ABU DHABI: YouTube co-founder Steve Chen has described the early decisions that helped shape the video-sharing platform, telling an Abu Dhabi audience that infrastructure, simple measurements and a willingness to challenge assumptions were central to its development.
Chen was speaking at LIVEX 2026, the Liveability and Investment Exhibition taking place at ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi from September 29 to October 1. During a panel titled “The city that thinks”, he discussed the challenges of building technology for millions of people and the lessons he carried from YouTube’s early years.
The discussion came as YouTube marks two decades since its creation. The platform was founded in 2005 by Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim, and its first video, “Me at the Zoo”, was uploaded by Karim on April 23, 2005. YouTube itself marked the 20th anniversary in 2025, noting that the platform had grown to more than 20 billion uploaded videos.
YouTube’s early infrastructure challenge
Chen said one of the most important decisions was to invest in infrastructure from the beginning rather than waiting for the platform to become large.
That was particularly demanding in the mid-2000s, when broadband adoption was still developing and cloud infrastructure was not available in the form familiar to today’s technology companies.
The early YouTube team had to deal with storage, uploads, backups, streaming and bandwidth costs while building a service capable of handling growing amounts of video.
Chen said the experience reinforced a straightforward lesson: infrastructure has to be considered from the first stage of building a technology platform.
YouTube’s subsequent growth demonstrated the scale of the challenge. In 2010, the company said the service had surpassed two billion video views a day, only five years after its first beta version.
Three numbers guided early decisions
Chen also explained how YouTube approached measurement when the company was still small.
According to his account at the Abu Dhabi session, the team initially concentrated on three numbers: videos viewed, videos created and users created.
Those measurements were deliberately simple. Chen said the team could retrieve them with basic database queries and use them to judge whether individual features were worth keeping, changing or abandoning.
The approach changed as YouTube became more sophisticated.
Understanding engagement, determining whether a product was genuinely useful to viewers and creators, and interpreting user behaviour eventually required considerably more information. Chen said that developing those more complex measurements took years.
That evolution illustrates a broader difference between measuring activity and understanding the quality of an experience. A high number of views, for example, does not necessarily explain why someone watched a video or whether the experience was valuable to them.
Learning to question the first assumption
Chen also spoke about the importance of accepting failure during product development.
He said YouTube’s culture allowed employees to propose ideas based on their own experience with the product, rather than limiting ideas according to job titles. The market would ultimately determine whether an idea worked.
The former YouTube executive also emphasised the need for humility when evaluating decisions made at the beginning of a company.
His point was particularly relevant to the discussion around algorithms and behavioural measurement: a metric can shape the product depending on what a company chooses to optimise.
Tom Gruber, founder of Siri and Humanistic AI, raised a related issue during the same panel, arguing that what organisations choose to measure can influence what they ultimately build.
From a small startup to a global platform
YouTube’s early trajectory provides context for Chen’s comments.
The service was created in 2005 by three former PayPal employees. Its first upload, Karim’s short San Diego Zoo video, became a landmark in the development of user-generated online video. YouTube later became part of Google following a $1.65 billion stock acquisition announced in October 2006.
YouTube’s own historical material shows how quickly the platform expanded after its launch. By 2009, the company said it was serving more than one billion video views per day.
Two decades later, YouTube says it operates across more than 100 countries and 80 languages, with billions of monthly viewers collectively watching more than one billion hours of video each day.
For Chen, however, the numbers are only part of the story. The other lesson is recognising that the metrics and assumptions used at the beginning of a company may not remain appropriate as the product, audience and technology change.
His appearance in Abu Dhabi therefore offered more than a look back at YouTube’s history. It was also a reflection on how technology companies make decisions when they are building products whose eventual scale cannot yet be known.
Who is Steve Chen?
Steve Chen is a co-founder of YouTube, which he established in 2005 with Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.
What did Steve Chen discuss in Abu Dhabi?
At LIVEX 2026, Chen discussed technology leadership, infrastructure, product measurement, failure and lessons from YouTube’s early development.
What three metrics did early YouTube track?
Chen said the early YouTube team focused on videos viewed, videos created and users created.
Where did Steve Chen speak in Abu Dhabi?
Chen spoke at the “The city that thinks” panel during LIVEX 2026 at ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi.
When was YouTube founded?
YouTube was founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley and Jawed Karim.
What was the first video uploaded to YouTube?
“Me at the Zoo”, uploaded by co-founder Jawed Karim on April 23, 2005, was YouTube’s first video.
When did Google acquire YouTube?
Google announced its agreement to acquire YouTube for $1.65 billion in stock in October 2006.
What is LIVEX 2026?
LIVEX 2026 is the Liveability and Investment Exhibition being held at ADNEC Centre Abu Dhabi from September 29 to October 1, 2026.
