YouTube, and the many PayPal fathers

Matt Marshall | November 7th, 2005

Updated

youtube.gif

It’s official. YouTube of Menlo Park has raised venture capital from one of Silicon Valley’s top-dog venture capital firms, Sequoia Capital.

Unlike the preliminary whisper last month that the round was for $5 million, the round is actually $3.5 million, according to the company’s statement. Remember, this is the company that allows people to easily upload, tag, and share personal video clips, and is billed as the “Flickr of video.” We found the site noteworthy and previously mentioned it here.

By the way, doesn’t it seem that PayPal, the online payments company that was bought by eBay for billions, is a success that has an amazing number of fathers? It’s almost as though every new company we discover is…

started by somebody who founded or at least was a pioneer at PayPal. So YouTube says it was founded by “early commerce pioneers” from PayPal. And of course it is being funded by Roelof Botha, Sequoia Capital partner and former CFO of PayPal.

Yesterday, we wrote about Yelp, which is one of three companies incubated by Max Levchin, co-founder PayPal. Then you’ve got LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman, who was “in charge of all business relationships” at PayPal. LinkedIn is also funded by Sequoia, where another leading partner Michael Moritz was a main backer of PayPal. You’ve got the Founders Fund, which was launched by three PayPal co-founders. And this list is just off the top of our head….How many other PayPal fathers are running around? Have we missed any?

UPDATE: Corrected location to Menlo Park. Also, note this space is pretty crowded, as the comment below makes clear.

Sphere It Digg this story!
Trackback URL

One Trackback

  1. February 24th, 2006
    7:26 pm

    SiliconBeat said:

    Catching up on Silicon Valley tech stuff

    Here’s a list of recent stories, and we’ll probably have more next week! Bill NewsomeIf he’s not already a mad scientist, perhaps he will be? — Stanford neuroscientist Bill Newsome wants to implant an electrode in his brain to better understand human …

6 Comments

  1. November 8th, 2005
    1:00 am

    Startups.in said:

    myveo.com
    vimeo.com
    video.google.com
    blip.tv
    youtube.com
    ourmedia.org
    clipshack.com
    phanfare.com
    evideoshare.com
    streamload
    bigvcr.com
    justpress.com

    few free..few stand out but definitely getting crowded.

    Startups.in

  2. November 8th, 2005
    5:40 am

    Ina said:

    World Ahead Publishing - Eric Jackson
    http://www.worldaheadpublishing.com

  3. November 8th, 2005
    5:54 am

    Matt Marshall said:

    I almost deleted the comment immediately above about World Ahead Publishing, because it looks like spam. It points (scroll down) to a book called The PayPal Wars by Erik Jackson, so at least it is relevant in to this post. Guess the publisher must have some sort of automated scanner of blogs with the word “PayPal” in them?

  4. November 8th, 2005
    1:13 pm

    Ina said:

    Sorry, I didn’t mean to be mysterious, I was in a rush this am. I’m Ina from AuctionBytes.com, a newsletter covering the online-auction world, including eBay and PayPal. Eric was former Marketing Director at PayPal.

    I had included my email address with my domain name in my first post so you could see where I was from. :) I have SiliconBeat in my Bloglines, I’m a faithful reader.

  5. November 8th, 2005
    1:31 pm

    Matt Marshall said:

    Ina, thanks for clarification. Apologies for “almost” calling you a spammer!

  6. November 9th, 2005
    10:13 am

    j said:

    In the list of competitors above, you should add:
    - Revver
    - Veoh
    - Brightcove

Add a Comment