Justin Kan (Twitch) - Finding Fulfillment in Entrepreneurship [ETL Looks Back]

Who you are defines how you build. This is the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Series, brought to you by Stanford eCorner.

Welcome YouTube communities and Stanford communities to the Entrepreneurial Thought Leaders Seminar. I am Ravi Bellani, a lecturer in the Management Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University and the director of Alchemist. an accelerator for enterprise startups. This is the kickoff for the new year for ETL, and ETL is brought to you by STVP, the Entrepreneurship Center in Stanford's School of Engineering, and BASES, the Business Association of Stanford Entrepreneurial Students. I can think of no better guests, guests to kick off a new start to a new year than Justin Kan. Justin has jumped headfirst into entrepreneurship without having a filter like few people I know. So when it comes to starting something new, we are blessed to have the master of starting bold endeavors, Justin Kan. Justin is a serial entrepreneur. A few people, frankly, have experienced peaks as high as Justin has on the entrepreneurial journey and depths as low as Justin has. And few, if anybody, is as honest and unfiltered about the experience. If you don't follow Justin, I highly encourage you to follow him on a variety of different social media outlets. You will have a better and more interesting and informed life if you do. But let me give you the formal introduction for Justin. So Justin is a graduate from Yale, where he studied physics and philosophy as an undergrad at Yale. Then at age 23, he started with fellow Yalies Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Voigt, Justin.tv, which was famous for being one of the first and anchor lifecaster platforms where a lot was centered around Justin. A lot of it was centered around Justin's 24/7 streaming of his life. Justin.tv gave birth to 2 other successful startups, Socialcam, and most famously Twitch. Twitch ended up getting acquired. Amazon for just shy of $1 billion and is arguably today worth $15 billion. Justin has gone on to be a serial entrepreneur and investor. He also famously started Atrium, which was a legal tech firm that raised $75 million, but ultimately shut down. He's also been a prescient investor. He has funded companies like Alto, Cruise, Bird, Reddit, and many, many others. And today he's the general partner of VC fund GOAT, Greatest of All Time, and the host of the Quest podcast. So without further ado, please welcome Justin Kan to Stanford. Justin, welcome.

Wow, thanks. It was an amazing intro. I'm glad we recorded that.

I'm

going to play it for myself every morning.

It is really awesome to have you, Justin. And I know we're going to have a lot more stuff to cover than we're going to have time. So just thank you in advance. Just to start off, I want people to— you know, people know you as the co-founder of Twitch and maybe infamously with Atrium and also being a former partner at YC and other things. But just for the record, can you tell people how many startups have you founded, or would you consider yourself a co-founder of in your life? And could you give the scorecard of if you had to break them down in terms of Wins, draws, and losses, what would that look like?

That's a good question. I don't know. It's probably like, if you include the ones that I'm working on now, maybe like 8 or 9, which isn't good. You know, I think if you're a good entrepreneur, you probably stick to one thing that really works. There's a little bit of luck in that. So maybe like you start 2 companies, one of them really worked. I think I've had a couple wins. You know, we had Justin.tv, which turned into Twitch. We spun out that out of Justin.tv. We also spun out this company called Socialcam that Autodesk acquired for $60 million. And then more recently, I incubated this company Alto that's doing really well, kind of got started in my house. And so there's maybe like a couple wins. And then there's a lot of like, there were some like draws. I started this company called Exec that was like a Basically, we ended up selling it. It was an acquisition. People made a little bit of money, but it wasn't very successful. And then started another company. My very first company, Kiko, was kind of a draw. We ended up selling it on eBay for some amount of money, which was okay. And then numerous, numerous losses of companies that just didn't work out.

But do you really believe that it's a vice, not a virtue, having started all these companies? Because I think there's And I want to ask you this sort of honestly, because there's sort of two schools of thought. One is, you know, you find something you love and you stick with that as your mission. And I think the other school of thought is more that entrepreneurship is about resilience and testing and trying and experimenting. And I think many would argue that you wouldn't have stumbled upon the Altos and the Twitches without having that appetite to be okay with failure and starting many companies. I'm curious what guidance you're going to give the next generation, the emerging young 20-year-olds, 20-plus-year-olds about entrepreneurship? Do you think they should just find one thing and stick with it? Or do you— would you espouse the path that you took?

Yeah, I mean, I think it depends on the personality, right? Like, it depends on the person. For, you know, I have friends who are much, much more successful than I am who started one company, you know, they like started Airbnb or Coinbase, and they just— was something that they really cared about. They picked the right idea and like they scaled. As the company scaled, they also kept learning and growing and scaling with the company. And my personality is more like, I love the start and new ideas. I love learning. And so, entrepreneurship is kind of a vehicle for me to learn and grow. And so, I think my personality is suited to maybe exploring many different things over time. And so, I think economically, it's probably like lower expected value, but it's just what I love to do. Here we are, you

know. But isn't that the ultimate thing, that it should be driven by who you are?

Yeah, it should be driven by who you are, not the economics. Right, right. There's not one right answer. No, I had my share of success, so, you know, it's great. Like, I think I've just discovered the, like, version of entrepreneurship that works for me.

Yes, but I don't think you should be self-deprecating about it. I guess that's where the division is. I think you should embrace that. That's your virtue. But let's dive into that. So I think few people— I think one of the upsides of having done all these experiences is a lot of people will comment about what you need to succeed or what you need to avoid to fail, but I know very few people who've actually experienced it, who've experienced successes, you know, at the order of magnitude that you have, and failures at the order of magnitude that you have as well. And so I'm curious if there's any durable lessons that you know for sure that are required now, that, that you know of now, having gone through the failures and the successes, that are required for success? I'm sure there's a lot, but I'm curious if you could share at least the top most key durable takeaways that you've had from those experiences.

