300 and $30 million each. He got $64 million. A fraction. A fifth.”
“Now, if you had kept that, uh, and you didn't sell, those Google shares, if in other words, if Chad and Steve hadn't sold their Google shares, it's like a $10 billion outcome. And for Jawed, it's like $2 billion.”