“A few days later, Chen sent an explosive e-mail to Hurley and Karim saying: “Jawad, please stop putting stolen videos on the site. We’re going to have a tough time defending the fact that we’re not liable for the copyrighted material on the site, because we didn’t put it up when one of the co-founders is blatantly stealing content from other sites and trying to get everyone to see it.””

I’ve always thought that the creation, growth, and ultimate sale of YouTube was one of the greatest, yet most diabolical, balancing acts of all time. Newly revealed e-mails from YouTube’s founders not only confirm this, but also point out one of my favorite advantages startups have over established companies: a reckless disregard for just about everything that gets in their way.