Twitch founder who sold for $970 million chats with a guy with $970 in his bank account

all right welcome to another video today we have justin khan as a guest so justin khan is an entrepreneur investor and recently a content creator he founded multiple startups like kiko socialcam atrium but most of you know him as the co-founder of twitch which got acquired by amazon for 970 million dollars as an investor he was a partner at y combinator investing and mentoring new startups in the valley today he has a fund called goat capital with robin chan oh and by the way let me know if you want a new partner for your fun i don't want to flaunt my wealth but i have about 20 large already on a joma capital so all right we'll take it really okay great he recently started a tick tock and a youtube channel that is doing extremely well inspiring people to start their journey as founder so welcome justin khan thanks for coming doma welcome bye welcome back you're inviting me but thank you thank you for having me awesome great so i just first wanted to ask you like you know what what's up with the the youtube channel you know for a guy who can be working on anything like why why youtube yeah so i guess it's specifically because i get to be working on anything that i love youtube it's been really fun for me to flex my content creation muscles and try to create my own brand of edutainment i'm loving it and having a lot of fun with it nice that's awesome so like what's your what's your main goal with the youtube channel when people watch your channel what do you want them to get out of it i love just teaching people things so some of the things that i'm most proud of in my career is just the times when i've been able to help someone out give them some advice whatever it is and that's what i want to do at scale through my youtube i had someone come up to me at conference a year ago maybe a year and a half ago before the pandemic and he gave me a hug and he was just like you know justin you talked about seeing a therapist and now i'm seeing a therapist's founder at a conference and so it's just moments like that that have really made me feel like i'm contributing to the world in some small way and just trying to do more of that yeah that's really that's really nice um when did you start uh seeing a therapist is it after twitch or before twitch acquisition it's kind of before so i was working on this other company i was incubating uh those i was creating called exec and it wasn't going really well and i just was super depressed about it out of desperation i went to see a therapist and i was just like what's wrong with me why can't i why can't i do anything why am i not motivated to do anything the company wasn't doing well and i had tied my ego up in the company you know so i told all my friends i told our investors my employees this is going to be the biggest thing ever and i'm i really have wrapped my identity up as a being a successful founder and so when the company was not successful that's that really was a blow to me and i spent all of my time instead of being in the present in this present moment i spent all my time in the past thinking oh i should have started a different company i should never have started this company i should have done something different or i was spending time in my future like how am i going to talk to my investors about how this isn't working out or you know i was just i was just always caught in in ruminating about the future or or feeling sorry for myself about the past it was just easy to forget the great you know the the what was good about my circumstances and just be caught into this negative feedback loop and so for me it's like yeah i was had the successful other company that my friend was running but then this company that i really cared about today wasn't working and so it was easy for me to get to forget about that other side of things so i actually brought you here to because i want to quiz you on twitch all right i want to know how much the twitch co-founder actually knows about twitch culture so i'm going to ask you a series of questions throughout this interview and if you get more than half of them right you'll get a prize and then each time you get one wrong i get to pitch you a startup how's that okay all right all right this is gonna be embarrassing no i think i think you'll do pretty well i think you do pretty well all right so i even prepared a powerpoint for this oh yeah so i actually made a whole presentation on our merger but we can i like it um okay so first question what does poggers mean poggers is like oh it's like when you're excited about something right yeah yeah yeah excellent oh okay i think that's really good yeah it's when you're excited about something like this poggers yeah yeah nice congrats all right that was an easy one we'll we'll do something a little bit more difficult what is that the name of this emote kappa i know that one because that guy used to work for me oh really yeah so so what happened is funny story josh this who is this guy uh was a programmer he was like a young guy who's working at twitch as a programmer and in the early days before we've been pivoted to twitch and we used to put all the founders and early employees in the chat as emotes so if you type in jcon style right now into twitch my face will pop up from 12 years ago or you know 15 years ago or whatever it was um