YouTube Uploads $8M in Funding
Largest Internet Video Entertainment Community to Grow Service and Infrastructure
with Continued Support from Sequoia Capital
SAN MATEO, Calif. – April 5, 2006 – YouTube, a consumer media company for people
to watch and share original videos through a Web experience, today announced it
has received $8M in Series B funding from Sequoia Capital. This contributes to the
initial $3.5M in Series A funding from Sequoia Capital completed in November 2005.
The additional capital will be used to advance the company's rapid growth, expand
sales and marketing efforts, and to accelerate the build-out of its world-class
data centers.
"This is the birth of a new clip culture where the audience is now in control more
than ever," said Chad Hurley, CEO and co-founder of YouTube. "With more than 35
million videos being watched daily on YouTube, our community is extremely passionate
about watching and sharing videos. As the leading video entertainment destination
on the Internet, we are committed to offering the best user experience and the best
platform for people to share their videos around the world. The continued support
from Sequoia will help us reach this goal."
YouTube is the largest community on the Web for short-form video, with tens of thousands
of clips uploaded every day by indie filmmakers and musicians, professional content
creators, and anyone with a video camera or camcorder. Entertainment by its nature
is both a personal and communal experience and YouTube is providing the stage. Everyone
can express themselves by creating content and distributing it through YouTube—and
our community decides which videos rise to the top.
"YouTube is at the forefront of a cultural shift in digital media entertainment
and media distribution and we are delighted to continue our support," said Roelof
Botha, Sequoia Capital partner and board member. "With more than 100M page views
per day and 6M unique users daily, YouTube has an opportunity to expand its business
while allowing its users to continue to share in the entertainment experience they
have created."
"We are pushing the boundaries of the Internet in ways that are unparalleled," said
Steve Chen, CTO and co-founder of YouTube. "By accelerating the build-out of our
data centers around the world, we are poised to continue to serve up billions of
videos in the most scalable and cost-effective way."
About Sequoia Capital
Since 1972, Sequoia Capital has provided startup venture capital for very smart
people who want to turn ideas into companies. As the "Entrepreneurs Behind the Entrepreneurs,"
Sequoia Capital's Partners have worked with innovators such as Sandy Lerner and
Len Bozack of Cisco Systems, Jerry Yang and David Filo of Yahoo!, Gaurav Garg of
Redback Networks, Larry Page and Sergey Brin of Google, Dan Warmenhoven of Network
Appliance, T.J. Rodgers of Cypress Semiconductor, Lou Tomasetta of Vitesse Semiconductor,
Steve Jobs of Apple Computer and Larry Ellison of Oracle. The companies organized
by Sequoia Capital now account for about 10% of the value of NASDAQ. To learn more
about Sequoia Capital visit www.sequoiacap.com.