Not a bad payday

Three young guys, Chad Hurley, a design school grad and Steve Chen and Jawed Karim, who both graduated from the University of Illinois at Champaign, were working at Paypal and got an idea. They'd use Adobe Flash technology to make videos more accessible on the internet.

They registered their domain name the very same day The Inside Dope was launched, February 15th, 2005. They called it YouTube.

A few days ago they sold their company for $1.65 BILLION dollars in stock to Google, Inc.

This is despite the fact that the website has likely never made a dime.

There's been controversy and they'd been sued over copyright infringement, much like the earlier Napster controversy, but now large media companies are looking to partner with the site to somehow wring money out of provided content.

But now, for their vision, skill, and initiative these three guys have made (on paper) $2,741,000 PER DAY for their efforts. (about $914,000 a day, per person)

Of course, they had investors, and won't see that full amount. But... it's not a bad pay off for less than two years work. And for a website that loses money.

Not bad work, if you can get it.