#2 Twitch Co-Founder: Net Worth, Self Worth, Gratitude, and the Hedonic Treadmill
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Well, what happened was like we sold Twitch. I got everything I wanted and more than I ever thought I wanted, right? And then I found myself a month after we sold it thinking like, I'm just as unhappy as ever. Welcome to Divot, a community for people trying to make their mark on the world where each week I'm interviewing the best creatives in business, tech, sports, and entertainment to learn how they've made their mark. Go to divot.org to see all the episodes, suggest a speaker I should interview or a product we should look at.

You can watch all the episodes on X, Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts. - Give it. - This episode is brought to you by Google Cloud and Notion. - Today, we're in a warehouse just north of San Francisco in Santa Rosa, California.

I'm interviewing Justin Kahn, the co-founder of live streaming platform Twitch, which sold to Amazon for a billion dollars. He's also the co-founder of Goat Capital, a venture firm backing entrepreneurs, and he was part of the initial Y Combinator batch that included founders from Reddit and OpenAI. Justin's entrepreneurial spirit has propelled him through tons of startups and projects

He's known for his candid insights, talking about the highs and lows of business and life. And today, that's exactly what we're going to talk about. Finding fulfillment from life, from work, and personal development. I hope you enjoy it. Thanks for having me. This place is crazy. All right. Thanks for coming here. You have to get some B-roll of everything. What...

What are we sitting in front of? Tell us about the mothership. Yeah. Oh, yeah. This is our latest piece of Burning Man art from our camp, Titanic's End. We built an alien spaceship. I think you're probably just seeing the lower part of it, but it's an ellipsoid spaceship. And the lore behind it is it's the alien ship that came down and created Titanic's End, which is a 70-foot long synthwave iceberg with over...

200,000 LEDs on it. It has lasers that go 17 miles. It's got a 200,000 watt sound system on it. And so it's, you know, it's pretty big and pretty cool. At least I think so. That's amazing. Yeah, we try to, every year we bring it out to Burning Man and other events around the world. And, you know,

It's a labor of love. Yeah. How do you get this thing out of this room? I mean, it is, you can't, I don't, I mean, I've seen pictures of it. Yeah. It doesn't do it justice. It's like, it's, it looks big in here and it doesn't fit through the doors. It's 25 feet tall. Yeah. So we had to pick it up, which comes in two pieces, like the two halves of the ellipsoid broken right down the middle. Yeah. And, um,

It's very clever. Like our guy on our team, Brian, who's the engineer, designed it in a really amazing way where you can lift it up with forklifts and then just place it. You know, the top half just goes down on the bottom half and fits into these cones. Yeah. And then it just kind of like

It works. Does it work? I mean, you get it out into the desert and is it just, do you have like backups for backups for backups on if something happens or is it just like? Well, we had, you know, when you're at Burning Man, there's a lot of things that can happen. Some of them are tough for like vehicles and construction and stuff. So like,

When we were building it, it was really windy and then we had to wait until the wind died down and there was a dust storm that blew through. I should send you a picture of this, maybe put it over it. There's a lot of chaos and then the heat of the desert was overheating the battery actually. That was a problem. It's a fully electric vehicle. When you get it off the trailer, how far does it have to go?

Can you just like drop it or are you taking it? We just drive it around. Yeah, we drive it around all over. How fast? At like two miles an hour. Not fast. Yeah. Not fast. So you just ride it out in the desert? Yeah, we just ride around. It's also the front of house for Titanic's End, so it serves as the place where we control the lights and lasers. So when we do a party at night with TE, we just roll it up and then this is like the booth.

And it's got like multiple, once you go inside. Originally, you know, I thought, oh, maybe we're going to go inside of it. And you totally could. I was like, I thought, oh, it's small, but actually it's like multiple layers. And I mean, how many people are in here when it's? Maybe like 30 people. Inside? Yeah, there's probably like 20 or 30 people. There's usually like six people operating the Titanic's lights and lasers. And then we have guests, you know, people are hanging out in there.

I think you're kind of seen as like this with obviously with starting Twitch and a bunch of other software companies, you're seen as from the outside of kind of a software person. But if I think it's like if I've looked more into the things you've done or like you started with Justin.TV, which was actually like basically hardware. It was almost like a performance art also plus hardware. Yeah. Where I stream my life to the internet 24-7 for six months. You're like strapped on, right? Like in a backpack and...

- Yeah, that's right. We basically built this hardware camera. My co-founder Kyle kind of designed it. And I wore this camera that was streaming what I saw was like my point of view and audio to the internet. And that turned into this idea for,

let's create a platform for live video because turns out my show wasn't that interesting. I was kind of the software guy, a little bit of a nerd, like in front of my computer most of the time. And people would log on and they'd say like... It was like always on, right? It was always on. So we'd be working on our website and it'd be like me in front of the computer, right? And people would be like, hey, go out and entertain us. Go do something. But luckily they also gave us the feedback. Hey, how are you doing this? This is 2007, like streaming to the internet. There was no Instagram Live. You were the original Kai Sinat.

Yeah, exactly. So people wanted to do it. They said, I want to broadcast my own talk show. I want to broadcast my own, I'm doing a bike race, whatever it was. And so the light bulb went off and we said, hey, we should make a platform for anyone to broadcast anything they want. And that's what became Justin.TV, which eventually became Twitch. Yeah. I think I read about you guys like

the police, you know, chasing you at times or like, you know. Well, the people would call, swat us like all the time. They'd like call the cops on us and report crimes in our apartment, which was pretty mad. Oh, just to see what would happen. Yeah, just to see what would happen, you know. I can laugh about it. I mean, it's not cool. Sorry. But I could, no, no, I mean, it's funny in retrospect for me, but like, you know, it's a crime, you know, so don't do, I'm just saying don't do it if you're watching from home. But, yeah.

There were a lot of reasons why streaming my own life 24/7 wasn't good, but the primary reason was it just wasn't interesting 24/7. I didn't have the mindset of somebody who was a 24/7 entertainer or even six hours of continuous entertainment. The good part was we were engineers, we were builders, so we ended up building it as a platform for other people. Yeah. I read somewhere that you said that if your first startup had failed,

you probably wouldn't have become an entrepreneur. Yeah, well who knows what would have happened in the fullness of time. But like we had this company that was kind of like Google Calendar. Yeah.