Sure. Yeah. So, you know, I had this billion-dollar outcome, like you mentioned in the intro. I also had to raise $75 million for another company and completely failed. And we ended up returning most of the, you know, some of the capital investors, but mostly like we lost money. And so You know, one of the lessons, like, I think they're all the obvious ones that people have probably heard 1,000 times, like, you really have to focus on a differentiated product. I think if you don't have product differentiation that, you know, that's a new and novel and useful product that's 10 times better than whatever else is out there, like, it's really hard to grow something in like hypergrowth. You know, it all stems from product. And I think I tried to ignore that at various times or didn't focus on it enough, and those were like really the root causes of the failures.

And just to— and I don't want to take away from the others, but just to make that clear, you know you have a differentiated product when it's a 10x?

You have product-market fit, you feel like you're rolling the boulder downhill, right? Most of the startup is like, before you have product-market fit, you feel like you're rolling the boulder uphill, you're begging people to use your product, you're like, you know, begging people to try it and give it a chance, and eventually, If you discover something that's really useful and differentiated, then people start to come to you and you feel like you can't make it fast enough. You can't keep the servers up, whatever that is for you, that you feel like you're rolling the boulder downhill and you're just running after it. And I think that's the difference. And I think it's really easy in Silicon Valley to cargo cult all the things that successful founders do that aren't working on your product, like, oh, I need to hire executives or raise a lot of money. But those things are irrelevant. You know, they're downstream from having a product that everybody wants, right? And they're pretty much irrelevant and actually detrimental to you discovering a product, you know, something that works, that has product-market fit oftentimes, if you know, but it's easy to get distracted by them. And I have in my career, you know, so that was one, probably the most important lesson, you know.

And are there any pitfalls? I mean, this is sort of the converse of the same question, but are there any Pitfalls that you can advise founders to avoid now that you didn't appreciate before? Obviously, the one on product market fit and differentiation has already— is key. But are there any other pitfalls?

Yeah, so for myself, you know, like another lesson learned or like necessary ingredient is like, to work on things that you actually care about doing, right? Like, not— I think in the past, I've been at times like really mercenary, like, oh, this is a good business idea. So I want to build it. Because I think it'll be successful, it'll make money, whatever it is. And I think having really spending time to work on, you know, spending time to think about what do you like actually love to do and what do you care about and finding things that, you know, a space that you could, where you could work on something that you love to work on in some way. You know, it doesn't have to be in every way, right? But in some way, something that energizes you, that's what's going to keep you going when it doesn't, when it's hard. And I think oftentimes, no matter who you are and what kind of entrepreneur you are, what kind of background, it's always going to be hard at times.

And just to— yeah,

product, you know, that company or market fit or founder market fit, you know.

Yeah. And just to dig in on that then, so let's go through— I would love to talk about founder company fit for Twitch and Atrium and maybe Alto. But when you were going into Justin.tv, I guess even the precursor to Twitch, What was— did you have an— well, first of all, did you have a vision when you started Justin.tv? Or was it there— I think there's also these 2 schools of thought. One is that you have the entrepreneur that has the bold vision, and then they manifest that through the art of entrepreneurship. And then there's another, which is that no, entrepreneurship is really about the process, and the vision will just unfold, and you just need to focus on design thinking iterations, working with people that you love, and let the future tell you what the future is.

I would say there's like 2 kinds of entrepreneurship, like the— where the first kind, vision-based, and the second, which is like you are your own customer, right? Or you really deeply understand the customer. Maybe you're not your own customer, but you probably worked with your customer or are very close to somebody who's your customer. That's how you know about the idea. And with Justin.tv, that's a perfect example where it sounds surprising, but actually, it was both of those things, right? When we pitched the idea for Justin.tv to PG, Paul Graham, in the very beginning, who's the founder of Y Combinator, we were saying, hey, this is, you know, this could be a new form of entertainment on the internet. And I think in a way we were right. Like, people, you know, my core, the core idea was like, people want to follow people. This is in 2006, before social media, right, really happened. So, so we were like, people want to follow other people, they're interested in other people's lives. And I think that has been, that's a core insight that's been borne out, actually. And we thought, we said, this is the vision of this is like, it could be all these different types of people. We didn't see it as like social media at the time, but like where anyone could just sign up. But like, we thought, there would be hundreds of streams of different people where you could see live video of their life, right? And people would want to watch that. So there was like a big vision around it and there's like a new form of reality TV. Obviously, like it didn't play out exactly the way we thought. Well, actually, I would say it actually did play out exactly the way we thought like 15 years later where now like IRL streaming is huge on Twitch and that is actually happening where you have hundreds if not thousands of people who are streaming their lives in various ways on Twitch. So, there was that big vision, but then the second thing, part of it was like, it was also what I wanted to do, right? And what I mean is like, I was actually the customer. I wanted to stream my own life because I wasn't very popular when I was a kid and I was always looking for the attention of other people as a way to like get their approval. And so, that was manifested as my— I was a young adult and I was like, okay, this is, you know, I wanted to create— I thought like, if I can just stream my life to the internet, then I'll be popular or something. It was like a subconscious process, right? So, I actually was my own customer, right? Like, and we built that very first version of Justin.tv, which was like a live video and chat with my own use in mind, right? Like we were creating our own show. And so actually it did, it was, you know, both. And I think that's why it was so successful in the beginning, you know.

And so you had the vision and you had this intention too. And was that your— was the intention driven by economics?

Yeah, I mean, part of it was like, yeah, we wanted to start a startup. And we thought it was a good way to make money. But it was also like exploring our own curiosity, right?

But would you say— okay. Oh, sorry.

There's many motivations, right? Like, part of it was like, yeah, I mean, I had my friends at Reddit, like, start a company, they got paid very quickly. I was like, oh, I wanted that. I want that, right? So there was an economic motivator. But there's also a— there was like a curiosity, right? Like, I really love new ideas and like new technology ideas and applications of technology on culture and And so for me, that was like a— it was kind of a novel idea, and it was exciting to pursue that from a product person.

I'm going to come back to Twitch and Justin.tv, but I want to stay on this thread of vision and intent. For those who don't know, Twitch got acquired for $970 million. Your bank account was not empty after that. It probably had a couple more zeros than you were used to seeing. And then you go and you decide to start Atrium. Can we talk about vision and intent with Atrium and, and how that might have been different than Justin.tv and Twitch? And if there were any takeaways from that, did you have a vision going into Atrium, or was it more driven by an intention than the vision? And was that intention— and can you add color on, on, on what was going into the process?

Yeah, I mean, there was a vision. Well, I would say it was, it started off as like a, you know, kind of like a business model innovation, right? And the business model innovation was like, you can create this new type of corporatized law firm where, you know, it's run more like a business, right? And it could be more efficient for the customers, the clients. And, you know, the problem I would say where it ran into, which I think is true, actually, like, that's like a That is a— I think that's like a reasonable angle of attack. They're just like, the problem was, I think, in the execution and probably in the founder-market fit where, you know, I thought it was a really good business idea, but I wasn't really our own customer. And I mean, I was kind of like in that I was a founder who wanted to like, who was starting companies that had legal spend, but I didn't really care that much about solving that problem from a product perspective. And I think the problem with that is, you know, it wasn't was consequently we didn't create a sufficiently differentiated enough product that like represented product-market fit. So, you know, like I was able to scale a lot of organization and infrastructure and fundraising and stuff like that, but it really doesn't matter at the end of the day unless you have like a really substantially differentiated product.

And what was the intention then? So why— I understand there was this vision of a new business model, but why spend your precious few days on this earth after having made, you know, more money than the top half of the top half of the top half of the top half of the top 1% of people in the world? Um, what was the intention behind spending your time on something that you didn't necessarily care that much about?

Yeah, I think that for me, you know, I want to make a lot of money more and I wanted to be more successful because I like— I would— there was a After we sold Twitch, I was like, oh, okay, now what? What's the point? It kind of got the— caught the dog chasing the car and I caught the car. I was like, now what? I didn't really have a— feel like a sense of purpose. And so, for me, it's like falling back on what I know. I know about entrepreneurship. Let's start a bigger company. Maybe the goal is not to start a $1 billion company, it's to start a $10 billion company. Here's a vehicle by which I can start a $10 billion company. It seemed like a reasonable path to pursue at the time. I just don't think it was particularly self-aware of lower insight. There wasn't a lot of wisdom in there.

And was the goal to chase the former high from Twitch to try to— where the goalposts just shifted and you just wanted to rechase that experience again?

Yeah. I think in the past, I'd experienced goalposts shifting a lot. I remember when we first started Justin.tv, you know, which turned into Twitch. I was sitting with my co-founder and I was like, hey, you know, we could make each make $1 million in entrepreneurship. Like, because our friends at Reddit had sold Reddit for like $13 million or something like that. They made like single-digit millions. I was like, we could make $1 million each. And that idea blew our minds, right? Like, we were like, if we did that, we'd be set. And then obviously when we sold Twitch, it was like a lot more than that. And so— But then like by that time, it was like, oh, now I have friends who are like starting— they had Dropbox or Airbnb or, you know, whatever. So like there's a long way to go to the top. You know, it's easy to like, no matter who you are, there's always someone who's doing better than you or got more than you. It's easy to look at them and be like, oh, I got, you know, I should be doing better. Human beings are very comparative, you know, creatures by nature.

Yes. But then have you— do you have any takeaways now about where happiness resides in the entrepreneurship process? Because it seems like after Twitch, you would've been the poster child of any aspiring entrepreneur who's trying to make money. You didn't make $1 million. You made probably 2 orders of magnitude more than that. And yet you still thought, I need to go even— I need to have $10 billion. And so in these processes, when is it the most— do you ever feel happy? Or fully content and sated, where there's not this desire to even do more. Maybe that is tied with happiness in that entrepreneurial journey. And if so, where is that and when is that?

Well, I think there's 2 answers. One is that, you know, there are like, whatever you do, whether it's entrepreneurship or anything else, you know, there are hopefully ways, like experiences that you have of like being in a flow state, right? Something where you're like very present and you just love what you're doing. you have joy, you find joy in what you're doing, and you can just be fully present with it. So for me, there were moments of that in building a product or programming, right? Things that I just really love to do. There were a lot of things that I didn't have a flow state in, like managing people or worrying about the sales or whatever. There's tons of things, worrying about fundraising, stuff like that. So that was like, well, there were punctuated moments of happiness, probably varying degrees over time. depending on what I was doing and like what my responsibilities were on the entrepreneurial journey. So, you know, like I would encourage people, I guess, if they're like looking for what to do, like you should think about like what is the thing that gives you joy to do every day? That's what I think about every, like now it's like, what do I love to do every day? And what would I do if nobody paid me for it? If nobody was watching it, if it was just for my own edification, like, right? And so, you know, that's why I like making content on YouTube. It's like, I love storytelling, so I'm like, making content for this YouTube channel, it's never going to be as big as people who are making really compelling content. It's just a little niche around entrepreneurship, but it gives me joy to do it. So I do it.

And so are you past that feeling before? So right now when you see the Coinbase founders, and because everybody's like, Justin Kan, he's the man. And then when you see whoever is that next goalpost for you, do you still have that feeling? And if not, can you explain where you're at right now in life?

And yeah, so, so, right. So like, yeah, I don't— I let it go, right? Like, I let go of my like comparison to like other entrepreneurs, but it didn't happen because I made any more money or was any more successful. Like, I had like tons of comparison and like beating myself up over, oh, we should have kept going with Twitch or whatever, whatever. Like, it's worth more. Like, I should start a new company. Like, that was all happening Even after we sold Twitch, right? And then, you know, what changed was for me, I like kind of woke up one day, I like went through a series of life events where I realized like, oh, I am just— I like, this is like, this is a treadmill, a hedonic treadmill that can last forever. And I'll always be dissatisfied. And maybe happiness doesn't come from external things. It comes from the internal, right? Like, even like in the past, like I've achieved everything I thought, and then there's just been new goalposts. And then like another treadmill of like, or another another hamster wheel of unhappiness or dissatisfaction, I should say. And, maybe instead, I should focus on how I can be satisfied every day and what are the things that give me peace every day. And so, there's a lot of things like I started keeping a gratitude journal every day, I started exercising every day, I started meditating every day, and basically reprogrammed my mind. To be like, like let go of a lot of these attachments to like other, you know, outside sources of reward or achievement.

And, and are there— and so you, do you find yourself then more in that flow state that you were talking about before where you are getting more joy now than you did in the past? Or was there another moment in the past where you felt it was the pinnacle of life pleasure?

No, no, no. Now is the pinnacle of life. For sure. Like,

now is the pinnacle. Okay.

Yeah. Like, for me, it's like, yeah, I'm more in the flow state and more doing the things that give me joy every day, because I'm just choosing the activities that do that. And the funny thing is, like, from the outside, it looks like I'm pretty much doing the exact same thing. There's this concept my meditation teacher speaks about in Buddhism, where like, the final stage is like a wheel of like progression. And then the final stage, the image that represented is— represents it is just like this shopkeeper in the town square or whatever. And he's just living like a normal life. He's just super at peace and like free of attachment, right? But he's like gone all the way around and like from the outside, you'd never know.

Yeah.

And I feel like the thing is like people are like, oh, you're just on YouTube, on social media making content and like investing in startups and incubating startups. So like, it's exactly the same thing you were doing 3 years ago, 5 years ago, 10 years ago or whatever. But the difference is like today I just do them from a place of joy where I'm like less concerned with like, or I'm not concerned with like the outcome. And it's more about like, am I enjoying the process of this? Am I working with people I like? Am I working? Am I doing the things that I think are my talent instead of the things that I don't think are my talent? You know, I think I'm good at fundraising. I think I'm good at like ideas. I think I'm good at mentoring and coaching. And like maybe I'm not as good at being the CEO of these companies or whatever. And so I just focus on the things that I love to do every day, and it happens to look like a lot of the things that I was doing before, but just part of them, the part that I love and not the part that I don't love.

It's such a good lesson, Justin. So people are going to say, of course you can say that, Justin, you made $100 million or whatever, and now you have the luxury of doing what you love, but I can't do that until I've had my first Twitch exit, my first Justin.tv or Socialcam exit. What do you say to founders that say that?

I mean, if you like, go to Silicon Valley and like, get a job at Facebook or Google or whatever, you have like more money than you actually need, right? Because you, you know, you can eat out, you can go on vacation. Like, those are the things that are like really, you know, kind of like the basic building blocks of like contentedness, right? You don't have to worry, basically, you have like financial security. Everything after that is just like, you're ramping up your costs to whatever, you know, your lifestyle costs to like whatever your means is at the moment. And, you know, so like, no matter where you're at, you can make $100 million and be like, oh, I can't buy the private jet that my friend bought, you know, like, because that's $30 million or whatever, right? Like, so it just scales infinitely, like your needs, your potential, like things that you think you need can just scale up infinitely. And so I guess the only way to be free of that is to just like free your mind of attachment.

And while we're on this theme of understanding what gives you joy and energy, can we talk a bit about resilience? So, you know, across these 9 startups, you've had one huge— well, 2 huge breakout successes, but the majority were draws or fails. And you've also had your own strifes during all these moments as you're going through and Going through these journeys, any lessons on staying resilient that you've learned that you want to pass on as durable lessons that you advise other founders to adopt?

Yeah, I mean, there's— okay, so I've probably talked about some of them, right? Like, I think meditation is really important, like being able to find ways to be present with your experience.

Do you meditate every Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt.

I meditate every day, but like, what I do is irrelevant. That's, that's kind of like irrelevant, right? To you, the listener, like, you should just find what works for you.

But how many minutes do you meditate a day?

I feel like that's like kind of a red herring, right? Like, okay, like people are gonna be like, oh, I need to do it.

I need to do more.

Like, I need to do more. If he says 10 minutes, I need to do 15. If he says 25 minutes, I need to do 30 minutes or whatever.

Fair enough. Okay.

The point is that like, before I was very not able to sit with things that weren't going well, like experiences that were uncomfortable, right? So like, it could be physical discomfort, but also like, you know, emotional discomfort, including anxiety over what was gonna happen with my startup. So if I was feeling that way, I would go and like, I would have to escape from that experience. And I had many different mechanisms of escape, right? Like one was like, I would go get super fucked up and just drink a lot. Or another would be like, I'd watch like a whole season of Netflix in one night or something. just to keep my mind off of ruminating. The power of meditation, or there's many other modalities that you can use to become comfortable with these uncomfortable experiences, is that it helps you sit with it and you could be present with the experience of, oh, something's going badly, but not have to escape from it. At least that's what really helped me. And when you feel that way, then it's like you're not ignoring your problems anymore and it's much easier to actually take the challenges of life head on. So, I mean, that was like, you actually become more resilient, right? So, that's one thing that really worked well for me. You know, another kind of resilience, you know, like, one of the things I've done for resilience, I think, you know, like partnering with the right people, I think is really important. So, like finding the right co-founders. Maybe mentors to some extent, like the people who are going to be around you to give you encouragement at the right time, I think is like, you know, it's invaluable. I would never have like gotten nearly as far with any of my projects without like having the right people around me. And so like finding those people where you share values, you have aligned values, and they're people you can really rely on. That's like, I think that's really critically important.

Are there any unintuitive insights there? Because I think you also have tons of experience with having gone through so many different types of founding teams. Are there any unintuitive insights about when you know you have a co-founder that is a high affinity fit that you should say yes to?

Yeah, I think it's—

and first of all, how sacred is it to have a co-founder in your opinion versus going in it solo?

Well, I mean, lots of people go in solo and arguably like some of those are the better companies, but like I think in my opinion, just knowing my personality, having a co-founder is really important. I like to be around people and work with other people and so I think for, you know, the insight there is like, it's all about values more than anything else. I think values alignment, that's where you get into conflict is when you have values misalignment. And values aren't necessarily like there's one set of right ones, right? You know, like I remember one of my co-founders and I like argued because he didn't believe in FaceTime at all. And I believe in a lot of FaceTime, right? And he was like more like, I wanted to be efficient. He wanted to work when no one else was in the office. And I was like, no, we gotta leave, have an example for our employees or whatever. No one's right. It's just, it caused a conflict because like we just have different values, right? And so I think values alignment is like super important.

If there was anything else that you were going to share, you're welcome to on resilience hacks, but it sounds like it was meditation, teams.

Taking care of yourself is really important. Like, so, you know, startups are a marathon, not a sprint. having spending the time to make sure to take care of yourself for the long term. Oftentimes, it's easy as a founder to say, oh, I'm gonna do that. I'm gonna like start working out after we get to this milestone, right? Like, right now, I don't have time. I have to like go fundraising. Like, it's like, I gotta do 80 hours a week or whatever. So I don't have time to take care of myself. Or, you know, like, like, you can— it's easy to put off everything that you need to want to do for yourself. But like, in order for it to be maximum sustainable, right? Like, you have to make sure that it's sustainable for you, right? Like, it has to be. Like a sustainable lifestyle, and I think that's really important and something that gets overlooked. Now I'm not saying like don't work hard because like I think a lot of people swing too far the other way. Like like if you guys are you know this is a class of Stanford students, right? So like you don't have any skills yet, right? Like you probably don't have that much money. So like the only thing you have right now is like your ability to work a shit ton, but it has to be like sustainable, right? So you're going to be better off and sustain that ability to work a lot if you you know. Take care of your mind, take care of your body, etc.

But, you know, I think many Stanford students and Yale students as well have gotten to this point because they're pretty good at numbing themselves to pain to endure, you know, to endure through long things. Is there, is there a tactical way where you know for yourself or for others when you're not taking care of yourself and it's time to really step back? Is there a whisper before it becomes—

Like, it's just like how you feel. Every day, right? Like, you know, some days I don't feel that, you know, I'm like, oh, I feel like shit because I ate unhealthily or I didn't work out or whatever. And just like getting yourself back on the literal treadmill sometimes, right? Or like Peloton or whatever and go work out. Like, go design. Like, I know the signs of like, I like, I know what sets myself up to be productive, right? Like, it's like if I meditate, if I exercise, if I go for a walk, whatever, then I'm like primed to like have productive time. If I like don't take care of myself, then I'm like not primed to have productive

But just even feeling a little bit off is a strong signal. That's something where you should say, get—

I think like people should spend more time. You know, one thing I love about meditation, I mean, like, you know, people probably take this with a grain of salt or whatever, because like, it's kind of like sounds woo woo. But like, the thing I like about meditation is that it helps you understand your own experience better, right? To get in touch with your own experience, whatever it is, your experience is like, you know, I feel lethargic today, or I'm like excited or whatever your own emotional experience, your thoughts, it's like just It gives you more sensory clarity on like what is going on inside of consciousness. And I think that is helpful to like make changes, right? Like you might— before, like I went through life like very subconscious. Like for example, when we were working on Justin.tv, we'd have pizza for lunch every day. It's like very unhealthy. And I would eat pizza for lunch like most of the days and I'd just take a nap in the afternoon. I would like fall asleep and I thought, I'm just a sleepy fucking guy. You know, like I'm just like a sleepy guy and I never really correlated like, oh, like when I eat pizza, like all this, like a high fast carb meal or whatever, I feel terrible afterwards and like I just am tired and like, you know, fast metabolism and like, you know, high glycemic index foods don't do well for me. And so like I just like didn't realize that for a long, long time. And then when I became more conscious of my experience, I was like, oh, Like, if I, you know, there are things that I can do to like make myself feel better and prime myself for like more productive hours. And, you know, I mean, that's not really the point, like, is to be the maximally productive, but like the downstream effect is, yeah, it's more productive. And so I don't know, I just feel like being more conscious about your experience is never bad.

And can I— and because you've been so open about talking about your relationship with alcohol and other substances, Can I just create space for that? I know you've already mentioned it a little bit, but, um, you know, there are some people that would say that having, um, extra— there's a whole movement right now with biohacking where people are microdosing with hallucinogens and doing things that allows for mental plasticity. Um, I'm curious about— and I know you're a curious soul, which is why I'm at— and an honest soul. And so I'm curious about what is your relationship to external substances? And what's your viewpoint now and how has that evolved or changed or anything that you wanna share on that?

Well, I mean, I think psychedelics are really interesting because they're a way to give yourself some neuroplasticity and like break your context, right? But I think there's a little bit too much focus on like psychedelics specifically. Like, I think that I'm interested in like anything that like breaks my existing context to give myself like fresh perspective. And so, you know, I— it's like anything can do that, like just taking a day and doing a meditation retreat or traveling or, you know, fasting for extended periods of time or breathwork. There's like infinite modalities for like things that can break your context and like make you see things from a different angle. And I think those are all, you know, very interesting. Psychedelics, I mean, yes, like I, I'm a, you know, recommend them, I guess. But like, I think that There's a little bit more like I'm— I think there's just like one tool in like an arsenal of things that you can do for yourself.

But to be clear, with alcohol, do you view that as a tool as well?

I mean, alcohol is a tool, right? It's a tool. It like numbs things for you and it's just like not a very good one. That's not very good for you, right? Like, so I was using alcohol as a tool for a long time. It's like kind of like ibuprofen or something, but worse, right? Like, I'd be like, oh, I have feel terrible about something, right? Like my startup or my relationship or whatever, something. So like, what's the remedy? I'm gonna like go drink a lot and then I like not think about it right now.

And what was the moment that changed that? When did you come to the moment where you knew that I didn't need to do that anymore?

I mean, a couple years ago. I mean, I just realized I had 10,000 hours in or probably tens of thousands of drinks. And I realized like, it's not doing anything for me. I just feel bad afterwards. And I've kind of exhausted every possible angle of trying to fix things in my life with alcohol and it doesn't work. And, there's some health consequences. I wasn't that bad off there, but I wake up feeling horrible and I occasionally do something incredibly dumb and this is not a great lifestyle. I'm not a great person. I'm not the person I want to be when I'm drinking.

Thank you, Justin. I'm going to go to Q&A in about 5 minutes, but just one— so gang, if you have any other questions, start posting them. Justin, one of the themes for Stanford this year is a focus on principle-driven entrepreneurship. And what we mean by principle-driven entrepreneurship is having a value besides just making money to dictate the decisions on how— on building new ventures. What's your view when it comes to principle-driven entrepreneurship, and how important is that? Yeah,

I think I'm primarily interested in principle-driven entrepreneurship now, right? Like everything I'm working on, because it's, and it's, it's like, what are the things that give me joy that I'm excited about doing? Like, I only want to do those things. And so, you know, with all the startups that I'm creating now, you know, working on now, they're like, connected to something that I like care about in the world.

And so Justin, just to play devil's advocate, how do you reconcile that with You know, many people would argue that Twitch is, as phenomenal as it is, is also responsible for a lot of mental unhealth because it's— Twitch has created a very addictive platform built on this monetization engine. When you look at Twitch, do you feel— if that's true, and you can let me know if that's not true, but if that's true, how do you perceive your relationship to Twitch? Do you feel proud of it? Is it mixed? Any comments around that?

I don't feel that way about Twitch, you know, like unlike Instagram or something like that or Facebook, right, which I think is questionably good for the world, you know. Like, I think Twitch fills a need and it allows people to connect with each other in a much more human way. Like, with Twitch, you're not like presenting just your best, you know, face, right, because it's like live and it's live for hours and hours. So like people are seeing you in like all different contexts, and I think that It's like a lot more human and a lot more connected. So I, and, you know, with Twitch, we've allowed all these people to, you know, like have this as a career where, you know, it's something like they were doing something that like they wanted to do much less before, you know. I remember one guy like early on, he was like working at McDonald's or Walmart actually, and he quit Walmart to like become a full-time Twitch streamer. And I was like, That's amazing, right? So I feel very proud of Twitch. What I will say is that I think that the first wave of entrepreneurship, of which I was a part of, of this like internet entrepreneurship, was about creating platforms and using technology to create something that of value prime, where most of the value accrued to the platform, right? So I think Facebook and Instagram are like the ultimate examples of that, but Twitch is in that vein as well. And like when we thought about like notifications and you know, how to get people to stream more. It was all like centered around how do we do that for our own sake, right? Like, and incidentally, like with Twitch especially, like we were trying to, you know, by empowering streamers, we knew that was in our benefit, right? But it was like, at the end of the day, we're empowering streamers because it's ultimately to our benefit. And I think there's an opportunity of entrepreneurship that's possible where now we use those same tricks and technology, you know, technological devices to empower people to live their best lives and to do something in service of the user. And so, I'm very inspired by apps like Headspace or Calm, things like that, where we can— that are much more in service of the end user. And I started this app called Kin Habits, which is like a habit tracking app, like a social habit tracking app, which is obviously habit formation is something that's really important to me. And with this, like, this app is like all over, you know, that's why I started it. It's like I could build something where I apply the things I learned from building social apps, right, and social sites to like help people be the best version of themselves, you know, be on their, you know, on their wellness journey. And so, you know, I think that I see a lot of entrepreneurship in that direction, and that's very encouraging.

It is, it is. Justin, I'm going to go to the student questions now. The first question is, there's a question from an anonymous attendee, which is, when is the right time to give up on a startup? How do you know when it's not working the way— considering it's not working the way you want to, when do you know to give up?

Yeah, I think, you know, people give up when they run out of ideas of what to do. I don't know if that's the right time or not, but like, that's what the practical, you know, the practical answer is. Like, people give up when they run out of ideas. And so that's probably when you will give up. Let me just ask you, Cora.

Yeah.

Oh no, keep going, keep going, Justin. No, I don't have any. That's my only—

Okay, well, that is a good insight. But just so with, you know, Twitch got born out of Justin.tv. When did you know that Twitch was— what was the moment when you knew that Twitch was gonna be big?

Yeah, so what we did, which I think was pretty good, was Internally, people were not convinced Twitch was ever going to be big because it was like, you know, this is 10 years ago, gaming, streaming, like, is that gonna be a thing? Obviously, gaming was really big on YouTube, so there was like some hint of that, but streaming, I don't know. So, 2 of the co-founders of our company were like, that's not gonna be a thing, we shouldn't work on it. And Emmett was really the one who was driving it internally. And what he, you know, what we did, which I think was really smart, was we agreed to set goals a priori. So, we were like, okay, if it grows X% a month, 15% a month for the first 12 months and 10% a month for the next 12 months, then we think it's on track to be a really big thing, you know, because it was going to be as big as gametrailers.com, which is like the biggest video game video website at the time, at 10 million MAU. And so after 6 months, we agreed to measure and we measured and we had like, well, we were measuring the whole time, but we like saw we had been beating those benchmarks every month. And that gave us the confidence to say like, oh, we should go all in on Twitch.

Okay. And when was the moment that you knew that? And, and just to, um, underscore that, at that moment, you guys, it was— it's easier, it's easier to say yes to go on Twitch than to say I'm going to kill Justin.tv. Yeah. Is that fair to say?

We hadn't killed Justin.tv. It was like funding the whole endeavor. Yeah. Yeah. So we didn't kill it for years.

But I will say that's the easiest way to pivot is just to say yes to something instead of having to say no to something that you're— Yeah.

So I had this I had this call with my friend, I was in person with my friend who had pivoted his startup many times. His name was Matt Sanchez. He started this company called Say Media. And we were like, how do you decide to pivot? And he was like, well, Justin.tv, the business was making millions of dollars a year. We were like— he was like, well, I wouldn't kill that business. I would just work on this other thing, just have a team work on this other thing internally and then set these milestones. He's the one who gave us the idea for setting these milestones. And if you hit the milestones, then go you know, work on this other thing. And I think that's really what gave us the confidence to go for it.

Okay. And with Atrium, when was the moment that you knew it was not going to take off?

Well, the problem is like, it was kind of the same thing. I ran out of ideas like this. It was, I mean, the TLDR, we were generating, it was a pretty, like, we were generating revenue, it was like generating like $15 million a year revenue. But the problem is the margins were terrible on it. And I was like, everything we tried to do to improve it was like not working. And like the churn was like immense. So it was like, this is not a scalable venture business. It's a business of some sort, but it's just like not one that I would invest my own venture dollars in. And so then it didn't feel like, you know, I felt like I was just kind of making everyone do this Chinese fire drill to like, you know, until we ran out of money to like figure it out, but like it wasn't working. So it was like, I don't know. And I didn't have any ideas on how to make it work anymore. So at that point, I was like, we should, we gotta, you know, we should do something different.

Okay. The next question is, how did you know it was the right time— oh, to sell Twitch. Oh, how did you know it was the right time to sell Twitch? Do you regret selling Twitch based on its current valuation? People now say it's worth $15 billion or more. What were your thoughts, Justin, on—

Yeah, well, I made a YouTube video about it. You can go check that out on my YouTube channel. But the, uh, you know, when, when I At the time, we had tried to sell some secondary shares for like $200 million valuation in January. And so, when we kind of went through this whole process of selling potentially to Google and then to Amazon, and we ended up selling it for like $970 million, and that seemed like an egregious amount at the time compared to what our internal valuation for it was. Of course, turns out that was a pretty good deal for them. But, at the end of the day, I have no regret about it. You know, it like the journey that I've been on, both the success and the failure, I feel like I've gotten so much about it. Like from that, those learnings personally that like I wouldn't have it any other way. And like I said, like, you know, even if you if you whether you have ten million dollars, a hundred million dollars, even start lower. Whether you have five hundred thousand dollars, ten million dollars, a hundred million dollars, or billions of dollars, like you can always have. Like, you can always feel richer, you can always feel poor, you can feel content, you can feel discontent. It has nothing to do with the amount of money you have in the bank.

There you go, gang. There you go. Um, we're gonna move to the next question, which is, what are your thoughts on evidence-based entrepreneurship versus intuitive entrepreneurship, i.e., ideation execution based on customer discovery, research, iteration, versus the oft-romanticized knowing that your idea has potential, even when others don't seem to agree?

Well, I think generally in the latter case, when you know your idea has potential and other people don't agree, hopefully it's because you're your own customer, right? Like, but sometimes it's because you just believe in that idea so much, but you're not really the customer and it's easy to confuse those 2 things. So I would, you know, if you can't get anyone to agree that it's a good idea, or to try it. Like, let's say you're like trying to build a prototype and you're like, you know, nobody will try it, then like, and you can't find anyone, then it's probably not a good idea. You know, like even Justin.tv, which sounded like a horrible idea, we got people to try it. We got like, people were like, oh, this is cool. Like, you know, some like weird internet people, you know, internet weirdos would try it, but like somebody wanted it. And like, you know, maybe all the investors thought it was stupid, which they did, but like some set of people thought it was like, a good idea, right? And so, you know, if you can't, you should be able to find some, you know, it could be a very small set of people, but you need to find some people who think it's a good idea.

I thought it was a good idea.

Yeah. And just a story for the class, right? Like, Ravi was the one who pushed Tim to make our, you know, Series A-1 investment, which basically saved the company. You know, if we hadn't gotten that money from Tim, we would have, you know, Tim Draper, we wouldn't have gotten our existing investors to come in with like a much bigger slug, I think. And Kind of give them confidence. So you are indirectly responsible for Twitch existing, I think, in some way.

I'm honored to be the catalyst. That was just the catalyst. But yeah, thank you. Um, next question, Justin, is how would you say Justin.tv evolved to become Twitch.tv? And what was the process of changing— what was the process of changing features like? Were you— were there features that changed that you really had enjoyed, or others that you were added that were added that you disagreed with?

I mean, I think the process, like with Justin.tv, the problem was like we didn't talk to our customers very much. And then Emmett was like, hey, we need to talk to our customers. They're the streamers, the people creating content, and we're gonna figure out what they want, which was kind of obvious in retrospect that we should do. But like, it was very innovative for us to do at the time because before that we had just built all the features that we thought we wanted and we were like not building anything that actually like anyone used. And so, with Twitch, that was the method and we just— at first, it was just a part of Justin.tv's site. It was just the gaming category, but we'd build gaming-specific features. And a lot of them internally were met with skepticism, but they were important, right? One of them was having a partner program where we paid people for their streams. Internally, we're like, well, we're barely making money ourselves. How can we afford to pay people any meaningful amount. It turns out, like, for a lot of these gaming streamers, they didn't need to make that much for it to be meaningful at first. And so, you know, by talking to our customers, we really learned what they wanted and started building those things. And, you know, yeah, there was disagreement, but at the end of the day, one of the things I think we did really well was let Emmett be the product person for Twitch. And he, you know, he figured it out and we kind of deferred to him.

Next question. As you develop, brainstorm new ideas, how do you know if it's worth pursuing? What do you do to determine if the product has product-market fit?

Well, at the brainstorming side, you probably don't know if it has product-market fit or not. So it's really just an idea, right? You really have to like have some version of the product out there to like really know if people really want it, right? Because people will say, oh, that's a cool idea, or they'll say like, no, I don't care. But you don't really know until you like have it out there, right? And so I think that like, you know, for me, it's a lot of it is exploring, do I like this? Like, what do we think about this idea? Talking it through with smart people, you know, testing it, talking to potential customers and seeing what they say, and then prototyping something and trying to get it out there and iterating, you know, in public.

Terrific. Thanks, Justin. Next question. What is your advice for fostering and maintaining meaningful relationships?

