Speaker 1: Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Speaker 1: Radio and t DC Media. But it's hard, and you know,
Speaker 1: it's hard, and companies fail and it's okay to fail.
Speaker 1: It was so weird and stressful and depressing honestly at times.
Speaker 1: Companies from all over the world and from different industries,
Speaker 1: some of which were unexpected, all reached out. I think
Speaker 1: now are our lives are just yes, fundamentally different. Now
Speaker 1: if you haven't caught on by now, we're talking to
Speaker 1: Kevin Lynn. We've interviewed a lot of influencers in front
Speaker 1: of the tech. Kevin is one of the few so
Speaker 1: far that we've had that basically created the tech. And
Speaker 1: I think that that's just as important because without you,
Speaker 1: there would be no doctor disrespect, there'd be no Ninja.
Speaker 1: I mean there'd be, but what would they be doing
Speaker 1: playing video games by themselves exactly. So, so we're really
Speaker 1: happy to have you here. Welcome, Welcome, So Kevin and Kevin,
Speaker 1: there's so much to talk about. Kevin actually is one
Speaker 1: of my husband's best friends, so I know a little
Speaker 1: about him. He enjoys Taco Bell thoroughly. Who actually KFC huge?
Speaker 1: Oh is it Popeye's I forgot forgot. I forgot is
Speaker 1: pretty good. Yeah, you're from Nolan's. Did I say that?
Speaker 1: We just say New Orleans? I don't know, Knowlins, Like
Speaker 1: a lot of people come and they're like, hey, we're
Speaker 1: in Nolins, and everyone just like we just say New Orleans. Well,
Speaker 1: when I visited Nolan's, the uber driver insisted on teaching
Speaker 1: me the proper way to say it, and he was like,
Speaker 1: it's Nolins And I was like, Nalins, but everyone else,
Speaker 1: you know, it's something for everybody there. So I kind
Speaker 1: of say it however, you like, I suppose. Yeah, New
Speaker 1: Orleans though, were supremely lazy Arleans. I like that. Actually,
Speaker 1: what an interesting place to grow up, by the way,
Speaker 1: definitely a strange place to grow up. How was that?
Speaker 1: I don't know. I I struggled to like fit in.
Speaker 1: I started smoking weed when I was fourteen, went to
Speaker 1: a lot of like just roamed around with like one
Speaker 1: or two friends. Didn't go to school. It just didn't
Speaker 1: like it. Still managed to get three days. They could
Speaker 1: have kicked me out, but somehow they didn't. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know, just roamed around a lot, lived in the suburbs.
Speaker 1: I mean, I grew up in Kenna, where such precious
Speaker 1: people as DJ Khalid hail from. Um. Like, I've never
Speaker 1: been to your town. Like, actually you have. If you've
Speaker 1: ever flown in in New Orleans, you've flown into the
Speaker 1: New Orleans International Airport, which is actually in Kenner, which
Speaker 1: makes Canada the gateway to the world. Um and uh
Speaker 1: so as the suburb, you know, suburbs and uh you
Speaker 1: went to school. There's like all boys Catholic school for
Speaker 1: high school, which which taught me a lot like this.
Speaker 1: My brother went through the same school and just like
Speaker 1: refused to go back to Louisiana for quite some time
Speaker 1: as a result of his experience there, but then ended
Speaker 1: up going to this boarding school up in Nakadish like
Speaker 1: northwestern Louisiana, like middle of nowhere where Steel Magnolias was filmed,
Speaker 1: beautiful little southern town. Um where basically all the people
Speaker 1: who just couldn't fit in where they were in Louisiana went.
Speaker 1: I was like a magnet school. So that was great.
