YouTube (owned by Google) is one of the most innovative and successful websites that started as a home business in the world today, so when i discovered that TechCrunch TV had visited its headquarters in San Bruno, California (Watch the video at the bottom), i thought it will be a good idea to summarize its history.

Chad Hurley, Steve Chen and Jawed Karim worked together in PayPal and decided to start a sharing video website after they had difficulties to share online some dinner party in the beginning of 2005. After Activating the domain name YouTube.com they run a beta version of it until November 2005 when it was officially launched.

This online home business grew fast and when Sequoia Capital invested in it $11.5 million, the founders moved to an office above a pizzeria and Japanese restaurant. By July 2006, 100 million videos have been watched on YouTube every day and the “little” company was accountable for 60% of all videos watched online!

In October 2006, Google couldn’t stay indifferent anymore and acquired YouTube in a deal worth $1.65 billion! Today, YouTube is the most popular and engaging video site online, while about 90% of the videos being watched online, are YouTube videos. The founders, Chad Hurley and Steve Chen, recently launched the new Delicious after acquiring it from Yahoo with their new company, AVOS.

It wasn’t such a long journey from being a small home business to one of the most visited sites on the web with fancy offices… Here is the TechCrunch TV visit in YouTube headquarters video: