Kyle
YouTube Co-Founder, Steven Chen, took the stage today at TechCrunch Disrupt Beijing. Chen sat down with the queen of international start-up reporting Sara Lacy to talk about business, what’s new and of course the big YouTube deal.
Chen revealed that while they were negotiating the sale of YouTube to both Yahoo and Google they often met with both companies at a Denny’s in Paolo Alto. Chen says he wanted to find a place that no one would think to look for them at. Of course, TechCrunch Founder, Mike Arrington was keen to their dubious plans to get Moons over My Hammy and Grand Slam breakfasts while negotiating a grand slam of a deal.
Chen admits to having eaten Mozarella sticks while pondering over one of the biggest deals (at the time) in Silicon Valley. Chen told Lacy that it was Google CEO (at the time) Eric Schmidt’s commitment to continue to let the YouTube founders run YouTube the way they wanted, that ultimately swayed them there instead of Yahoo.
“For twelve months, whatever we wanted to do, we were allowed to do,” Chen told Lacy “It was tremendous courage from Eric, allowing this group of 20 year-olds to run the company.”
source: TechCrunch