This is before. This is before. This was in 2005. Right when I graduated from college, we were starting this company. We saw Gmail come out. We were like, someone should make the calendar version of Gmail. Turns out Google was going to be the one to make it. But we decided, let's make something like that. We ended up getting funded in the first batch of Y Combinator, which is an accelerator that's funded all sorts of companies. You're familiar, but for the audience, this is the company that's funded Reddit and Instacart, Coinbase, Dropbox, Airbnb, Amazon.

- You were in the first batch of the startups they funded. - Yeah, before they knew what they were doing, they just were funding a bunch of people. They decided to fund their companies in batches and they decided to admit us. My co-founder Emmett and I, so then that's how we got our start with startups. We ended up starting this company.

Didn't really get traction. Over the year that we were starting it, Google Calendar actually came out and destroyed what small traction we had. And then we ended up selling it on eBay as like kind of a last ditch effort, you know, YOLO to try to recoup our investors' money. And we made like a small amount of money. We sold it for $258,000.

And that was basically after we paid our investors back and gave them their share. It's kind of like Emmett and I had worked a year's job. Like you got a salary. We got a salary for a year, but we got a lump sum at the end of the year. But it felt like a lot. Yeah, it felt like a lot because I got like 70. Plus if you think it's worth, if it's going to be worth zero and you sell it for $250,000, you're like,

That is a lot. Yeah. I think we made 70 grand and I thought like, hey, that's pretty cool. And so we ended up deciding to start things not so bad and that's when we started Justin.TV. Yeah.

Yeah, are you the only person that's ever sold a business on eBay? Is that... I was inspired. To be fair, I was inspired by another company that had sold their business the previous year on eBay for like 100 grand. A tech company. I was like, 100 grand? That's amazing. Yeah. How do you see yourself? Do you see yourself as like... I think of myself as an entrepreneur first. To me...

I think what's different, like for the longest time I thought of myself as like just another guy. Like I'm just the same as, you know, I feel I'm very, I feel myself like I'm an everyman, you know? And then over time as it became more successful, maybe like people started to be like, dude, that's not true, you know? Yeah. And I've come to realize I think the thing that is different, you know, I'm kind of smart. I'm pretty hardworking. But like the thing that's really different about me is like,

I have like a skewed sense of risk. Like I think from other people, like I'm willing to take a lot of risk. Like, you know, we had, I had a pretty solid job lined up out of school. I like gave back with a bonus check to start a company and with no experience. Yeah. And in retrospect, I, you know, the no experience really showed up in the performance of that company in many different ways. But then also, you know, so I have a skewed sense of risk. The other thing is like,

I don't really second guess myself or see barriers to me doing things in the world. When I'm like, hey, we should build this giant art car. It's not like I don't know the first thing about that. It's like, hey, let me just find some people who do know something and let's get everyone together to build something cool. When it comes to building a company, I might not know anything about that space, but I'm like, I'd probably figure it out. For example, I quit drinking six years ago.

Why'd you do that? Well, I was a functional alcoholic through most of my life and career, and it finally was obviously not working for me. Happy to dive into that. But after enough time, I did my 10,000 hours of drinking. I like to say I probably... I try to calculate how many drinks I've drank in my life, and I think it's probably somewhere between 10,000 and 15,000. Wow. And I was like...

no, it doesn't work for me. I kind of did it every kind of way. So finally I was just like, I got to quit drinking. And so I started drinking six years ago. And when I quit, there wasn't really anything good to drink if you're not a drinker, if you're going out. And so a couple of years ago, I was like, there should be a non-alcoholic wine, like a sparkling wine, like a champagne. I love champagne. Or I did. And so I just was like, I want to create a non-alcoholic

champagne company and I don't know anything about beverage creating like the liquid you know how to do CPG product yeah but I was just talking about this idea I had and like what I thought the hole in the market was and at a

barbecue actually I met a friend of a friend who was a winemaker and So you were just kind of thinking about it. It was in the back of your head. Yeah, you hadn't you hadn't actually done anything I had done anything I had an idea and then you kind of intersected with this. Yeah, and I intersected with

My now co-founder, Woody, and we started a company that was like a non-alcoholic wine company. It's a real product now. We actually have multiple products. I should be drinking this. What is it? Yeah, well, our flagship product is called Woody's, which is a California wine, and it's distributed in- Non-alcoholic. Yeah, non-alcoholic. It's distributed in a bunch of different states. You can buy it in-

let's see where did we just go live with in in sf in the bay area you can buy it in buy right yeah um among a bunch of other shops it's really cool we also have a french import brand called la petite victoire uh the small victory and uh that's also in a bunch of places so it's live and off to the races now so now you're a non-alcoholic wine

- Expert? - Yeah, I don't know about expert. I always think of myself, I have the beginner's mindset. I never think of myself as an expert in anything actually. - Really? - Yeah, maybe in startups, like early stage startups particularly. - Yeah, you do, I mean you are an expert in that. That thing you do, but nothing else. - Nothing else, no. - Huh, that's really interesting. - Yeah. - Yeah, because I think I'd see you as an expert in a lot of things, but is that just like, why is it? - I think it's like a, it was a,

it was adaptive or like it was actually a trauma response personality trait. Maybe trauma response is the wrong word, but like when I was a kid, I felt like an outsider. Yeah. And so I was always, you know, I was kind of like I went to school with not that many Asians. You know, I grew up here. My dad's from here, but like I felt like I was kind of an outsider. I was kind of a nerd, you know, like Dungeons and Dragons and Magic Cards and stuff like that. So I always felt like an outsider. I wasn't looking at the cool kids from the outside. And so that

Made me I think I've always had that self conception as an outsider and so when I even when I'm like in an industry Like I was saying maybe ten years ago. I was telling like some friends of mine like I really feel like an outsider in Silicon Valley They're like dude, you're like work at Y Combinator and sold twitch like what are you talking about? You know like all these people who are like the successful people in Silicon Valley and I was like, I guess that's true That's like not really true anymore. But like that's how I've always that's how I see myself, you know And then I think it helps me

