Last updated on August 1st, 2015 at 06:22 pm
Chad Hurley, the long-time CEO of YouTube, told an audience of 8,000 people in New Orleans for Sage Summit 2015 that a key business tip is to “surround yourself with great people, and have fun.”
Hurley was the keynote speaker on in a talk moderated by Jodi Uecker, president, North America Sage.
When Uecker asked Hurley about SMBs being challenged by the pace of change and what advice he’d offer, he said, ”It’s about ideas; embrace failure until you find the way, and know perseverance will solve your problem. With any success there are many failures.”
Hurley was asked how he generates ideas in the workplace, and what suggestions he has for others. “Use a whiteboard,” he noted. “Talk with friends/colleagues and look for ‘small insights’. It’s not about a big breakthrough, this thing no one’s seen. It’s about the small details that people overlook.”
He also stressed the importance to “internationalize, so everyone in the world can know your product. That, is a core, value need,” he added. Such global expansion has yielded impressive stats for YouTube: A billion people watch the video-sharing site daily, and watch time year-over-year is growing by over 50 percent.
Hurley said YouTube also adapted by creating a “seamless solution” when it planned to operate on all platforms and browsers knowable, so “nearly everyone in the world” can watch.
Uecker mentioned that her Sage offices uses YouTube for internal communications, and have sent colleagues informational videos.
“We developed YouTube for anyone to participate,” said Hurley. “From a business point of view, you could do demos, tutorials, commercials. Like the time a powerplant shut down in a town and they made a video on how to fix a problem, so colleagues would know how to fix it themselves.”
Reporting and photography by Dave Gordon
Check out @b2bnewsnetwork‘s feed this morning for coverage of Sage Summit’s final keynote, with Tony Hawk, Trevor Noah and Mad Men’s Matthew Weiner.
