I'll begin with the obvious.
As the only billion-dollar venture capital exit of 2006, YouTube's $1.65 billion sale to Google makes the three founders and two primary institutional investors the biggest venture capital and entrepreneurial winners of the year. It took less than 24 months for the company to zoom to a ten-figure valuation and the directors were smart enough to sell at a lofty price rather than soldier on as an independent company mired in litigation.
Runner Up online video exit of the year: Grouper's $65 million sale to Sony, which is still one of the biggest Web 2.0 sales ever.
Wannabe online video exit of the year: MetaCafe's supposed $700 million sale to Yahoo (the speculation hasn't become reality yet).
For more on year-in-review stories, see:
News.com
The Deal
Tags: youtube, google, m&a, sequoia+capital, vc, venture capital
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