The Net Worth Of YouTuber Jawed Karim

Jawed Karim is an American software engineer of German and Bangladeshi descent who co-founded YouTube with two of his other friends, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley. Interestingly, he is also the first person to upload a video on YouTube.

Early Life In Germany And The US

Karim was born in Merseburg, East Germany, in 1979. While his father, Naimul Karim, is of Bangladeshi origin, his mother, Christine Karim, is German. Elder of the two boys, Jawed did not have a happy childhood as he faced discrimination in East Germany. When he was still young, his family crossed the border into West Germany, where their condition did not improve much. While they were financially better off due to the open society, they continued to face xenophobia and had to leave for the US not long after settling in West Germany. In the US, Jawed grew up in a middle-class neighborhood in Saint Paul, Minnesota.

Co-Founding YouTube And Current Status

Jawed attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where he studied Computer Science and met one of his two YouTube co-founders, Steve Chen. But being of an entrepreneurial bent, he left campus even before completing his degree course to join PayPal, where he would meet his other YouTube co-founder Chad Hurley. The three friends founded YouTube in 2005 and fueled its initial growth with their modest income till the platform was taken over by Google in 2006.

Cut to today, Jawed is a successful internet entrepreneur. He is running a venture capital firm called Youniversity Ventures or Y Ventures. He founded the company with his friends Keith Rabois and Kevin Hartz in 2008. The company offers mentorship and financial aid to upcoming startups and has been associated with successful companies like Airbnb.

Where Is Jawed Karim Now?

Jawed is internet shy and has a minimal online footprint. He also remains away from the media and denies interview requests. Some people believe that he suffers from depression and other medical conditions, which prevent him from speaking in public. However, others have dismissed these suggestions as rumors. Frankly, nothing is known about his current life or work, except that he gave a few lectures at universities after completing his master’s in computer science from Stanford University.

His company Y Venture has a website with only three pages and does not list the investments it has made. “We help talented teams with innovative products to take the next step. We provide mentorship, expertise, contacts, and access to capital,” it says on the home page.

Net Worth Of Jawed Karim And Christine Karim

When his family arrived in the US, Jawed’s father started working as a researcher at 3M. At the same time, his mother joined the University of Minnesota as a scientist in the biochemistry department. They had modest earnings and enjoyed an upper-middle-class lifestyle in a relatively less costly part of the US.

Although Jawed was an integral part of the development of YouTube. He had taken a back seat and started attending Stanford University by the time Google bought YouTube. As a result, Jawed received a relatively smaller share of the earnings from the sale than the other two co-founders, Steve Chen and Chad Hurley, who had negotiated the deal with Google and had taken care of their interests in the transaction.

Jawed Karim Net worth

It has been widely reported that Jawed received 137,443 shares of stock, which were worth about $64 million at the time. Google bought YouTube for over $1.65 billion, which means his co-founders made over five times the money he did. Jawed’s decision to move away from YouTube right before Google bought it may have proved to be a big mistake.

At the same time, Jawed’s mother Christine Karim is believed to be worth $5 million. It include her earnings as a scientist and professor over the last 30 years.

After the sale and during his time at Stanford for his master’s degree in computer science, Jawed served as an informal advisor to YouTube. If he was paid a salary for his position or was compensated in the form of shares remains unknown to his day as neither Google nor Jawed has spoken about this. His earnings from his time at PayPal and the lecture tour he undertook after his time at Stanford also remain out of the public eye.

However, based on the documents available in the public domain. The testimony of the people who have worked with him over the last decade, Jawed has a net worth of around $300 million.

Jawed appears to have made some money from Y Ventures. However, like everything else, it’s almost impossible to give the exact amount he has earned from the company during the last decade.

Jawed is also believed to be involved in a large number of philanthropic activities. Both in Bangladesh, where his father comes from, and the US, where he grew up as a teenager and went to college.

Investments of Jawed Karim

Jawed is gifted with the talent of identifying successful business models. In 2009, when Airbnb was still taking shape, he invested in the company. In fact, Jawed was the company’s first investor and invested in it in the first seed round in April 2009 itself. He is also known to have made big investments in Denver-headquartered Palantir Technologies. It is a software company that works in the area of big data analytics, San Francisco-based social news aggregation site Reddit, and an event management company called Eventbrite.

It is believed that Jawed earns around $10 million from these sources annually. Although the figure has not come from official sources.

Jawed Karim’s Future

People close to Jawed have hinted that the entrepreneur and investor, who is only 42 years old as of today. He will make a comeback very soon. Given that his potential as an innovator has remained underutilized. Many in the world of business and technology have called on him to speak publicly. Also invite him to share his thoughts on the developments in the sector. Many recent reports in the US suggest that he has ignored these calls. He continues to live a very private life in Palo Alto, California.