YouTube's $1.65 Billion, €1.16 Billion Acquisition Was Negotiated at Denny's over a Week

Even in the fast moving and casual world of tech startups, business is business. Especially when faced with a multi-billion dollar offer, you'd think entrepreneurs would stick to more customary procedures.

That was not the case when YouTube was acquired, cofounder Steven Chen recounted in an interview at Disrupt Beijing. The YouTube team didn't want the acquisition meetings to happen at offices, either theirs or the other company's.

So they compromised and settled on Denny's, a non-stop restaurant chain. At the time, both Yahoo and Google wanted to get YouTube, but Google CEO, at the time, Eric Schmidt convinced the founders Google would be the best choice, promising them unlimited resources.

The whole negotiations took one week and the deal was done. It ended up being a historic one. Even now it's one of Google's biggest. And, while the site may not yet be profitable, it is still growing at a fast rate and bringing in more money than ever.