Speaker 1: That was a lifesaver. But yeah, this is great. Music
Speaker 1: is great, foods great. People are actually super nice. People
Speaker 1: are very nice. They're actually Um, I was there for
Speaker 1: a movie junket and I remember thinking the one thing
Speaker 1: I was a little shocked by was during the middle
Speaker 1: of the day, just people drinking and smoking cigarettes. There's
Speaker 1: that's I think New Orleans honestly has a bit of
Speaker 1: a marketing problem, so there's a lot of people that
Speaker 1: go through every year. I think it's something like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, twelve million people flow through New Orleans every year,
Speaker 1: and it's this little bright spot in the South that's
Speaker 1: just very different from everywhere else. People know it from music,
Speaker 1: but people also associate just like super ratchet heavy drinking,
Speaker 1: what the bro culture on Bourbon Street um, but really, like, sincerely,
Speaker 1: there's something there for everybody. Like I started taking my
Speaker 1: friends to Marty Crawl the last few years and they're like,
Speaker 1: holy crap, Like we thought this was going to just
Speaker 1: be like a NonStop hangover fest with like, you know,
Speaker 1: a bunch of college kids, which is there. You can
Speaker 1: certainly go to that part of Marty Gral, but it's
Speaker 1: very family friendly. When I was a kid, my parents
Speaker 1: would take me to Marty Gral every single year. Is
Speaker 1: my favorite time of year. Schools out. They were teachers
Speaker 1: to schools out for them too, and we just go
Speaker 1: and just like park it at ten am, wait for
Speaker 1: the floats to come. My dabby drinking beer. We'd be
Speaker 1: eating like hot dogs. I'm catching beads and like random trinkets,
Speaker 1: and it was like, awesome. You go home with all
Speaker 1: this loot, you sort through it, you organize it. I
Speaker 1: guess I did that. It was do that. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like I prepared as if I was ever going to
Speaker 1: ride in a float one day. I had like tie
Speaker 1: them all together, like perfect, perfect dozens and so on.
Speaker 1: But it was really fun and you know, your your
Speaker 1: friends come out with you. You like my my parents, friends,
Speaker 1: families would would come out too, and it was a
Speaker 1: great time. Lots of music, lots of cool art. The
Speaker 1: floats are all designed. It takes them all year to
Speaker 1: do these things, and an army and it's like one
Speaker 1: of the biggest parties in the world. Takes over an
Speaker 1: entire city for really about a month. You know, a
Speaker 1: lot of people associated with the last couple of days
Speaker 1: when people go from like Friday till that Tuesday, but
Speaker 1: it's really going on in the city the whole time.
Speaker 1: But that happens all the time. People just wake up
Speaker 1: one day and they're like, you know what I feel good.
Speaker 1: I feel real good. They call their friends, they send
Speaker 1: out a flyer, they put like this elaborate costume on,
Speaker 1: and then they just go march down the road, uh
Speaker 1: and party music, aunts food and they just meander through
Speaker 1: the city kind of wherever they want. You gotta obviously,
Speaker 1: like let the cops know that you're doing it so
Speaker 1: they'll help and protect you and make sure traffics routed properly.
Speaker 1: But that stuff happens all the time. Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: it is. It does have a marketing issue because I
Speaker 1: would have never known any of these things. Yeah, everyone
Speaker 1: just so it's like it's like Vegas South, right, A
Speaker 1: lot of people think of it that way, and you know,
Speaker 1: Harris promotes themselves a lot. There's a casino down there.
Speaker 1: It's a much friendlier experience, and a lot of people,
Speaker 1: imagine people think it's just really like heavy drinking. Uh,
Speaker 1: like you know, one of those types of experiences. But
Speaker 1: you can go and do how do it however? You like?
Speaker 1: Food is amazing. I remember a few meals that I
Speaker 1: had there. I was like, holy shit, this is amazing.
Speaker 1: But also it's going to give me diabetes probably, Yeah,
Speaker 1: you know that is so like the it's a very
Speaker 1: you know, let the good time's role, as they say,
Speaker 1: type of place. And I think the thing I greatly
Speaker 1: like about being there's everyone has good balance. They work
Speaker 1: hard and in the case of like you know, startups
Speaker 1: and corporate workers, they work a lot, but they'll you know,
Speaker 1: they'll they'll take the time to go to happy hour,
Speaker 1: to go spend time with their family and friends every night.
Speaker 1: I think the result of that, as you notice, is
Speaker 1: people are just a little happier and they're just not
Speaker 1: like they hustle, but they don't overdo it. But the
Speaker 1: food and the drinking is a big part of the culture.
Speaker 1: There's a big part of this, like local community culture.
