On April 23, 2005, at 8:27 p.m., YouTube co-founder Jawed Karim uploaded the first YouTube video “Me at the zoo.”
Shot by high school friend Yakov Lapitsky (who went on to become an engineering professor), it shows Karim talking about how cool elephants’ trunks are. The nearly 20-second clip has been viewed nearly 20 million times.
Ten years later, YouTube is “the most valuable storytelling outlet our planet has ever seen” and its CEO Susan Wojcicki is “the visionary behind YouTube’s next evolution,” as Academy Award-winning producer Brian Grazer writes in this year’s TIME 100 issue, which recognizes Wojcicki as a “Titan” in the tech industry.
Read next: Brian Grazer on Susan Wojcicki
See What Your Twitter Profile Looked Like Over the Last 10 Years
More Must-Reads From TIME
- The 100 Most Influential People of 2024
- The Revolution of Yulia Navalnaya
- 6 Compliments That Land Every Time
- Stop Looking for Your Forever Home
- If You're Dating Right Now , You're Brave: Column
- The AI That Could Heal a Divided Internet
- Fallout Is a Brilliant Model for the Future of Video Game Adaptations
- Want Weekly Recs on What to Watch, Read, and More? Sign Up for Worth Your Time
Write to Olivia B. Waxman at olivia.waxman@time.com