but we stopped doing that after we hit like eight employees right because it was just too many emotes and then eventually josh took over the chat code and he saw this code base and he just added himself most of the you know hot keys or like that the text that people would that were was representative of each of us was like much longer you know but he he made his kappa because that was like his nickname it's very short and i think because it was short people started using it a lot and so that's how it became popular all right so the next question is what does no cap mean i have a feeling you won't get this one well i mean no cap in other context means like i'm not lying but like because i assume is that what it means on twitch yeah yeah that's what it means okay well i guess you got that too oh yeah for some reason i i thought you would get these wrong so i could pitch you startups but i guess not you can pitch me to start up anyway it's okay all right speaking of like startups let's go back to startup questions um yeah you when you talked about exec uh you then actually mentioned what exec was about was an errand running service it was like a live air running service and you could just it's kind of like uber meets taskrabbit you just put in whatever you want into this text box and then we would try to deliver to you but eventually that idea didn't really work and so we turned it into something that was more like a cleaning service like an on-demand cleaning service which was a terrible business well they were like during the time when we were working on exec everybody was all these venture capital you know funded companies were scaling these businesses with extremely low margins that they were giving basically giving away money to users if you were going to start a company today i wouldn't start a cleaning company yeah i get i would start something like twitch i think you know if i had to choose twitch if yeah so why did you think uh twitch succeeded then like when you worked there yeah you know in the beginning well i think what really worked is my co-founder emmett identified that gamers were what we wanted to focus on and kevin lynn who is uh our ceo they went to gamers and asked them like what can we do to make you stream on twitch what can we do to make your experience better and so they spent a lot of time doing that and just really creating that tight feedback cycle with the customers and talking to the customers was huge that's what made them um that was what made them come and stick and really feel like they were listened to you know your customers want to be loved and they want to feel like you care about them and so if you listen to them that's a really great way to show you that you care i'm guessing that you guys had like an exponential growth right because it's such a good product it started it started multiplying in users it grew really quickly once we pivoted from justin tv to twitch uh justin d was our first company that was kind of like this live streaming company uh for anything and we turned it into twitch you know as soon as we started working on twitch it kind of grew and grew and grew very consistently but it wasn't exponential you know it was it was kind of it was with fits and starts you know it would like grow some and then would stop and grow and because we were very dependent on live events some months where there would be like really big live events it could be really big and then other months it might not be as big so when you have these huge big events did you ever run into like scalability issues infrastructure wise or people-wise i mean anybody who's knows who's been on twitch knows that we ran into a lot of scalability issues so i'm not gonna lie we did a lot with a small team though we built this uh you know data set data centers and like streaming uh points of presence like all over the world 16 locations with a team of like less than four on the network engineering side so we we scaled quite a bit but you know it was still there was still some occasional downtime so when you started um twitch or justin tv you said that um you weren't really a great programmer right yeah i was not a good programmer when we started justin tv so what but i learned to be a decent one i was i'm a really good catalyzer of people i'm really good at getting people excited about an idea and getting together and executing on that idea how how did you get that skill do you think it was just um you were born with it you know i've i guess i've always i've always been excited about new ideas and i can't help but evangelize them and so i think that's been a big part of it to be honest so your weakest asset like would you say programming was your weakest asset compared to the other co-founders no no no my my well i was much worse as a programmer than the other co-founders for sure but i think my weakest you know skill that i probably would have benefited me to be good at was on the management side you know i was a pretty weak manager in the in the beginning because i i didn't have any experience we started the company before we had ever really had a job in the real world so what are some tips and tricks to becoming a better manager what have you learned okay the basics right you gotta talk to that your team members regularly you have to regularly schedule one-on-ones like that took me years to figure out and then it's like you need to