Chapter 45– The First Crack
Jake Harper stood outside a small café in Palo Alto, his hands tucked into the pockets of a custom-tailored jacket that somehow made him look even younger. Next to him stood Nolan Pierce, calm and collected as ever.
Inside the café, seated at a table near the window, were the three founders of YouTube: Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. They didn't look like moguls. They looked like guys trying to get their startup off the ground.
"Ready?" Nolan asked.
Jake took a breath and nodded. "Let's make history."
They walked in. Introductions were brief—Jake didn't waste time.
> "Your site is growing fast," he said. "But you're running on spaghetti code and borrowed bandwidth. If one more college dorm starts uploading dance videos, your servers will catch fire."
Steve blinked. "You're... twelve."
> "And I have $900 million and the infrastructure to make you faster, stronger, and ten times bigger," Jake replied. "You want to be remembered, or just another dot-com casualty?"
The table went quiet. Chad leaned forward. "We're listening."
---
Back in L.A., the FacePhone beta had begun.
Jake handpicked twenty Caltech students and a few trusted engineers. Each received a prototype loaded with the current build of FaceOS.
Within two hours, his phone was blowing up with feedback:
Camera freezing during FaceWorld uploads
UI stuttering when switching between apps
Battery dying after four hours
Howard muttered, "This thing's less stable than my cousin's second marriage."
Jake got to work. He stayed up for two nights straight rewriting memory management routines and tweaking GPU load balancing. Slowly, the bugs fell away.
Three days later, Jake sat down in a follow-up meeting with YouTube's founders. The tone was different now. Steve and Chad looked serious. Jawed was quiet.
> "We've had offers before," Chad said carefully. "But no one with your kind of resources."
Jake nodded.
> "YouTube is worth more than people think. But you'll burn out before you can scale."
> "We agree."
Jake placed a revised contract on the table.
> "$680 million. Cash. You keep full creative control. No micromanaging. You get your dream, I get your platform."
The three men looked at one another.
Steve finally said,
> "We'll think about it."
Jake smiled.
> "You won't get a better offer."
---
Back in Brentwood, Judith noticed the dark circles under Jake's eyes.
> "You're not sleeping again."
> "I'm fine."
> "You're twelve. This isn't normal."
Jake paused.
> "Neither is building the future."
Judith didn't argue. But she stayed by the kitchen table longer that night.
Just in case he needed her.