Speaker 1: I mean you see bars, restaurants. There's not a lot
Speaker 1: of national change. You see them of course, like Taco
Speaker 1: Bell Popay is actually from the rolling so people embrace it.
Speaker 1: Raising Keynes is a new new fried chicken spot from
Speaker 1: Louisiana that people like. But there's a lot of local
Speaker 1: stuff that you can go to and people like to congregate.
Speaker 1: People actually like to go out and hang out. It
Speaker 1: could be in the neighborhood, it could be at a bar,
Speaker 1: at a restaurant, but they like to see each other
Speaker 1: in person, which is cool. So when you go down
Speaker 1: there as a tourist, you're not just seeing a bunch
Speaker 1: of other tourist, You're seeing a lot of locals and
Speaker 1: they're they're they're happy to welcome you. But yeah, the
Speaker 1: they have a fitness problem in addition to a marketing
Speaker 1: problem of the city that people got to exercise. Maybe
Speaker 1: they're the best lives and they don't care they are.
Speaker 1: But then you know, you think about, like we have
Speaker 1: a huge diabetes problem. We have a huge The Optioner
Speaker 1: Hospital in Louisiana is like the number one liver transplant
Speaker 1: hospital in the world. I mean, congratulations, but you know
Speaker 1: you might want to some community outreach about Lily. You
Speaker 1: fly to the airport, big sign Ostener Hospital, number one,
Speaker 1: that transplant hospital in the world in the airport right
Speaker 1: when you arrived, right when you get that, like, yo,
Speaker 1: check out this awesome thing we do. Well. No one's
Speaker 1: pointing out that it's because of the ben years for
Speaker 1: all fish. No, but my mistake was going there without you.
Speaker 1: The next time. I'm definitely going to go with you.
Speaker 1: This year. I really wanted to go with you because
Speaker 1: you had your own float, which, by the way, I
Speaker 1: had no idea. It was so hard to acquire or
Speaker 1: be a part of a float. It's like a whole situation.
Speaker 1: We wrote in Orpheus, I mean flow. It's one of
Speaker 1: those things I never really imagined that ever do. And
Speaker 1: it's you know, generally historically reserved for fairly wealthy people,
Speaker 1: very networked people. But Orpheus was started by Harry Connick Jr.
Speaker 1: And what he wanted to do was create a parade
Speaker 1: where anybody had a shot at riding, and it wasn't
Speaker 1: about how much money you had. And it was also
Speaker 1: about diversity. So if you look at like most of
Speaker 1: the parades were all male historically, then a couple popped up,
Speaker 1: like Muses that became all female, and Harry's was the
Speaker 1: first to be mixed. And he was just like, fucking
Speaker 1: I can do this. I'm Harry Conic Junior. Why not?
Speaker 1: And so it was all about embracing that, It's all
Speaker 1: about celebrating the arts. He's got a nonprofit that supports
Speaker 1: all that stuff, and he's done so much for the city.
Speaker 1: So I don't know. We Ryan invited us to go
Speaker 1: to Orpheus capaid so they all have balls after the
Speaker 1: parade and so we went to Orpheus Capaid the last
Speaker 1: couple of years, and then two years ago Marty Gras
Speaker 1: he was like, hey, do you guys wanna do a
Speaker 1: float and sure, why not? Happened I fall right near
Speaker 1: my birthday, so I worked out. It was great fun.
Speaker 1: It was weird. Honestly, it was kind of a really
Speaker 1: weird experience to be on the float on and just
Speaker 1: sort of you drive through so many neighborhoods and you
Speaker 1: can see how much of a dichotomy there is just
Speaker 1: from one block to the next. Sometimes maybe you see
Speaker 1: the city in different light. That's that's insane, especially since
Speaker 1: you grew up there. When did you leave New Arlands? Okay,
Speaker 1: so college? I was born there, stay there till I
Speaker 1: was sixteen, and then tenth grade I went to Louisiana
Speaker 1: School up in Nakadish and I spent two years there.
