"all ’bout da videos, yo" - How YouTube got started with Hot or Not idea.

Co-founders of YouTube and their leaked email from February 13, 2005.

Jawed Karim emails Chad Hurley and Steve Chen with the subject "video idea," this was the genesis of YouTube. The original idea was to make a video version of "Hot or Not" and to be secretive; they use H and N in the email.

In their Viacom vs. YouTube case, the US District Court made their documents public, including interesting internal emails.

I love reading through these leaked early emails, and as an entrepreneur, it's fascinating to see the evolution of YouTube in the early days through these emails between the co-founders:

April 23, 2005 Jawed Karim wrote: "It's all 'bout da videos, yo. We'll be an excellent acquisition target once we're huge."

June 15, 2005 Steve Chen wrote: "we got a complaint from someone that we were violating their user agreement. it may be because we're hosting copyrighted content. instead of taking it down – i'm not about to take down content because our ISP is giving us shit – we should just investigate moving www.youtube.com"

June 15, 2005 Chad Hurley wrote: "So, a way to avoid the copyright bastards might be to remove the 'No copyrighted or obscene material' line and let the users moderate the videos themselves. legally, this will probably be better for us, as we'll make the case we can review all videos and tell them if they're concerned they have the tools to do it themselves."

June 20, 2005 Jawed Karim wrote: "If we want to sign up lots of users who keep coming back, we have to target the people who will never upload a video in their life. And those are really valuable because they spend time watching. And if they watch, then it's just like TV, which means lots of value."

June 21, 2005 Jawed Karim wrote: "Where our value comes in is USERS… Our buy-out value is positively affected by … more Youtube users…. The only thing we have control over is users. We must build features that sign up tons of users, and keep them coming back."

Takeaway: Focus on your users; Vimeo was founded almost a year before YouTube but could not capitalize on a first-mover advantage. Vimeo banned content from video gamers and other creators not suitable for their community.

Fun fact: Zuck built FaceMash before Facebook, which was a college version of Hot or Not.