Tuesday, October 10, 2006

YouTube Founders in their own words...



It's hard not to be jealous when these guys just raked it in, isn't it?

Sigh....

As Venturewire says:

With its $1.65 billion acquisition of video sharing Web site YouTube Inc., Google Inc. is once again providing Sequoia Capital with monster returns.

The Menlo Park, Calif.-based firm poured about $11.5 million into YouTube since last year and reportedly held roughly 30% of the company. That would give Sequoia about $495 million in Google stock, worth roughly 43 times its investment....


This implies that everyone else - including our pals Chad and Steve and the other 65 YouTube employees - have 70% or less in stock... If we assume that our founding buddies have roughly 20% each, leaving 30% for other investors/employees/etc., that means... snifff.... they have in the neighborhood of $350 mm each. For 18 months work.

Of course, Sequoia's return on investment for YouTube is nowhere near what it scored with Google. The firm invested about the same amount, roughly $12 million in 1999. At the time of Google's IPO in 2004, Sequoia's eighth fund held about 21.65 million shares, according to Google filings, meaning Sequoia's shares were worth about $2.17 billion after the first trading day.

Over the years, Sequoia has dwindled down its stake in Google to about 0.1%, according to an April Google filing, leaving it with 412,823 shares worth about $177 million. With Google's stock trading at $429 as of Monday's close, Sequoia is getting roughly 1.15 million Google shares in the YouTube deal.

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