Speaker 1: I mean I was going back home every month, driving
Speaker 1: back and forth. It was like a four and a
Speaker 1: half hour drive up to Nakadish, and they made us
Speaker 1: go home once a month just to make sure we're
Speaker 1: still being with family and everything. And then eighteen, so
Speaker 1: year two thousand, I went to college. Where'd you go
Speaker 1: to school? I went to Yale for undergrad I've never
Speaker 1: heard of that school. Yeah, it's it's it's you know,
Speaker 1: it's it's, it's it's it's okay, honestly, Um, yeah, So
Speaker 1: Yale is this where all the magic started happening. This
Speaker 1: is where all yeah, something like that. Um, I went
Speaker 1: to Yale studied college way. But let's reverse because you
Speaker 1: said you never went to school and you smoked pot,
Speaker 1: but you still got great grades. Why is it that
Speaker 1: I meet these successful people all the time who were
Speaker 1: like I barely tried. Then I went to Harvard, and
Speaker 1: I'm like, what what happened in between? I think about
Speaker 1: this a lot, actually, because I also encounter similar people
Speaker 1: and so, like in high school, I just didn't go.
Speaker 1: I didn't once I went to school called Jesuits, all boys,
Speaker 1: Catholic schools. It was terrible experience. The sad reality is
Speaker 1: our educational system is one of the worst. I think
Speaker 1: it is second worst, if not our first, first, worst,
Speaker 1: most worst, whatever, the worst. See, this is what happens
Speaker 1: if you don't finish high school. I finished high school,
Speaker 1: so I went there, and I just didn't enjoy going
Speaker 1: for for multiple reasons. A lot of bullying a lot
Speaker 1: of just boredom, um, a lot of just like they're
Speaker 1: they're like forcing religion on you. And I just wasn't
Speaker 1: prepared and my parents didn't know how to prepare me
Speaker 1: for that type of schooling. And now I understand why
Speaker 1: my brother is so bitter about his experience. You're supposed
Speaker 1: to be able to skip like ten days a semester
Speaker 1: or semester every half years, so twenty days a year.
Speaker 1: I skipped like forty because I just didn't want to
Speaker 1: go in and still got straight days, and so they
Speaker 1: didn't kick me out. But many times I went to
Speaker 1: see the guidance council and they're, hey, you gotta come
Speaker 1: to school or else we're gonna gonna have to drop
Speaker 1: you out. And I remember, I remember this, this is
Speaker 1: just popping my head. Random moment of redemption I think
Speaker 1: I had where my ninth grade geometry teacher came and said, hey,
Speaker 1: will you come to me Alpha data the like math
Speaker 1: competition with us, because if you come, we think we'll win.
Speaker 1: And I was like, no, that's my girlfriend's birthday that weekend,
Speaker 1: so I'm just not gonna come. And then after that
Speaker 1: they just wrote me off and I left to go
Speaker 1: to Louisiana school, but the schools tearing. You know, I'd sit,
Speaker 1: I go to home room in the morning and all
Speaker 1: the kids in class would be like, Hey, which one
Speaker 1: are you, Dan Tran, don Wyn, Kevin Lynn. You know.
Speaker 1: That happened almost every day and gotten fights eventually found
Speaker 1: this really small community of magic, the gathering players. So
Speaker 1: we literally like we were so egregious about it. We
Speaker 1: sat in the basement between the coke machines playing magic
Speaker 1: and it grew from like five of us to like
Speaker 1: ten of us to twelve of us. And there's this
Speaker 1: guy Brian Funk like a bunch of my friends, like
Speaker 1: Charles Prrett's, Charles Press, Charles noon As. Kevin Walker didn't play,
Speaker 1: but he was like a baseball card gather and he
Speaker 1: just hung out with us. But it's like a bunch
Speaker 1: of kids who just couldn't quite fit in. So we
Speaker 1: just play magic together during lunchtime for everyone to see, right,
Speaker 1: We're like sat down with me, now, yeah you want
Speaker 1: to go? And I actually got They actually banned us
Speaker 1: event well, they tried to ban us at some point
Speaker 1: because they thought the cards were satanic um. Because this
Speaker 1: was like, you know what the year was this like
Speaker 1: I don't know, nine six or something, and it was
Speaker 1: the cards were like demonic or demonic tutors, so they
Speaker 1: like literally would rifle through my cards looking for things
Speaker 1: that look satanic and like, okay, you can't play this
Speaker 1: game anymore. Luckily I found out about this boarding school
Speaker 1: and left. But it wasn't great. I mean, they just
Speaker 1: don't They don't teach the kids there how to like
Speaker 1: be good community members. They just kind of let them
Speaker 1: run rampant, very jock driven school, like the Jesuit would
Speaker 1: win you know, the football state championships and blah blah blah.
