Steve Chen

30-Second Overview

Steve Chen (陳士駿, 1978–), born in Taipei, emigrated to the United States at age eight, and in 2005 co-founded YouTube with two former PayPal colleagues in a garage. Twenty months later, he sold it to Google for US$1.65 billion, becoming one of Silicon Valley's most prominent Taiwanese-American entrepreneurs. A few months after the Google acquisition, he was diagnosed with a brain arterial aneurysm. After two craniotomies and fifteen seizures, he returned to Taiwan with his wife and children in 2019.¹ In 2018, then-Premier William Lai personally presented him with Taiwan's first "Employment Gold Card."²

Born in Taipei, One of Two Asians in the Whole School

Steve Chen was born in Taipei in 1978. He attended the private Ching-hsin Elementary School in Taipei for two years before emigrating to the United States with his family at age eight.

He later said that in his American middle school, he and his younger brother were the only two Asian students in the entire school.³ During that period he developed a passion for mathematics and science, which eventually brought him to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to study computer science. He joined the newly launched startup PayPal before finishing his senior year.

After eBay acquired PayPal for US$1.5 billion, Chen left. He briefly joined Facebook as one of its early employees, staying a few months before leaving again — he wanted to build something of his own.⁴

A Garage, a Credit Card, Twenty Months

In February 2005, Steve Chen and former PayPal colleagues Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim began building a system in Hurley's garage.

Startup capital was minimal. Chen later said: "A few computers, one credit card — my credit card — and we had the system up."⁵

YouTube's original concept was a video-uploading dating site, allowing people to post clips for strangers to watch. But they quickly discovered users did not care about dating — they just wanted somewhere to share video. Funny clips, family home movies, live music performances, anything. YouTube accidentally grew into an entirely different species.

It officially launched in May 2005, and traffic grew fast enough that servers could barely keep pace. That year, there was nowhere in the world where ordinary people could upload and watch video this effortlessly.

On October 16, 2006, Google announced its acquisition of YouTube for US$1.65 billion — the most attention-grabbing deal in the history of the internet at that time. Chen was 28 years old and held approximately 17% of YouTube's equity.⁶

But he later said it was not something they had gone out to sell.

"We were basically forced down the acquisition path, primarily because of legal issues."
— Steve Chen, Sequoia Capital Podcast⁷

YouTube hosted enormous quantities of copyright-protected video — content from NBC, CBS, and MTV — all uploaded by users without authorization. Media companies were threatening to sue. The three founders could not withstand a legal battle on their own; Google had the capacity to negotiate. It was not a sale — it was survival.

Google Employee, Brain Tumor, Farewell Letter

After the Google acquisition, Chen remained at Google in a senior role. In 2007, CNN approached YouTube with an unprecedented collaboration: allowing internet users to submit questions to candidates in the US presidential election.

Chen said: "I was so busy I went three days and three nights without sleep, and fell asleep on the flight back to San Francisco — only to have a seizure."⁸

The diagnosis was a brain tumor — medically classified as a giant thrombosed aneurysm. He underwent the first surgery and began long-term medication to manage the condition.

But the problem was not cured. The aneurysm in his head continued to grow, and after marrying and having two children, this threat became ever more concrete. In 2018, at age 40, he decided to undergo a second surgery. Two doctors warned him the surgery carried extreme risks.

"I wasn't sure whether my children knew their father was going in for head surgery — something like having your head cut off with a saw. I also wrote a farewell letter to my children." He later said: "As it turned out, I survived six hours of grueling surgery."⁹

After two craniotomies and fifteen seizures, he was alive.

Two More Ventures: AVOS and Nom.com, Two More Times Without Success

In 2011, Chen and Hurley left Google and founded AVOS Systems in San Mateo, California — the same Silicon Valley city where YouTube had been created — and also acquired the social bookmarking service Delicious from Yahoo.

This time there was no repeat of YouTube's success. In 2014, Chen was reported to have left AVOS and joined Google Ventures (Google's venture capital arm).

In 2016, he co-founded Nom.com, a live-streaming food network allowing people to live-stream while cooking. In 2017, Nom.com shut down.¹⁰

Neither second-act venture succeeded, but Chen never used the word "failure" to describe them. He has said he wants to do "things that have never been done before" — whether the outcome is good is a separate matter.

Back in Taiwan: Earthquake on Day Four

In 2019, one year after surgery, 41-year-old Steve Chen moved back to Taiwan with his Korean-American wife Park Ji-hyun and their two children.

He said the desire to leave the United States had been building for a long time. "The gun violence, drugs, and public safety problems on San Francisco's streets are very serious — it's very dangerous to walk around at night." He wanted to give his children a different environment, to let them learn traditional Chinese and engage with Taiwanese culture.

Life in Taiwan surprised him. "Taiwan is small but has everything you need. Transportation is more convenient than other countries, people are friendly, and the scenery driving down along the coastline is genuinely beautiful." He also said: "I still remember, on the fourth day back in Taiwan, we had an earthquake."¹¹

His children adapted better than he had expected. He had worried they would "be treated as outsiders when they returned to Taiwan" — but the kids integrated quickly, and now when they mention their American friends, "it's as if they're talking about a foreigner."

In 2018, then-Premier William Lai (賴清德) presented Chen with Taiwan's first "Employment Gold Card" — a combined work and residency permit established by the government to attract overseas technology talent. Science and Technology Minister Wu Cheng-wen subsequently presented him with a VIP black card for the Taiwan Tech Arena (TTA).²

Does He Regret Selling YouTube?

This is the question he is asked most often.

Some friends have estimated that if YouTube were still operating independently today, its valuation would be somewhere between US$50 billion and US$80 billion. Chen held 17% of the equity — meaning the number he could theoretically have held is many times larger than the US$1.65 billion he received.

His answer has consistently been: no regrets. He says YouTube grew into what it is today because of Google's resources and protection — without the ability to resolve the copyright litigation, YouTube might have been destroyed by media companies' lawyers long ago.¹²

And US$1.65 billion is not a small number. He was 28, had money, had time, and had things he still wanted to do.

What He Said to Taiwan

In 2023, Steve Chen spoke at a public event encouraging young Asian Americans to pursue their dreams in Silicon Valley, but his words ultimately came to rest on Taiwan:

"Taiwanese people's talent is not inferior to Americans'. What we lack is not talent — it is success stories, and the chance for the world to see us."¹³

In Taiwan, he sponsored the Stanford Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC) to establish the "Taiwan Program," partnering with National Taiwan University to hold forums bringing together entrepreneurs and researchers from Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and the United States. He says what he wants to do is make Taiwan's startups visible to the world — not waiting for the world to come to Taiwan, but actively bringing Taiwan to the front of the stage.

A person who left at eight and returned at forty-one is continuing, in his own way, to remain connected to this island.

Further Reading

• Steve Chen Interview: Surviving a Life-or-Death Brain Tumor Battle, Returning to Taiwan to Live for His Children's Education (Mirror Media, 2021) — The most complete account of his return to Taiwan
• YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen: From 0 to 2.5 Billion Users, the Key to Creating a Miracle in 18 Months (Meet.bnext, 2024) — Inside story of YouTube's founding and technical decisions
• William Lai Presents First Employment Gold Card to YouTube Co-Founder Steve Chen (NDC, 2018) — Background on the Employment Gold Card policy
• Steve Chen Ventures in Taiwan: Silicon Valley's Golden Boy Returns (Yahoo News, 2022) — Observations on his entrepreneurial activities at TTA after returning to Taiwan

References