With that, keeping that beginner's mind, which I think is a healthy way to live, is to think, if you think you don't know anything, you're more open to asking questions and being wrong about your assumptions and learning from the world around you. When you think you know everything, then you're not learning anymore. I could just see you walking into a room

or talking to this person that knew something about making wine and being like, just asking him a hundred questions, whether they're good or bad questions, like it doesn't matter, like you don't care. You're just like, I just want to learn. And that then leading to all sorts of new things that change your mindset. I think that's right. I'm always curious about the intersection of

business and technology and marketing and economics and psychology and that's kind of morphed into this career in entrepreneurship where you know when you're building a new product you're thinking about all those things and like how is it gonna intersect with the world and sometimes you're right you have formal hypothesis sometimes you're right sometimes you're not right yeah yeah how do you think about taking risk and doing new things um i think i'm just willing to

work on something that like may that's like completely new and may not materialize into a market or durable product or anything you know yeah so like

Just projects different project, you know, like the non out, you know, this non-alcoholic wine space I've not alcoholic drinks is actually exploding like yeah, I believe because people are drinking a lot less Yeah, but when I kind of started I was like that wasn't necessarily happening Yeah, and we started working on the product anyways, and so we were like it was more of just like hey I want to just follow my curiosity and see what happens and I'm willing to like put money into this thing and like just you know, like

YOLO a million dollars on like let's see if there's a market here I don't know like yeah I mean but you've had so much success like it's I think some people would say like everything you need like well if it's not successful then does that put some sort of

Does that mean something about you or about the work you've done? I don't think you see it that way, but I think a lot of people would see it that way. - Yeah, so like a lot of cultures, for example, I mean, the US is on one place in the risk curve, but there's other places like in, I don't know, Japan or in Asia, right, where if you're unsuccessful as an entrepreneur, it's actually stigmatizing to you. Well, the US is probably more forgiving of failed entrepreneurs. - Especially the West Coast. - Yeah, especially the West Coast, but I'm on one end where I like,

I don't really feel like it reflects on me at all if something doesn't work. Why is that? Well, to me, it's like shots on goal. You only need one Twitch every 10 years to be in chips for the rest of it. So for me, if I start a bunch of different businesses and some succeed and some don't work, as long as I'm putting my best effort in and I think it's a good idea, how do you know what's going to work beforehand? You can't unless you're taking no risk. All the things I've ever worked on, I've worked on it

my full heart, like 100%. And yet so many of them haven't worked. And then a few of them did work. It's like, what's the difference? It's like, well, it wasn't how hard I worked. It wasn't my effort that I put in. So it sort of resonated with what you're saying of like, just come up with an idea,

Don't be worried about what happens to it. If you're passionate about it, be creative about it. If it works, it works. And maybe it'll take 10 years for the next thing to work, but eventually something will hit. Yeah, exactly. You have to take risks. If you want to be successful at anything, you have to do something that people haven't done before. And that's implicitly a risk. That's true in any...

anything, right? Like even in music or something, like you're making, if you're making music, if you just make music that people have made before, that is not going to differentiate you. You're never going to like build an audience and you're never going to get ahead of the pack, you know? Yeah. Yeah. I think Rick Rubin or somebody said like, you've got to, you build things that you're excited about and that you like and love, and then maybe people will come with you. Maybe they won't, but maybe they will. Maybe they will. Maybe they won't. You never know.

How do you think about people and building the right kind of core group around you? Well, I always just try to work with people where I'm inspired by something about them, where they fill a gap with me. I'm learning from them. They fill a gap in my own skills. And so it's always been whoever's been around.

Sometimes that's worked really well. Sometimes it hasn't to be honest, but like most of the time it's been really positive and all of the time I've learned from people around me and so, you know, luckily I've been in some like really great social networks where I've had a lot of opportunities to work with really incredible smart people and Yeah, it's been it's been really that's been a great joy of my life, you know, like people see me but I'm not I'm not the one who like

Builds any of it, you know, I'm an engineer by background in in twitch or Justin TV I broke some of the early code or whatever but like at the end of the day mostly It was built with the people around me and by the people around me. Yeah, I Had a birthday party once I assembled a bunch of like my favorite people in the world and a lot of them I'd worked with and they'd been my collaborators and partners and I said like, you know the people I've worked with all of you have carried my back my dreams on your backs and

And like that has been the great joy of my life is to work with people who are super talented and to build like breathe life into some amazing projects. And I could never have done it by myself. Yeah. What would you do if you were Justin Kahn just coming out of college, like don't know anybody, like where would you start trying to build a sort of great group around you?

If you don't know anyone, you know, you don't have that social network, well, then you just got to go out and meet people. You know, when I started my first company, I started with a friend from college, right? Yeah. Actually, we were friends for a lot much longer than that, but we went to college together. And so Emmett and I had grown up together, but we just, you know, we were friends during college. We kind of reconnected actually. And then

He was around, turns out he was super smart, but at the time he didn't know any, he wasn't a great web engineer, web application engineer at the time.

figure it out together. And we're both pretty incompetent, to be honest, in lots of ways. And so we learned together. We were like evenly matched and like we're just starting out. Same age, same place of life. Exactly. Yeah. Same interests. Yeah. The things that we had going for us were number one, the ability to take risk. Yeah. Because we're young and we had like very low burn. We're probably paying ourselves like $800 a month. And then we picked a space to work on.

That was like a growth space, the tech industry. Did you do some full analysis on that or did you just... No, we just were into it. So in retrospect, it turned out that was a good idea. Yeah. How did you end up... You talk about how you ended up selling Twitch. It was like you... Eventually, Amazon bought it, but you... I think Google looked at it. Yahoo looked at it. Yeah, I made a YouTube video of this. So you can get the kind of really in-depth story on YouTube. But like...

I started off as us at the beginning of the year in 2014, like I was like actually trying to sell some equity in the secondary market, like to get some liquidity. Like we didn't really have very much liquidity at the time. We'd spun off and sold like a small company called Social Cam. But we were like, hey, how do we make some money out of this? And we ended up trying to figure out how to like sell. We're trying to sell secondary equity, but nobody wanted to buy it at a $200 million valuation.

Then a couple months later, we were trying to do this partnership with Google where they would link, if a YouTuber was also on Twitch, they would link to them from their channel to their Twitch stream. Just like a Twitch button on there. Yeah, exactly, when they were live on Twitch. And then they were like, well, why don't we just, maybe we could work together more deeply. And then they wanted to buy us and they kept...

offering us more and more money over time. They were like bidding against themselves. - As in they gave you an offer and you just said no thanks. - Yeah, we said no and then they came back. The first offer was like 150 million or something plus $25 million in retention. And we're like, "No, it's way too low." And they just kept going up and up and up. And eventually it got to like 850 million plus 150 in retention. So like right around a bonus, I'm sorry, bill, right around a billion. And then we actually said yes

But it turned out that they didn't think well they were like there was a debate on what would happen with the antitrust like yeah And so they own the whole that whole market. Yeah, so we said hey like you have to agree to a breakup fee like if the Department of Justice doesn't approve this deal like if basically if there's a Antitrust concern with this deal then you end up paying us money right and they were like no and

And they were also saying, well, we don't think there's antitrust risks. So we ended up walking off the deal. And then Yahoo came in briefly. They made us a big offer. We almost took it, or we did try to take it actually. And then they changed their mind at the last minute. And then finally Amazon showed up and we ended up consummating the deal with them. I mean, that's a lot of stress, pressure, no? Yeah, it was pretty stressful. You know, you think one moment you're like, I'm going to make a ton of money. And the next moment you're like,

Oh no, they went away. Yeah, it was a lot for six months. Six months? Yeah. Really, my co-founder, Emmett, was kind of dealing and deciding what to do because he was the CEO at the time. So it was probably the most stress on him to his credit. How do you navigate pressure? Before I had mostly unhealthy ways of dealing with pressure. Like what? Like drinking. That was like number one. Number two was like if I wasn't drinking, then I'd be like,

dissociating from my experience by watching hours and hours of TV, which is also unhealthy, but maybe doesn't have the physical effects of drinking yourself to oblivion. So ended up, that was like, luckily over time, probably after Resolve Twitch, to be honest, I learned some more healthy mechanisms of coping with my experience. You know, one big one, which helped me a lot actually was I had this therapist who

So they told me about mindfulness, kind of like not in those terms, but I was telling her I felt guilty about how one of the companies wasn't going very well. And I was like kind of paralyzed by that guilt. Yeah. And she was like, what does guilt feel like? And I was like, what are you talking about? It feels like guilt. That's a weird question. So she was like, no, what does it feel like in your body? And I'd never thought about how an emotion felt in the body before. So I was like, oh, it feels like.

kind of a tightness in my stomach and maybe like some energy in my chest and like a voice in my head that says like, you know, and like it was a combination of sensations. And then she was like, well, when you experience guilt, maybe next time, maybe just sit with it and just kind of focus on what it feels like. And I realized if I did that, then it would dissipate over time. You know, the emotions, emotional content of the body wasn't persistent if you just kind of sit with it and sit with the experience.

And so that was kind of the first healthy coping mechanism I think I ever developed. Beyond that, knowing like working out is really good for me. So if I feel some type of way, like some difficult emotion, like often working out is a great reset or just going on a walk or gratitude journaling.

So I have a lot of tools now. - What do you do for that? - Just every morning I write down the three things I'm grateful for. - You do that now, every morning? - Yeah, every morning I write down three things I'm grateful for. And I usually write down the affirmations of like a couple of affirmations every day. They're always the same. - Yeah. You don't have to share them if you don't want to. - I can share them. So they're, I say, I love and am loved. You know, one thing I was always an outsider. So just under realizing like in reinforcing, wow, I am loved by the people around me. - Is that in question?

Not anymore. I think in the beginning it was. And then I'm calm. I'm calm whatever the outside world delivers to me. I'm calm. I can weather it. And then lastly, I say, whatever happens to me, whatever happens today, I accept it. You write it down. I type it, actually. On my phone, I just type the same thing every day. It's just like you wake up and...

before you shower everything? Is that like the first thing you do? Yeah, usually in the morning. Now with kids, it's not necessarily the first thing I do anymore. But you always do it? Yeah, every day. Yeah, that's really cool. I mean, it helps me a lot just to know like, yeah, I am calm. I am loved. And like, I am able to survive the circumstances and many difficult circumstances. You know, people look at someone like me, I'm now resources, I'm successful, you know, whatever. And they're like, oh, that guy doesn't

have any difficulties. But no matter who you are, the human brain is such that no matter who you are, you will experience things that are relatively difficult. Some days will be good, some days will be difficult. Anyone who has kids know that being rich doesn't solve your kids being difficult or having trouble. So in many ways it increases the difficulty, right? Yeah. I'm at the young age, so you probably haven't seen that yet. So for me, it's like,

Just reminding myself like I can weather whatever happens, you know, I was a CEO of a company and success, you know, not a success but didn't end up being successful. I like years after twitch I'm CEO of a company, you know, and I flipped over the handlebars on my bike biking an e-bike around the city and broke both my elbows, you know, that was like a very Not great thing to happen and like very painful in the moment and very painful physical therapy after and surgery and like, you know I've never it'll never be a hundred percent, but I survived it and

And I know I can survive anything. The anxiety feeling that you feel building a business, is that normal? Yeah, I think it's normal. I think it's normal. Everyone has anxiety. Anxiety is a normal part of the human experience. One of the other things I always tell myself is when I'm experiencing a difficult emotion, maybe it's anger, anxiety, sadness,

I always remind myself like these are evolved traits to help me, right? Like anger is the sign that something's wrong and you should do something about it. Sadness is a sign something's wrong in the past. Anxiety is a sign that maybe something will go wrong in the future. And your brain is, you have the rational brain that's like thinking thoughts, but you also have the emotional brain and that's an intelligence that's taking in all the signals from the world and

