YouTube’s founders split over $650 million when they sold to Google in 2006—had they held out, they could have taken a slice of $550 billion

But when its founders sold the common video platform to Google for $ 1.65 billion in the fall of 2006, they could not even predict a large extent – or to what extent they could do.

At the time of sale, every founder – Chad Hurley, Stephen Chen and Decim to Daw – seized millions of dollars from shares: Hurley, CEO of YouTube at that time, received 345 million dollars to the time when the Securities and Stock Exchange Committee documents were issued a few months later, according to what I mentioned a few months later New York Times. CTO CTO received about 326 million dollars, and Karim got the jaw, which left the project early to return to school, at a value of $ 64 million.

“This is great,” Hurley said in a video posted when the sale was announced. “Molkan has collected together. The king of research, the king of the video meets together. We will be on our way.”

YouTube sale price to Google is just a small part of its estimated value of $ 550 billion today, according to the Movefettnathanson search note that I reported diverse. This is an increase of 333X (inflation) of nearly two decades. Although it is difficult to determine exactly, Hurley received the same percentage for sale today as they did in 2006, each of them could have passed more than $ 100 billion each.

It is too late 20/20 when it comes to selling

Last year, YouTube has achieved about $ 54.2 billion of revenues, and Disney is expected to exceed the largest media company through revenues in the world, diverse I mentioned. Highlighting YouTube’s successes to register in how Google can overcome the problems struggled by the founders of the video platform-including operational losses and copyright claims-and their distributions.

But YouTube’s mastermind is far from the only business leaders who saw their company rising after the exchange of ownership.

During the first two weeks of Apple, Ronald Wayne, the well -known third founder of the company, scanned 10 % of his share, where he recorded $ 800 at that time, in addition to $ 1500 to lose any demand for the company for good. However, its value can now range between 10 % between $ 75 billion and 300 billion dollars, thanks to the maximum market of $ 3.2 trillion now.

These stories are also out of technology. For example, Boyarde Boyardee’s company sold the company in 1946 for $ 6 million. Throughout the contracts, the company has greatly grown its operations, and expanded to multiple lines of canned and microwave commodities. Only this year, the brand, including the powerful factory of more than 500 people, was sold to private stocks for $ 600 million-an increase of 10,000 % in value.

In the case of Boyardi and YouTube chef, it is unclear whether this massive growth may be achieved without the support of the owners of major companies. For the founders, this means that the weight of the sale early and leaving billions of future dollars on the table – or adhering to the company and risking it does not reach its full potential.