No great venture succeeds without some initial hurdles. An old video of YouTube founders getting stressed over so few videos on their video hosting platform has gone viral on X. In the video, which dates back to 2005, the three founders—Steve Chen, Jawed Karim, and Chad Hurley—fret that there were only about 40-50 videos on the site.
The video was earlier shared by the X channel Historic Vids and was recently re-shared by user Mitsuri.
Chen could be seen venting his frustration. “I am getting pretty depressed towards end of last week… We have, like, maybe 40-50 videos on the site, but I am not… It’s like, I am thinking, if I were actually a user of this site, I’d be like gone, because there’s just not that many videos I would like to watch.”
Netizens React
The video clip went viral, gaining over 447K views. One X user wrote, “Now it’s the ocean…” Another quipped, “Now 40 videos in milliseconds!”
Another comment read, “Lesson: Never stop!” Another wrote, "Every great company has a humble beginning!" Another wrote, "With a time machine - $50K for 40%.."
A startup owner said he would take this as an inspiration, as his app had 0 users.
About YouTube
YouTube is a U.S.-based digital platform that allows users to share and stream videos online, and it operates under the ownership of Google. The service was launched on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, who had previously worked at PayPal before starting the venture.
The very first video ever uploaded to YouTube went live on April 23, 2005. It was titled 'Me at the Zoo' and featured co-founder Jawed Karim standing at the San Diego Zoo. In the short clip, Karim casually talks about elephants, marking the beginning of what would become the world’s largest video-sharing platform. Remarkably, this historic upload is still available to watch on YouTube today.
The company’s headquarters are located in San Bruno, California. Globally, it ranks as the second most-visited website, surpassed only by Google’s search engine.
By January 2024, the platform had grown to host more than 2.7 billion active users each month. Collectively, this massive audience consumed over one billion hours of video content every single day.
According to stats shared by the YouTube Official Blog, over 20 billion videos have been uploaded on the video-sharing platform as of April 2025. On average, 20 million videos are uploaded on YouTube daily.
The video was earlier shared by the X channel Historic Vids and was recently re-shared by user Mitsuri.
Chen could be seen venting his frustration. “I am getting pretty depressed towards end of last week… We have, like, maybe 40-50 videos on the site, but I am not… It’s like, I am thinking, if I were actually a user of this site, I’d be like gone, because there’s just not that many videos I would like to watch.”
Netizens React
The video clip went viral, gaining over 447K views. One X user wrote, “Now it’s the ocean…” Another quipped, “Now 40 videos in milliseconds!”
20 years ago Youtube founders were depressed cause they only had 40 uploads. pic.twitter.com/w95qssf2if
— mitsuri (@0xmitsurii) September 8, 2025
Another comment read, “Lesson: Never stop!” Another wrote, "Every great company has a humble beginning!" Another wrote, "With a time machine - $50K for 40%.."
A startup owner said he would take this as an inspiration, as his app had 0 users.
About YouTube
YouTube is a U.S.-based digital platform that allows users to share and stream videos online, and it operates under the ownership of Google. The service was launched on February 14, 2005, by Chad Hurley, Jawed Karim, and Steve Chen, who had previously worked at PayPal before starting the venture.
The very first video ever uploaded to YouTube went live on April 23, 2005. It was titled 'Me at the Zoo' and featured co-founder Jawed Karim standing at the San Diego Zoo. In the short clip, Karim casually talks about elephants, marking the beginning of what would become the world’s largest video-sharing platform. Remarkably, this historic upload is still available to watch on YouTube today.
The company’s headquarters are located in San Bruno, California. Globally, it ranks as the second most-visited website, surpassed only by Google’s search engine.
By January 2024, the platform had grown to host more than 2.7 billion active users each month. Collectively, this massive audience consumed over one billion hours of video content every single day.
According to stats shared by the YouTube Official Blog, over 20 billion videos have been uploaded on the video-sharing platform as of April 2025. On average, 20 million videos are uploaded on YouTube daily.
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