Spitting out emotions, you know, I almost think of it like AI right like you don't it's a black box how it's like coming up with these answers You know, but it's coming. It's it's spitting something out. And so like when anxiety appears in your consciousness That's a signal to you and it's actually there for your benefit, right humans didn't involve anxiety just randomly They evolved the anxiety as a way to help them survive in the world, right? because if you're anxious about something in the future you might take some steps to prepare against that and

And so when I remember, hey, like this is there to help me and like what can I learn from this anxiety? Maybe I do need to do something differently right now. And usually like it dissipates, right? Because you're sitting with it, analyzing it, accepting it, feeling it, and then letting it go. A lot of people don't let, including myself in the past, don't go through that whole process to let it go. Instead, they dissociate it from it, right? Which is like when I had that star engineer leave, I remember

10 years ago that happened to me. And I, instead of like processing it and letting it go and what can I learn from this? I drank a fifth of Jameson and just passed out of my like living room floor, you know? And so that's like, you know, there's different mechanisms of dealing with your experience, your emotional experience, some of which are very deeply unhealthy. Others are like healthy, but the emotional experience is there to serve you. So anxiety, it's like, it is a part of the human experience. And I think so much of like today's

and, you know, is about like,

it's almost like saying it's not, like it's a problem, like having anxiety. - Burying it or like-- - Yeah, it's like either dissociating from it or anxiety is like, I have like a mental health issue or, and yeah, maybe like there's some people who do have serious mental health issues, but, and it's good to acknowledge, hey, these are real experiences that people have, not like it doesn't make matter, it doesn't make sense, but like the thing to do is to recognize that's part of the human experience and to,

process your emotions, you know? Yeah. I, uh, I don't know if you've had this experience, but like where you wake up and just the, the, the world explodes on your business. And then by like 10 or 11 o'clock, you're just like, I got to get back in bed. Like I like, and it's like that physical, like my whole hard drive is, you know, shutting down and, and you know, and I think, I think what you're, what you're saying really resonates with me of just like, Hey, like physically, like your body is

is trying to help you process these things and help you figure out how to deal with it. And, you know, trying to create a system where like, if this is happening in my brain, or this is happening, you know, to me, in my heart, in my, you know, my body, like, hey, here are some ways that I can, you know, cope with that. Here's some ways that I can react to that, that can have a

that can help me deal with it in a positive way versus some destructive way or... Yeah, I think finding those positive things that you know work for you, like everyone's different, right? Finding the things that work for you, the strategies to cope with your experience that work for you was super healthy. Yeah. And I used to have days like that where I'd be crippled by my experience and then go back to bed at 10 or 11 a.m.,

But I don't have them anymore, to be honest. And I still have things that are tough for me relatively. Because of how you figure out how to cope with it. Exactly. I have strategies for me that I know work for me to be in the world and realize like I'm not the products I make. I'm not the companies I make. I'm not the money in my bank account. I'm not even reflective of my own health or the health of my family. You know, I'm just...

going through this experience. Things happen, but like none of this stuff really reflects on me. When the money hit from the Twitch acquisition, you said something like you didn't even think that much money could be in a bank account. Yeah. It was such a change in your life. But did you wake up? I had Bank of America at the time and I was like, I didn't even know Bank of America could hold this much money. It's crazy, bro. Yeah.

But did you wake up the next day happier? But that period of time was like a month. Yeah. It was really strong for a week. I was like, yeah, this is sick. And then after a month, I was kind of like, it was like my new baseline. You know, the hedonic treadmill is real, which is like... What is that? It's like you adjust to your circumstances. That's why you have so many crap, like rich people are pissed off about their PJs or, you know, bad service in a Michelin star restaurant or whatever, right? It's like...

you know, most people would look at them and be like, hey, they should never be mad. You know, like if you're a billionaire or something, you should never be mad. But like that's, I know a lot of billionaires and that's not the experience. It's not realistic. Yeah, because people adjust and adapt to their circumstances, good and bad. You know, it's the whole thing about when you win the lottery, you're just as happy after two years as somebody who got, you know, got paralyzed after two years, right? Yeah, there's an adjustment period, but like,

People just have new baselines of happiness and I've seen that happen both ways, right? Like for me I made a lot of money then I was just as happy as I ever was which was medium happy before Yeah, now I think I'm pretty high happiness But like before I was like medium right then I broke my elbow and I can never do a bunch of things I love like I used to work, you know bent breasts and Do pull-ups and clock rock climb and stuff like that. I can't do that anymore elbow surgery where like I have a replacement radio head and I

I was devastated in the moment, but it had an extreme sense of loss, but now I'm just as happy as ever. Actually happier, right? And so your external circumstances don't create lasting effects on your happiness. They create transitory effects.

I mean, it's just like something that's really evolved over time for you. Yeah, for sure. I used to be like a medium happy guy who was like mostly I thought you couldn't change how happy you were. You were just like whatever your genetic destiny was, was how it would be.

And I was just like, well, I'm kind of like kind of unhappy and kind of happy some of the time. And like that's it is what it is. Yeah. How do you balance the like the external like this is what the the world and, you know, people around you like expect versus like.

you just finding peace and happiness for yourself? Like, do you? I don't care what the world expects. Not at all? No, I only get like, I look to my own moral compass and my own values to decide like how I operate in the world. So for me, it's like, I do care about being a pro social human being, right? Like I care about doing good for others. I care about mentoring people around me. I care about giving back in the ways that I, that matter to me. I care about

contributing to society. I care about the products I create not being negative for people, or like scams or whatever.

And like that's all internally driven, right? It's not driven from an intrinsic values, right? It used to be like I used to really care about what people thought about me and that they would, you know, applaud me or that my products were successful enough that I could be wealthy and people would like want to be me, you know? Yeah.

I don't really care about that anymore. When did that change? Was there like a day or a moment that that changed? Well, what happened was like we sold Twitch. I got everything I wanted and more than I ever thought I wanted, right? And then I found myself a month after we sold it thinking like, I'm just as unhappy as ever. Which wasn't like deeply depressingly unhappy. It was just like medium. And so I tried to figure out what's going to make me happy. And I even started another company, raised a lot of money, tried to make that the thing. But I've realized over time like,

I had been living out my life to serve the needs of other people around me. I was trying to win their approval. I was making all these decisions in the world to get the approval of the outside world. And then I could be the source of my own approval in the world if I wanted to, and I could change how I was operating. So you buy a G-Wagon and happiness meter doesn't increase. It just kind of went up for a little bit, and then it went back down. Back to the baseline, yeah. Yeah.