Speaker 1: Like they were really into sports and I wasn't into sports.
Speaker 1: So another mark against me, you know, but you know,
Speaker 1: it's fine. It's a good learning experience. I got to
Speaker 1: meet lots of cool people ended up and and you know,
Speaker 1: it's okay. Survived. Louisiana school was awesome, though much different.
Speaker 1: And then you get into Yale because you just got
Speaker 1: into Yo. Yeah. I think it was like, you know,
Speaker 1: like seven people from Louisiana get into Yale every year.
Speaker 1: What made you apply to Yale? You had good grades?
Speaker 1: You had good grades, obviously, you probably scored well on
Speaker 1: your S A T. S. I'm assuming, yeah, I did okay,
Speaker 1: we did A C T and S A T. I
Speaker 1: did all. I did fine, I got good, I got
Speaker 1: I got great good grades. My brother went to Harvard,
Speaker 1: so my parents like, go to Harvard. Just apply, like
Speaker 1: blah blah blah. My guidance counselor um Joanne forrest in
Speaker 1: at Louisiana school, I was like, hey, you should apply
Speaker 1: to Yale. And honestly, I've never heard of Yelle at
Speaker 1: the time, and I was like, this is like a
Speaker 1: luck company, right, Maybe don't say that because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of kids out there right now who are likely
Speaker 1: I had never here. I am like seventeen years old,
Speaker 1: and I'm like, I don't know what that school is like.
Speaker 1: At the time, I was trying to come to my
Speaker 1: parents let me stay in Louisiana because at a high
Speaker 1: school sweetheart I wanted to stay nearby. She was in Mobile, Alabama.
Speaker 1: How did that work out? I didn't work out? Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: but or fortunately, I guess, I don't know. She's great.
Speaker 1: We keep in touch, but my parents like, you know,
Speaker 1: if it's meant to be, it's meant to be, right,
Speaker 1: And so applied for Yale played for everywhere we always
Speaker 1: one of the first response I went up there. I
Speaker 1: went actually to Shreveport for an interview with this random
Speaker 1: dude who was like, I don't know what he did.
Speaker 1: He was like a lawyer. I think a big building
Speaker 1: in Shreveport, Louisiana. Brought him a kingcake. I thought it
Speaker 1: was a nice thing to do, and he and I
Speaker 1: just got along awesome. And then and then they sent
Speaker 1: me and then and then they did a follow up
Speaker 1: interview at school on campus. Some some like an army
Speaker 1: guy came in I remember his name, but he came
Speaker 1: in and he was el grad and I think he
Speaker 1: was CIA, and he came in and spent some time
Speaker 1: with me, and it's like army outfit. I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is the most intimidating interview ever. But he was also
Speaker 1: super nice. So when they sent me the acceptance, I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, cool, this seems good to ask my brother.
Speaker 1: And my brother was like, look, you'll have better You'll
Speaker 1: have a better time at Yelden pretty much anywhere else,
Speaker 1: so just go there. It's like it probably will suit
Speaker 1: you the best. And he was right, you know, good advice. Oh.
Speaker 1: The other piece of my advice my brother gave me
Speaker 1: that was very simple but correct. I think it was
Speaker 1: just major and whatever you like, like it doesn't really matter.
Speaker 1: You'll see people that are history majors and polyside majors
Speaker 1: that go be a doctor, people that are econ majors. Like,
Speaker 1: you know, it doesn't matter. It's sort of like it
Speaker 1: just a period in your life where you're self discovering.
Speaker 1: So just try to find the thing you really enjoy.
Speaker 1: And so I switched, much to my parents chagrin, from
Speaker 1: biomedical engineering because my dad's an engineer as a professor
Speaker 1: at You and I University in New Orleans. My mom
Speaker 1: was also a special ed teacher, and so they're like,
Speaker 1: go be an engineer, but don't do what we did.
