Amid the speculation (and eventual reality) about Goolge buying YouTube, something that hasn't received much attention is how Sequoia Capital invested $3.5-million in November 2005, and $8-million in April, 2006. (Sequoia appears to be the only VC to make an investment in YouTube.) So how much of YouTube does Sequioa own and, more important, how much could its stake be worth? Last October, Om Malik suggested Sequoia's initial investment in YouTube was done at a pre-money valuation of $15-million. For the sake of argument, let's assume Sequoia own 25% of YouTube. If YouTube is worth anything near the $1.6-billlion being bandied about by the NYT and others, Sequoia is looking at $400-million, or a 40x return on its money. Now, that's a big-time home run - perhaps not a Skype-like monster blast home run but a home run nonetheless.
More: Mr. Wave Theory crunches his own numbers to come up with the booty split between YouTube's VCs, founders (Steven Chen and Chad Hurley) and employees. Here's a video interview featuring Hurley and Chen on how YouTube was started.
Update: DealBook reports Google's purchase of YouTube could happen as early as this afternoon. Google ended up making a $1.65-billion bid for YouTube.