And that happened with everything? There's nothing that created lasting happiness that was driven from the outside world. Everything that's created lasting happiness for me has been about my own mindset, figuring out how I want to spend my own time, and also who do I want to show up as in the world. It's ironic. Before I used to do things that were very self-centered. I think there's one bell curve of people, access of humanity, that I think about a lot. On one end of the bell curve,

it's people who put themselves in the center of the universe. And on the other end, it's people who put other people in the center of the universe. And being on either end of the bell curve is not that healthy, right? If you put yourself in the center of the universe, you're the narcissist. If you put other people in the center of the universe all the time, then you don't protect your own needs and you feel like you're stepped on and like disregarded, right?

And I'm naturally much more on the self-centered side. And I realized that. And I realized, so I consciously, maybe five years ago or so, tried to start doing things that would bring myself more into the center of the bell curve and put other people more often in the center of the universe. And by doing that, I started...

doing a lot more things for the people around me. How did you do that? What were the specific things you would do? I just try to show up in service of other people in different ways. So trying to mentor people around me. I coach some of my friends, for example, as a CEO coach or something like that. And it's not really for an economic reason. Some of them

Some of them pay me a marginal amount, some of them don't pay me. I don't... Yeah, you're just doing it because it's a good thing to do. Exactly. Helping other people. And having kids is a great way to do that. When you have kids, you know it's entirely for their benefit, hopefully. Otherwise, usually when it's for the parent's benefit, that's pretty unhealthy.

Having those experiences in my life really brought me more towards the center of the universe. And now, for the first time ever, I became proud of who I was in the world. And it's pretty cool to feel like, oh, wow, I'm proud to be me. I'm a good person. I'm a good friend to have. I'm a good father. I'm a good family member. I create some value in the world. And I mostly go around pretty stoked to be me now. And it wasn't because I sold Twitch. Yeah.

I mean, that's super interesting because sitting on the outside and the way I think that we, the sort of materialistic world that we're in, we're sort of taught that like, hey, you know,

it's almost like it's never enough. Like you've got to get more, you've got to get more, you've got to get more, and then you're going to be happy. And then like things will get to a good place for you. And to hear your story about having done that and having still basically have a hole in your heart, you know, at the end of that, that still needs to get filled. It's not filled by any of these material things. It's sort of contrary to a lot of what we hear and see every single day. And, um,

You know, and it's I mean, it's kind of cliche, but it's also true. Like some of the very best things like they can't be bought. And that's sort of what's beautiful about the human experience is that anybody anywhere, you know, can can do the things that you're talking about. They can wake up every day and have a good like be positive. They can wake up every day and be grateful for the things they have and not the things that they don't have. You know, and it's but it's really hard. It's really hard to get to that.

It's really hard to get to that place. And I think most people would think, oh, it's like once, you know, once as soon as I sell my company, like I'm going to get there. You know, and the truth is for almost everybody alive today, you are exceedingly better off than almost everybody who was alive in history, right? Like today, most people are not worried about

about food security and their physical security and like having the lights come on when they hit the light switch. And yeah, I mean, I acknowledge that there are people who are worried about that in the world, but you know, through most of human history, people were very, very concerned with those things. And like, so you are in an exceedingly good position and have something a lot to be grateful for, no matter, almost no matter who you are in the world right now.

But you're not. And why aren't you? I think part of it is you're marketed

that you shouldn't be by social media and the media in general around you is saying, "Oh, you should have more. You should want more. You should..." Even being in this interview with me, you're like, "Oh, that guy's cool spaceship behind him. If I had a spaceship, I'd finally be happy." I'd finally be happy. Exactly. So it's hard in the modern world to break out of that mindset. Yeah.

Do you meditate a lot? Talk to us about like, why do you meditate? Do you also pray? Do you just meditate? I think my micro meditations are more like what's resonating for me right now. Kind of like what I was saying where it's like really feeling my experience in certain moments, particularly around like emotional content. I do pray actually. Yeah. You find that helps? Yeah, it helps. Like I have a, I do have like a belief in a kind of universal power. I don't know the word.

I don't think that's like particularly any specific religion affiliation, but like, and I, you know, I do think that there's like a universal power that I'll return to, uh, that I has like, and I've been blessed, you know? Yeah. I heard Sassner speak one time and they said, you know, from space, there's no borders. You just see the camera with the effect is called, but there's this effect where like when you look down on the earth, you just sort of, you sort of realize like, wow, I'm just, I'm such, you know, uh,

Everything to me is really important and it's the most critical thing right now, but actually I'm part of something much larger and much bigger and basically all of it is out of my control and being grateful to be part of it and...

and having the experience and I think just recognizing the gratitude of that has been really powerful for me. - I think having, I've done five MEO DMT, which I think is Joe Rogan and Mike Tyson have talked about, like a lot of people talk about now. And it's like, for me it was that experience of like falling back into the sea of consciousness and realizing you're just such a small piece of the,

experience of the universe of experience. Yeah. I think we're about the same age. We're almost exactly the same age. I think we're still relatively young. We're not young. I don't know. I think of myself as young. Do you? Yeah. Where's the cutoff for being young?

Young is a state of mind. Okay, so you'd be 80 years old being young? Well, I think there's a lot of things I try to do to make myself stay young. I really try to push myself out of my comfort zone a lot. I think a lot of people who are our age and older or even younger than us physically, once you come into power in some way, whatever that is, your relative power, you stop making yourself uncomfortable. You create a bubble around yourself.