write down feedback and tell people feedback and ask for feedback right like it's like people are scared to get feedback i was so scared to give people feedback because i thought they'd be offended they'd like run away they quit their job and so for me that like just the realizing feedback's a gift and i need to invest in in giving people feedback was a was a big part of it those seem like really basic things but you know if you're a new manager they're like you know they were those are those are gems uh one of the biggest things the books that was really instrumental for me is this book called high output management by andy grove and anybody who has been in silicon valley long enough has been you know affected by the lessons of it because it's kind of a bible here in silicon valley but it's a great handbook for any new manager so i was wondering if you have to tell my viewers like a few tips and like how to start a startup or just the way to start a startup like what tip would you give them well the first thing is just get started you know like a lot of people have it in their own mind they're like oh i can't do this because it's too hard i don't know how to do it i like i don't know where to start like the first step is the hardest you know if you're building some sort of app or website like anybody can learn the skills to do that now you know it's very accessible and so you don't have to be a genius programmer to do it you can just get started like the way i taught myself to build my first website is i was just googling tutorials on building websites online you know and so i think getting started is the first step and the second thing i'd say is like work on something that you care about you know i think it's so important to work on something where you would work on it even if you weren't getting paid you know because that's what's going to that passion and it's going to what's going to drive you when things are tough and it's going to make you stick with it and so i think a lot of people choose what to work on based on what's going to make the most money or because you know they're very mercenary about it but i think it's so important to work on something you actually give a about when do you get in the zone like what what's what's passion for you yeah so i mean when i'm making content i think for me i'm often in the zone and that's why i like it so much you know i love to just brainstorm ideas and write and then film like that's what i like doing so to me that's like it's like a hobby and i'm not getting paid because my youtube channel only has you know 20 000 subscribers or whatever but uh you know maybe one day i will but it doesn't matter to me and i think that's why i like it so much i think by the time i release this video it might be like a hundred thousand i think all right my youtube video i'll re-record that my youtube channel only has 500 000 subscribers so i'm not getting paid but you know maybe one day i will i'm pretty sure you get paid at 500 000 subscribers but yeah all right let's take a break and we'll come back with more quizzes yeah so these breaks are actually perfect for me to put ad breaks so that's actually for me oh i actually have a a funny thing i forgot to ask uh yeah so before we go to the quizzes um i heard that during your senior year at yale you posed for a charity calendar you created and like is that is that you oh that is i'm very proud i'm proud of it that that one's cut out there's like you know the original has i'm in like a the kitchen of our uh kind of dorm room or dorm house the house that we lived in in college and uh yeah that's me it was it was it's uh it's very impressive thank you the story behind that is that at lunch just then when i was talking to him on the phone i was like okay i'm gonna make this calendar i started talking to some people who were like sitting next to me about it and i was convincing them to pose for it and i said you know to convince him i said i'll do something more ridiculous than whatever you do like if i'm asking you to like rub rose puzzles on yourself in the shower i'm gonna i'm gonna do something even more ridiculous and so they see that they agreed and i got friends of mine to like one of my friends was literally rubbing soap on him in the shower myself in the shower one was like lying on the pool table covered with rose petals and so i had to go you know i had to make good on my word and do something that was just even even more extreme that is crazy were you were you always this ripped i mean to be honest i looked a lot better than that last year but then i got into yeah i've been i was you know working out pretty heavily for the last couple years and then then i got into this accident and broke both my elbows so my workouts have gotten a little bit weaker yeah but you know i'll always have this photo right that's the important part that's pretty cool i mean i also have a more recent picture of you uh i think it's this one so this is what you look like now right this is that's my body yes that's very nice very nice but yeah okay let's go to the quizzes now um okay these ones are actually harder like you might you have to watch a video and stuff you just have to watch like five seconds of it and then you have to tell me what this streamer is talking about it's continuing to load you know for for someone who sold his company for 970 million you kind of have pretty