YouTube's South African connection

antowan

antowan

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http://sequoiacap.com/people/roelof-botha/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roelof_Botha

Pik Botha's grandson Roelof Botha is credited with selling
Web 2.0 sensation YouTube to Google for US$1.65bn last week, by far the
most expensive purchase made by Google during its eight-year history.


Botha sits on the board of Insider Pages as well as Luxim (a company
manufacturing lamps for projection systems), Meebo (instant messaging),
Xoom (money transfer), Zappos (online shoe and accessories retailer) and
others. He's also a partner in the Silicon Valley venture capital firm
Sequoia Capital.


The New York Times reports that Sequoia is set to turn its $11.5m
investment in YouTube into an estimated half a billion dollars.


Sequoia first invested in YouTube in November 2005 - a more than 4 000%
return on investment in 11 months. Sequoia, set up in 1972, invested early
in Google itself and also backed what's now Nasdaq blue chips Apple,
Oracle, Yahoo and Cisco, among others.


The previous employer of YouTube's founders - Chad Hurley and Steve Chen -
was PayPal, the first successful online payment company. Botha was chief
financial officer at PayPal before he joined Sequoia in 2003.


PayPal was sold to number one auction site eBay in October 2002 for $1.5bn.
Elon Musk, PayPal's founder, is also a South African living in California.


Botha is a Jan van Riebeeck High School in Cape Town matriculant (achieving
the best ever grades in the province), a University of Cape Town graduate
(actuarial sciences and statistics) and a Stanford MBA.


He's the son of well-known economist Roelof Botha and grandson of Pik
Botha, former SA Minister of Foreign Affairs. His uncle is rock musician
Piet Botha.
 
Wow - now there's some news we didn't know! Pik Botha has a rock musician brother!! :D
No seriously... very...
Interesting!! :D :D
 
Why can't we lobby these "ex" South Africans to invest in the SA ICT sector, in particular to develop it to the benefit of the whole SA? Our slow broadband and low caps leave us behind in this new Web 2.0 environment. The SA internet environment will only catch up in 2 -3 years time. We should create an environment where we are at the forefront of this technology, not "agter osse".
 
there is a very good reason why they are ex-south africans. why would they have any interest in a backward third world country with an idiotic goverment..
 
Oupoot said:
Why can't we lobby these "ex" South Africans to invest in the SA ICT sector, in particular to develop it to the benefit of the whole SA? Our slow broadband and low caps leave us behind in this new Web 2.0 environment. The SA internet environment will only catch up in 2 -3 years time. We should create an environment where we are at the forefront of this technology, not "agter osse".
Click to expand...

I think its more to do with not wanting to give away their money to a 3rd party that didnt do anything just so they can have a BEE/AA partner and be a south african politically correct company.
 
I think they left in the first place cos they don't feel too welcome. Imagine being the son of an ex-defence force head in the old regime... don't think your opportunities will be the same here.
 
They had an interview with Hendrik Verwoerd's grandson on radio 702 a while ago and it did sound like his not doing to bad considering who his grandpa was :D

But onepostwonder the guys that started paypal also south african and afaik they dont have any family in politics so why did they leave the country ?
 
Well, let's just say that they had little or no chance of starting paypal in South Africa, I won't get into Telkom issues here :D
Not to mention that Paypal still can't offer incoming transactions because of exchange and bank regulations in SA. I would imagine youtube would be the same. Hosting out of country is one thing, but it becomes costly to travel back and forth to manage staff and protect your assets.
 
DigitalSoldier said:
Hendrik Verwoerd's grandson
Click to expand...
You referring to Hendrik Verwoerd - the guy who does car torque? Sa TV presenter, etc.? AFAIK he's doing fine, but different circumstances... I think he's a journo first - not the regular businessman. Like most entrepeneurs, he has skills that no-one can touch and few can beat... always favourable... but competing in business has less to do with skill these days... being well connected to the right people certainly helps.
http://www.cartorque.co.za/hendrik.htm
 
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Nice. Afrikaans is available on some of the web services the companies he is a director on...

Happy for him. Go for it! Funny that it takes global companies (with ex-pats behind) them to provide localized content....
 
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