Nice. I love that question. I love that question. So for me, you know, I spent my whole life wanting like meaningful, deep relationships with people. You know, when I was a kid, I felt like I was an outsider, right? And so as an adult, I was like, if I just become successful, then it will attract people to me. And to some extent that's true. But, you know, meaning that people want, you know, wanted to know me or talk to me, like when I was, you know, after becoming successful. successful, they'd invite me to speak at their technology entrepreneurship class or whatever. But at the other end of it, they mostly want something from you, which is a little different of a relationship. Not bad necessarily, but different. And what I learned more recently is like, in the last couple years is like, oh, I could just have what I wanted, which is deep meaningful connections with people all along if I just am curious about people. Like, if I view people through the lens of curiosity, if I just like talk to them about instead of just the world of ideas or what startups they're investing in or building or whatever, if I'm just like curious about who they are as people and view them as someone I can learn from. And, you know, like, I mean, it's kind of a lame story, but I started doing that and then, you know, my relationships got way better, right? Like, so I guess my advice for that is You know, it's all about, uh, it's all about developing a genuine curiosity for the people around you. And you know what's interesting is you can learn something from anyone. Like, I, you know, from like the person who's driving you around in an Uber, or like, you know, your barista at a coffee shop, or whatever. Like, there's something to learn from anybody if you just listen, you know? And so I like, ever since I started adopting that attitude, I like feel like my relationships have become just much more meaningful. The other thing I would say is I've invested in just thinking about who are the type of people I want to be more like and surrounding myself with those kind of people. Everybody I want to spend time with is somebody where some aspect of their behavior is something that I want to model in my own life. And I feel like that has improved my relationship a lot.

And Justin, you are an intrinsically curious soul to begin with because what I'm curious about is the other lesson also that you've allowed yourself to lean into being who you really are, and you know who you really are right now, and you're allowing that out in an unfettered way.

Yeah, I think that's probably a good lesson. Yeah,

I think

I've always done that in some way, but I think I really have embraced it, probably turned it up to, you know, the maximum level now.

Yeah, I mean, again, I think Justin can be very cavalier, but I think he's one of the most curious souls and real students of business that, um, that I know, and he does a real service even though It may be belied by all of his actions, but I think it's— I think he's very curious. I say that just because the lesson is to do what is you. Justin is curious, and he's— and that's, I think, what fuels him. So, um, but I don't want to interject. Um, next question: what do you think is the value for STEM skills/knowledge in starting up? What does someone with a non-STEM background need to keep in mind in terms of navigating a tech-centric startup landscape?

Well, I mean, like, so obviously technology, that like, basically, tech is the innovation that's powered a lot of the like Silicon Valley startups, right? A lot of like the Silicon Valley ecosystem is like connecting things with the internet and like, you know, enabling new business models via the internet and like websites and mobile apps and, you know, now cryptocurrencies or whatever, right? So, you know, that's like, obviously, if you have the skills to build that stuff, like that is kind of like a core foundational thing for any technology product. And obviously, there are other startups that have sat on top of innovations that have happened in technology, like the whole D2C revolution, like all these people selling Allbirds or whatever, that's enabled because people have been able to market in a different way on the internet, right, through Facebook or whatever. And so, you don't have to necessarily have just a STEM-only You know, there's like lots of opportunities for entrepreneurship that don't involve like learning how to program. But if you do know how to program, it's like a very useful skill for you to, you know, start a company that's in the technology space. Actually, I think it's useful in general to like, you know, even if you're starting a company not in the technology space, because programming gives you a framework for how to get leverage on your time, right? By building programs that do stuff. So, you know, I think it's good. You should learn it. If you don't, but if you don't want to and you don't, or you can't, you know, there's lots of other skills that are necessary in startups. Like, I don't program things anymore. Like, what I'm good at is I'm a great storyteller. I'm great at fundraising and recruiting and, you know, stuff like that. And those are things that are necessary in startups. So, like, figure out what is a genuine thing that you are great at that you love to do. And, you know, there's probably a place for that in startups. Like, I mean, even art, right? Like someone now, like with everybody's making NFTs, right? Like, and there's all these like NFT communities that are basically startups or, you know, startup crypto projects. And like, that's very fueled by the art in it, right? So like there's something for everybody that's in the world of startups and technology.

We might have time for only one more question and there's 2 that are tied. So I'm gonna exercise my prerogative. I'll ask the other one if we have time to, but the question is, Do you think if you had started with your current self, no compare— that is, no comparisons to others, you would still get to where you are now? Isn't ambition and comparison the driver of success?

I think ambition and comparison is a driver of success. Um, I also think curiosity and joy can be a driver, right? Like, I'm still doing things that I think are gonna be successful and Probably economically successful, I hope. But I'm not doing them because I'm like, oh, I'm gonna make as much money as X, or I'm gonna like, you know, I've got to buy Y, or like, I'll feel this accomplished. It's more like because it's curious, you know, it's like I'm interested in seeing what the world's like when these things exist. And it's something that I like to work on. It's— and it's a creative pursuit for me. So, I actually think I would have been more successful if I had been more comfortable with myself and with what I was good at and not always reaching for something else. And my direct example is with Twitch. Emmett was running the product. He was really the product visionary and really the driver behind Twitch. So for the last 10 years or whatever, I've just been credit claiming Emmett's success, really. Emmett gets all the credit. But I end up starting another company and kind of moving to like just be on the board of Twitch after a couple years. And what I should have probably done from an EV perspective, just like to maximize, if I was interested in maximizing outcome, was like, I should have probably just stuck around and helped him raise money because I was really good at raising money and he was like, hated it. And consequently, because it was hard to raise money, that was one of the factors in selling. So, you know, it could have been the case that like maybe I just it let my ego go. And I was like, oh, you know, it's okay if I'm not the CEO of this company, it's okay if I'm like, have a job that's less important or seemingly less important than my friend who's my co-founder. And I just like, you know, work for whatever, a month or 2 months or 3 months a year and raise money and then like, I don't know, hang around the company or sit on the beach or anything. And like, that might have been like, made me much more successful, you know, at the end of the day. But instead, I was very ego-driven. I was like, oh, I gotta like be the man. I need to be number And so then I was like driven to do something that ultimately, you know, was not that successful. But it's all good. Like, that's a learning, you know.

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