I try to break that down all the time by like doing things I've never done before. Like I try to do things that are uncomfortable. You know, I fast five days every year. Straight? You know, straight five days. Water fast? I drink coffee. Yeah. Because otherwise it's like really too bad. But like, yeah, water fast basically with coffee for five days. What does that do? Well, it's deeply uncomfortable, you know, but it's also, it's a spiritual reminder for me. It's like,

When you don't have food, everything that you thought was a problem, it's not a problem. Not having food is the problem. Just a reminder that everything you're concerned with is not as bad as you thought. But anyways, that's just an example. My point is there's a lot of other things that I think are pretty uncomfortable I try to stay doing. I think that's a way to stay young. And also, constantly I'm actually trying to hang out with people who are younger than me. Yeah.

get that like young energy you know yeah like like people right out of college or people i don't know like people are it's like a mix of different you know burning man camp for example there's a lot of people in their 20s and i'm like okay what's like what are people doing now like what are what have how have i aged out and like i don't understand what's going on anymore right do you feel like do you feel like your ideas now are as good as they were when you were

in college or right out of college? Do you feel like the things you come up with, the way that you come up with has changed? It's a little different. I mean, I think there are better businesses because I have a better idea of what a business is and what business models exist. I think they're less out there, less risky in some ways because

I'm not in it, that cutting edge sometimes. For example, there's all these AIs, bots on Twitter that are agents wreaking havoc. That's something that I would have been at the forefront of 20 years ago with Justin.TV.

what is going on here, you know? I'm trying to like study it, you know? And so I think that's an example of like, I don't know, maybe my, is that a thing? I don't know. Maybe it'll turn into a thing or something, right? But like, I'm not like at that cutting edge. You're not the cutting edge of AI spam bots? Exactly. So, you know.

I don't know. Where do you go to just like starting a business or do you even think about it like that? Do you? It's like people first. Usually it doesn't start with the specific idea. It's like I want to work in a space like let's say a crypto or you know non-alcohol wine or something like that and then I like trying to find partners like I like to work with other people so it's like I always want to start a business with partners and it's like

okay who are the right people who where they're really good at the things that i'm not good at and i'm good at the things they're not good at and then if i find someone then we kind of work together for a bit and like see if it's a good vibe i have a business partner robin we partner on almost all the businesses so like he he and i work together really well so like we'll like work with people and see if it's a a good vibe from our uh fund go capital and then

you know, we'll trial it and then if it's a good vibe, we'll start the company and fund it. I mean, what would you say your level of like

leaning in and excitement with like funding a business versus like running your own or you know building a project or something like how would you how would you write well I like to be more I like to be involved you know so for me it's like fun to like be part of the experience of building a company I don't want to run it I'm not CEO of any of these companies I'd like yeah I think I put in my time as CEO and realized I wasn't that good and so you know rather partner with someone to be the CEO um

Yeah, but I also love, I invest in a lot of businesses. I love investing in businesses. It's not quite the same itch for me as starting a company, but it's really meaningful to mentor people. One of the things I'm most proud of in the world, more than Twitch actually, or more than any one business, is there's probably 50 to 100 guys and girls in Silicon Valley who

are like, thank God for Justin. You know, like he helped me in some way. I was like the first investor in their company. I was their mentor. I was their boss. And they went on to start something. And, you know, that means a lot to me to know I gave back in some way. Yeah. It's probably like five or six years ago, I remember talking to you and I was kind of like, I think,

inside of this like this wheel that we've been speaking about and like the sort of expectations and all these sort of outside voices coming in. And I remember saying something to you like, like, you know, like, well, I don't I don't have I don't have this or I don't have that, you know, like I haven't I haven't accomplished enough to get this or get that. One of the things you said to me was, well, if and I was kind of like, well, you like you

You're at this place that I'm not. You should basically have peace. You sold your company for a billion dollars and I haven't. And then I think your response to me was like, well, if I base my self-worth on that, how do I feel about my friend who started Airbnb or who started this company that's worth 100x that? Are they 100x better person than me?

are they, should they be 100x happier than me? Like, I don't know. Like, I've thought about that a lot and it actually really helped me a lot because, yeah, if you just like, if you never, if it's never enough, if like what you are and what you have is never enough, then it's just,

It kind of just goes on for infinity and you just, I don't know. Yeah, exactly. There's always someone who's doing better than you. You know, I said, there's like, you know, you might be looking at me and be like, wow, that guy really made it. I'm looking at, you know, my friend who started whatever, Airbnb or Dropbox or Coinbase. These guys really made it. They're looking at Zuck and they're like, wow, that guy's like worth 300 bill or whatever. He's like, Dave, he really made it. And Zuck is probably looking at Elon. Elon, sure. Or Steve Jobs.

And to be like, wow, that guy really made it. And Steve Jobs is dead. So, you know, there's like, no matter who you are, there's someone else there that's above you. Yeah. Outside of family, like who's the human being that you most admire or you look to or are inspired by? I have a friend, this guy Bill Atkinson. He's one of the early employees at Apple. He's the inventor of the Mac. And he did a bunch of the early UX on it. You know, he's the reason why, for example,

The text used to be like white on black and then they inverted it to black on white as the default. I think he like created that. He invented HyperCard, which is kind of the precursor to the internet. And he's like one of the most peaceful and joyous people in his everyday moments.

that I've ever encountered when you're in their presence, you're like, this guy's like figured it out. It feels like a Bodhisattva who's come back to earth to like spread love, you know? And I, I just having that presence and in the world, it was like, wow, that's what I would want to get to one day. What's the hardest thing you think you've ever dealt with in your life? Um,

I went through a period of suicidal ideation. Really? Yeah, where I was like not happy with how I showed up in the world. I was showing up in the world and I was like, this is not, you know, it's kind of involuntary. It was like, this is not working, you know, and that was quite difficult for me. And, you know, when I went through and changed things about my life to show up in a way that I was proud of, then that really, that really changed it for me. This is like post some success or pre-success? This is after I sold Twitch. Yeah. So, you know.

Once again, like the external circumstances and your internal feelings are like not completely disconnected, but they're not. They're not 100% correlated. Yeah. How did you get out of that hole? Yeah, I think it was relying on myself in that. How do I, you know, I actually do find a lot of catharsis from talking things through with other people and I'm pretty open about my experience. So, you know, that part probably did help. But like the end of the day, it was more about myself and how do I, how do I show up in a way that I'm proud of? How do I,

work on things that are important and meaningful to me? How do I make myself happy every day through these basic practices? - You think those little things, I mean those little things like that can lead to having big change? - Absolutely. I think that's the small things that create the big things. I think about happiness as like you're trying to fill up a bucket, one drop at a time. Every day you just put in drops and then eventually you've got a full bucket.

