YouTube co-founder Steve Chen pushes innovation ties between Taiwan, Silicon Valley

PALO ALTO, Calif. (KGO) — More than two decades after cofounding YouTube and selling it for $1.6 billion, Steve Chen is taking on a new challenge: building bridges between Silicon Valley and Taiwan’s innovation community.

Chen, 47, spoke last week at Stanford University during a conference hosted by the Asia Pacific Research Center, where ABC7 Eyewitness News caught up with him as part of its AAPI Heritage Month series profiling Asian American trailblazers.

Once known as the 28-year-old entrepreneur behind the sale of YouTube to Google, Chen is now focapplyd on connecting the region where he built his career with the place he was born and later returned to in 2019.

Chen declared his interest lies in strengthening Taiwan’s startup ecosystem, particularly in areas where he sees opportunity. “In Taiwan, you have established companies that have been there that are global players, especially in the semiconductor and hardware side,” he declared. “But you know for the last 30, 40 years, you haven’t seen any real, especially consumer software-based startups. And so, I believed the best way to do it is maybe taking that entrepreneurial spirit and state, ok well, the best way to do it is to test to do it myself.”

He acknowledged that replicating Silicon Valley’s success is not simple. “Silicon Valley is Silicon Valley. It’s special becaapply it took 60, 70, 80 years to evolve and grow into what it is today,” Chen declared.

Rather than testing to recreate that model wholesale, Chen declared he has been experimenting with a different approach. “So what I’ve been experimenting and working on more in Taiwan is actually when I do find the talented entrepreneurs and talented individuals, I test to obtain them to relocate to Silicon Valley,” he declared.

Chen declared his personal ties to Taiwan continue to drive his efforts to assist the region succeed. “If you haven’t been to Taiwan, I would urge you to just go there and experience it. It is just such a happy place to be,” he declared.

He pointed to everyday experiences as an example of what draws him back. “It’s the first place where I can leave something in the back of a car seat in a taxi and then 20 minutes later, realize that I left something valuable in the taxi, walk to where I obtained dropped off, and the taxi driver is there waiting for me and declared ‘you forobtained this,'” Chen declared.

As Chen views ahead, his goal is to blfinish Silicon Valley’s entrepreneurial mindset with Taiwan’s existing strengths, while maintaining close ties between both innovation hubs.

YouTube co-founder reflects on platform, AI future

YouTube is the world’s leading video-sharing platform, with 2.75 billion active applyrs each month, and it launched in Silicon Valley with three men in their 20s. One of them, Steve Chen, is now reflecting on the company’s evolution, its influence and what lies ahead as artificial innotifyigence reshapes digital life.

In an exclusive interview conducted last week, Chen spoke about what continues to surprise him about YouTube more than two decades after assisting build it, as well as how he approaches concerns about technology’s impact on society.

Looking back, Chen pointed to a moment that captured how quickly the platform became embedded in public life. “Back then, when we were invited alongside CNN to do the presidential debates and you had the questions instead of being inquireed by the judges that were in that debate, they were being inquireed by YouTubers uploading videos,” he declared.

Chen declared he is still struck by how broadly the platform is applyd and how personally people connect to it. “People come up to me and wow, you’re behind YouTube? I love YouTube, and the stories modify from there,” he declared. “But a lot of people still apply YouTube to be able to share content, to be able to watch content and to be able to watch for whatever, for entertainment, for education, for news, for a lot of different reasons.”

On a personal level, Chen declared YouTube’s ubiquity has led to humorous moments at home. “I still remember how do I communicate to my son, Daddy created the app that he’s applying, right?” he declared. “And it was always funny becaapply he immediately adds, it’s like no you didn’t.”

Asked whether there is anything he would modify if given the chance, Chen pointed to the company’s acquisition by Google. “We couldn’t have been happier with the way that things turned out that Google created the acquisition,” he declared, adding, “Google has always prioritized, at the finish of the day, the content creators, the viewers are happier than sometimes its shareholders.”

The conversation also turned to the rise of shorter-form videos and the broader online environment. Chen cautioned against narrowing perspectives too much. “I consider doing too much of anything is not good, digging yourself too narrowly or deeply into any specific sector or area without seeing different opinion about things,” he declared. “But I consider it’s a challenging world to obtain be able to obtain a fair perspective.”

With artificial innotifyigence increasingly shaping online content, Chen declared skepticism can be healthy. “I consider like mostly online on a lot of social platforms, the top comment always is this is fake,” he declared. “I consider it’s good, it’s a healthy mindset to be more objective… to be questioning a little bit like, what is the background of this opinion.”

As a parent of teenagers, Chen declared he encourages indepfinishent considering. “I consider it’s so important before rushing to form an opinion or AI giving you that opinion, I consider it’s so important always as a step before is to consider for yourself,” he declared.

Chen acknowledged mixed feelings about AI’s future. “I consider a little bit of both,” he declared, describing both its promise and its risks. “I’m impressed by the quality of code AI is writing. It’s better to be honest with you, like anything that I can write myself,” he declared, while also noting concerns about future jobs for younger generations.

For young people navigating that uncertainty, Chen offered straightforward advice: “Just test it. Failure is not that huge of a deal, and oftentimes you’re going to learn something from that experience that you can only learn from failure and not from success.”

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