When YouTube Launched, The Site Was a Total Flop ... Until the Founders Did This

From rags to riches!

Author

Steve Strauss
July 30, 2025

In partnership with

YouTube is, of course, a phenomenon. But it sure didn’t start out that way. The cool thing though is that all it took was one small tweak to turn everything around. A good reminder, that.

In 2005, three former PayPal employees launched what they thought would be a revolutionary video platform.

And their big idea really did seem like a great idea for the nascent online world. They would offer the world a video dating site and they would call it YouTube.

Tune In, Hook Up?

The original tagline for YouTube was “Tune in, Hook up.” People were encouraged to make and post videos saying who they were and what kind of partner they were looking for.

Great idea, right?

Wrong.

No one posted anything. Not one single video.

Desperate, the founders even tried bribing people on Craigslist to upload videos, offering $20 to any woman who would post a dating profile.

Still . . . crickets.

One Small Change Changed Everything

Then one of the founders, Steve Chen, had a simple but profound insight: What if we just drop the dating part and let people upload anything?

With little to lose, they all agreed and opened up the site to all kinds of video content:

  • Trips and vacations

  • Tutorials

  • Funny clips, etc.

Within days, uploads spiked, and all sorts of content was posted. In fact, the first YouTube video ever (and therefore the fist viral video ever) was called “Me at the zoo”

Ka-Boom!

Videos and views quickly spiked, and then, once users figured out they could share their YouTube clips by embedding them on MySpace and on blogs, growth really exploded.

Eighteen months later, Google bought YouTube for $1.65 billion.

The Takeaway

Your first idea might might not be so great. But so what?

YouTube only became YouTube after the founders let go of their original vision. They did not double down on a bad plan. They listened to what the market wanted, and then pivoted.

It didn’t take a ton of money, or a VC, or a shark.

All it really took was an open mined (or three.) The breakthrough was not building something perfect. It was being flexible enough to spot the real opportunity hiding inside a failed experiment.

The Key to a $1.3T Opportunity

A new trend in real estate is making the most expensive properties obtainable. It’s called co-ownership, and it’s revolutionizing the $1.3T vacation home market.

The company leading the trend? Pacaso. Created by the founder behind a $120M prior exit, Pacaso turns underutilized luxury properties into fully-managed assets and makes them accessible to the broadest possible market.

The result? More than $1b in transactions and service fees, 2,000+ happy homeowners, and over $110m in gross profits for Pacaso.

With rapid international growth and 41% gross profit growth last year, Pacaso is hitting their stride. They even recently reserved the Nasdaq ticker PCSO.

Invest in Pacaso as a private company and join notable investors like Maveron and Greycroft for just $2.90/share.

Paid advertisement for Pacaso’s Regulation A offering. Read the offering circular at invest.pacaso.com.

Steal This Strategy

📖 Book – The Lean Startup by Eric Ries
A startup bible on how to test, pivot, and adapt ideas quickly.

🎥 Video – The History of YouTube
Short and fascinating. Hear how the founders accidentally built the biggest video site on earth.

🌐 Website – Product Hunt
A place to spot trends, test startup ideas, and see what kinds of tech products actually gain traction.

🛠️ Tool – Typeform
Use it to ask your audience what they really want. Their answers might change everything.

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About Steve

Steve Strauss is the best-selling author of The Small Business Bible (and 17 other books), Inc.’s small business columnist, a lawyer (non-practicing), and an entrepreneur. He sold his last venture, TheSelfEmployed.com to Mark Cuban & Zen Business. Need a ghostwriter or a newsletter for your business? Contact Steve!

“Be bold! For boldness has genius, magic, and power in it.”

- Goethe

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