It's not a light switch, right? It's not like, you know, I used to think of it as a light switch. Oh, if I just sell Twitch, then boom, I'll be happy to turn on the lights, you know? But they just go back off, right? Like it doesn't work like that. Yeah. You want to be really happy. You also, like, you don't want to be really sad. And it's like, you've got to kind of like,

You kind of got to move in the sphere of both of those things once in a while. That's part of being human. It's part of the experience we're in. Exactly. You're going to have sadness. No matter who you are, you're going to have sadness. Yeah. You're going to get old. Your life might be super rich and never have daily trauma, but like

The richest, I have a lot of friends who are super successful, right? Like in their goal, I've seen people, they go through normal human, like their family members get sick or things happen, right? And you are going to experience sadness. And it's not about dissociating from that or shoving it down. It's about accepting your experience, whatever it is. You're going to have sadness. You're going to have happiness. Consciousness is going to experience a whole range of things. And the best thing to do is accept it.

What accomplishment are you most proud of? Being a good father. I think I'm proud of how I show up as a father. I think I'm an active parent. And I think my kids will, I said, people ask me, they used to ask me, like, when my first kid was born, my first son was, they said, what would, you know, what do you want for your kid? And I remember 10 or 20 years ago, when I thought about having kids, I was like, I want them to be successful, driven, whatever. And today the answer is I want my kids

It's very simple. It's like I want them to be kind to themselves and others. And I wanted them to be the source of their own approval in the world. And I think, you know, that was five years ago and now my oldest kid is five and I feel like he's on the way. I don't know what's going to happen, but he's on the way to that. And I do think that like my wife and I had an active role in creating that for him. And that's what I'm most proud of. People often ask, like, do you want your kids to be entrepreneurs?

and i don't i think they'll make their own choice i'm like do you want your kids to go to war like no i mean do yeah dude if if you know if you want to go do something really hard if you're driven by it go do it but you know it's not you know certainly not pushing pushing anybody to go go start a business or yeah you know yeah they should find their own path um if if when you die you you meet god or some universal creator face to face what would you hope they say to you

I don't think it'll be a conversation like that. I think it's more like returning to the source energy. So it's more just going to be like a drop of conscious energy that falls back into the ocean of consciousness. And, you know, so I think it'll be like a simultaneous return to all of the knowledge and experiences of the universe. So I don't know if they'll say something specific, but if they did say something to me, I'd probably want them to say something like, I love you.

How will you ultimately measure your life? I think I used to be in how many experiences I had or how much I did. And now I think it's much more like who did I show up as? Do I feel like I was there for other people? Both people I'm close to and people I'm not as close to. One friend of mine said maybe two years ago that she told me,

Justin, you would do anything for anyone. And that really meant a lot to me to think my friends thought so highly of me, like that I would be of service. And yeah, that's I think what's really meaningful to me now. That's why I make these YouTube videos and stuff. I'm making videos on whatever, entrepreneurship or life or whatever. They're awesome. People like them, but they're not that big. It's like,

you know, each one gets hundreds of thousands of views. No, no, the big ones got hundreds of thousands, but there's some of them that get like a thousand views or a couple thousand views or whatever, right?

But I get so much, not so much, I get feedback from people that are like, wow, that like, I was helped me in some way. You know, someone was like, I remember someone I kind of knew socially, but not really. It was like, oh, I read your thing on like how to sell my company. And I used that to sell my company. And or someone else is like, I read, I had one entrepreneur who was like, I was going to quit my startup. But then I like read your, a bunch of stuff that you were doing to make yourself successful.

feel good in the world and then I started doing those things and then like repaired my relationship with my co-founder I was just like it's like happy now you know and that's someone I'd never met so just knowing I've done good in the world for the people around me that I'm on this planet with that's like uh most meaningful to me it's had a big impact on me I mean I've you know you you put a lot of this stuff out many years ago and and I've watched all of it and

I think it's the natural condition that we're in. There's so many things that I feel like outside influences trying to tell you where you should be and where you should go. And I think the thing that I learned most from you is just actually what you need is right here and you just need to be more thoughtful and sort of, I don't know, more empathetic to yourself and just...

Sort of trust that what's gonna happen is what's supposed to happen and I don't know I like it's uh, it's had a bit It's had a big impact on me. All right, what and finally like what what part of your success do you tribute to your hair? 100% this is my proudest accomplishment actually you you asked me what my proudest accomplishment was but usually when people ask that I'm saying it's my hair because you know for the longest time I had it short but and I was afraid to grow it long because I thought it would like look stupid and

it doesn't look stupid no it's awesome so you know does it stop growing or does it just keep going i cut it i need a haircut actually because what i learned you know guys don't know anything about long hair please teach me but like when you grow your hair long like actually how you cut it it turns out it falls differently i discovered my wife you know made me get a haircut like a couple years in and i was like oh it's actually good

And then another thing is like guys hair care people never learn about that, you know, like you have to Condition it you don't want to wash it all the time. Like this is a complicated, you know I actually think there could be a startup that focuses on long-haired guys because when they you know, most people form their health care their bodily care habits and

Young right? Yeah, like I use Old Spice deodorant or whatever. I've been doing that for like 20 something years. They got us in the 90s. Exactly. So but hair like if you grow your hair long that would be your first time that you actually have long hair and so that's an opportunity to like get in with a whole new set of products, you know. So I give that one for free to the audience. That's great. I mean if you want to co-found it with me, I think I... I think you're the right founder. You know you want people who like are

- Living the problem. - More the users of the product. Exactly, users of the product. But yeah. - Thanks man, appreciate you. Thank you. - Absolutely. - On next week's episode. - I came to America in 1992 with no plan. I didn't know why I came. I just went, I heard like it's land of opportunity. That's the only thing I knew. So I came here, didn't speak any English and I had only $700 cash. So that's the beginning of my journey in America.