slow internet slow my internet's fast it's my computer it's like a slow piece of which is weird because it's like a mac you know like top of the line macbook like maybe have too many tabs open uh that's weird there's a risk for reward right and even even the mages like orion definitely feels like right but lux players oh no no oh no no guys no no is this guy like cosplaying something he's like doing ninja stars [Music] kaido for people who who who understands it it makes complete sense i don't know what's going on [Laughter] oh my god he's no now he's shooting up an airport oh that's a different club i feel like that's a different club now all right so i'm guessing you have no idea finally no i have no idea right so he was um he was talking about league of legends yeah yeah he was talking about how this character is so cheap and doesn't take any skills playing it because it you just do fuchi okay i i dude i never played league oh really even though it was like one of our most popular games did you play any video games yeah i played hearthstone oh like a nerd intellectual game of course whatever anything and i played i used to play call of duty like 10 years ago oh okay fps nice nice do you know about the game valorent no nah it's it's the newest fps shooter it's it's made by riot games but anyways oh excellent i could pitch you a startup all right okay all right let's see which one should i choose let me look at my list okay this one's actually pretty good i think like it's a real one so it would be imdb or linkedin but for youtubers so youtubers can hire like editors videographers thumbnail designer you'll have a bunch of youtubers profile and you have a bunch of like editors profile and you could have like you know which editor has worked with which uh youtubers right away or you could click on a certain video that they've made and you could see who worked on it so you can hire people who are already in the industry or like the youtube industry that's interesting that's not a bad idea yeah i wonder why that hasn't existed for normal film and tv production oh it does it's called imdb but do people hire people off imdb um yeah that's a good question i'm not really in the industry but i think they do look at they have to they have to download oh sorry they have to pay for imdb pro to actually see the whole cast list and then i'm guessing that's what they do yeah that's actually not a bad idea i feel like it it could work the you know because there's so much this like like i said on the influencer economy side it's becoming the whole economy like youtube pays out what 10 billion dollars to creators every year or something yeah i mean it's a huge industry now so i don't know yeah i can see it not bad right not bad all right cool all right let's go to another question what is the name of this emote uh i don't know that's a pepe the frog right yeah oh you got that right like this one yeah to call it you have to write feels bad man which is why oh yes feels bad man it's sad all right one more startup okay let's see social media for youtubers with 100k subscribers plus anyone below it they can't join it so it's more exclusive oh wait so you can't join it oh dude it's cold that's cold but i have 500 000 subs now by the time this video is i really hope you don't joke works um that would be cool it's kind of like a uh like a exclusive social network like raya what's raya it's that like dating app that you have to be you know like get approved to join or whatever right i think i think there was another one called something else called it was called elites or something i don't remember what it was but i think i got approved yeah yeah nice nice work yeah you're in the elite now it was pretty easy i think they accepted like hundreds of thousands of people by then all right cool and then the last question is at this moment right now which category has the most viewers kind of assuming it's like just chatting or fortnight oh my god you got it right again well i think i don't know it was it was just chatting an hour ago let's let's see if it changed twitch oh yes twitch just chatting with 343 000 viewers yay hooray it would look less awkward with the editing so yeah all right i'm not i didn't fully embarrass myself no i don't think so i think you did really well to be honest you almost i think you almost got every question right except for like two anyway so the prize is you have won a 25 amazon gift card uh it says 50 here but it's just like a stock image but it's it's 25. i'm gonna buy myself some camera equipment yeah i don't think you can buy anything with 25 to be honest i could buy like uh uh what is it one of those quick release plates for my camera to fit on my tripod oh okay yeah i mean the expensive ones are a little bit like fit more expensive but yeah i guess you could buy a cheap one um oh you're shading me and my camera purchases yeah all right but yeah it's pretty crazy right it's like history repeats itself you know first amazon pays you 970 million and now they're paying you 25 it's crazy i love it yeah yeah actually you're paying them to pay me 25 yeah that's true that's true cool cool all right um yeah i think that's pretty much it well you know thanks for coming justin awesome yeah thanks for having me this is so much fun yeah i'm glad you enjoyed it and i'm glad you got the quizzes right yeah all right all right i didn't look terrible