Steve Chen

Young and enthusiastic minds always take their ideas to next level starting from scratch. Many of these revolutionary ideas have led to innovations that have changed the way our world is connected. Now you can be connected to any part of the world in just a few clicks. You are also able to see what’s happening in the world, on the largest video streaming network – YouTube. The idea for this video streaming service was born into one such young mind of Steve Chen.

Early Life

Born on August 18, 1978, in Taipei, Taiwan, Steve Chen and his family immigrated to the United States of America, in 1993 and, got settled in Prospect Heights, Illinois. Chen took his middle school education from River Trails Middle School, which is situated in Mount Prospect. Then for the first year of high school, he went to John Hersey in Arlington Heights. He spent the next three years of high school at Illinois Mathematics and Science Academy in Aurora, Illinois. Finally, Chen went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, to pursue a degree in Computer Science. and graduated in 2002.

Initial Career Stages

Just after graduating, Chen landed his first job with industry financial company PayPal. It was this company, where he met his future co-founders Jawed Karim and Chad Hurley. He also spent some time as an early employee at Facebook, but, left the company in few months to focus on his own venture.

He had a knack for innovative ideas and one such idea was lurking in his mind. It was to develop a video streaming platform, and Chen, along with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, founded YouTube in 2005. Steve took the position of Chief Technical Officer in the company.

Just within few months, Chen announced that YouTube was receiving around 100 million views per day and around 65000 videos were being uploaded from different parts of the world each day. The popularity of YouTube skyrocketed and quickly came to the notice of Google. Next thing they knew was Google offering to acquire YouTube. The online video streaming site was ranked among the top 10 most popular websites.

Google acquired YouTube in 2006 for a mind-boggling $1.65 billion. From then on, YouTube has never looked back and is constantly achieving new heights of success. Chen received 625,366 shares in Google and extra 68,721 in trust as the part of the sale. These shares are valued at $729 million in 2018.

After YouTube

Steve Chen is an energetic person who does not prefer to stop at one success. The definition of success is to keep moving forward and achieve greater heights than the previous ones. The next venture Chen started was named AVOS Systems, Inc. He founded this venture along with Chad Hurley and Vijay Krishnamurthy. One of the services known as Mixbit, which is a video sharing service is quite well known. AVOS acquired Delicious from Yahoo! Inc. The founders sold AVOS Systems, Inc. to Science, Inc. in 2014.

Along with founding a couple of most successful companies, Chen is also well-known for his investments in promising start-ups and businesses. He has invested in HonestBee, Drama Fever, Spool, Wish, Road Hero and many more.

Personal Life

In 2009, Chen got married to the Google Korea product marketing manager, Park Ji-Hyun also known as Jamie Chen. The couple lives in San Francisco with their two sons. Chen is a huge art admirer and makes a humble contribution towards The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

In 2008, Chen along with his partner Chad Hurley was awarded Vanguard Award. The Magazine 2.0 nominated Chen as one of the ’50 people who matter now’ in business. The Asian Scientists Magazine listed Chen as one of the 15 Asian Scientists to Watch.