Speaker 1: Don't teach you after go get a go get a
Speaker 1: real job, but learn engineering is really important. And ideally,
Speaker 1: go be a doctor. That was was pre medtracked. I
Speaker 1: had it all figured out. Yeah, that was that. That
Speaker 1: was the plan. And then I took this a class
Speaker 1: called e B one oh one, which was the Diversity
Speaker 1: of Life with his teacher named Leo Busts, who was
Speaker 1: this like awesome ecologist guy and loved it. And I
Speaker 1: was like I'm going to switch to ecology and evolutionary
Speaker 1: apology as my major. There was like the first rift
Speaker 1: I had with my parents were like, no paying for school.
Speaker 1: You're going to study engineering and you're gonna go to
Speaker 1: med school. That's like, that's what we're paying for. Switched anyway.
Speaker 1: I had a blast, love my major, love my classes.
Speaker 1: I learned how to do bug collecting. That was my
Speaker 1: favorite class for sure. Did you have a plan at
Speaker 1: that point when you chose the major, what the and
Speaker 1: game would be or were you just like, I'm focusing
Speaker 1: on what interests me right now and I'll figured out later.
Speaker 1: So in reality, that's what was happening. What I told
Speaker 1: my parents was, oh, I don't want to be a
Speaker 1: doctor doctor. I want to be a veterinarian. And so
Speaker 1: that became the reason to switch. And so I'm studying animals,
Speaker 1: animal science, ecology, anthropology like a really he is a
Speaker 1: very wide variety of of of classes you know, to take,
Speaker 1: like hard math classes like differential equations, which to this
Speaker 1: day still doesn't make any sense to me. And that
Speaker 1: was the excuse. And then then you had to do
Speaker 1: likes of veterinary volunteering in order to even apply and
Speaker 1: there's only like at the time, I don't know how
Speaker 1: like twenty something veterinary schools in the nation, and so
Speaker 1: U C. Davis is one of the best ones. And
Speaker 1: I think north I don't remember anymore, Uh, Northwestern maybe,
Speaker 1: And so that was the quote unquote path I had selected.
Speaker 1: And so I spent my summer in my junior year
Speaker 1: doing uh internship at the Autuman Center for Research of
Speaker 1: Endangered Species also known as ACRES back in Louisiana on
Speaker 1: the west bank of New Orleans in like the middle
Speaker 1: of the swamp. That was my veterinary experience need I
Speaker 1: guess fulfillment. And it was great, honestly. It's like part
Speaker 1: zookeeper work, part what they called reproductive physiology work, which
Speaker 1: was a nice way of describing that we were just
Speaker 1: trying to make sperm and eggs last longer in transit.
Speaker 1: And then so from that, you graduate with this major,
Speaker 1: did you you didn't switch again? No? Stay in? And
Speaker 1: then what was your next step after that? I didn't
Speaker 1: have any job lined up after graduation. I had met
Speaker 1: this girl my senior year on this random trip in Taiwan,
Speaker 1: and she was in New York. She was an N
Speaker 1: Y year. Her name was Jenny. We had we just
Speaker 1: hit it off. It was great. We weren't dating or anything.
Speaker 1: But we started hanging out in New York towards the
Speaker 1: end of my senior year and I was like, oh, yeah, totally,
Speaker 1: Like all my friends are going to New York. I'll
Speaker 1: just come to New York. And she's like, that'd be great.
Speaker 1: I'm gonna stay here. She was working at a hotel
Speaker 1: because she wanted to go through like hotel management program
Speaker 1: and so on, and so I was like that sounds awesome.
Speaker 1: Like I'll just move there and maybe I'll find a job.
Speaker 1: All my friends are like they got a job at
Speaker 1: you know, some bank or some some consulting group paying
Speaker 1: real salary. I get there and I'm like, okay, I
Speaker 1: need to find a job. It's expensive. Man. And my
Speaker 1: brother hooked me up with this group that he knew
Speaker 1: called Usual Suspects. They're like an events production company. I
Speaker 1: did a ton of events in college, lots of parties,
Speaker 1: lots of actual events. And I talked to them and
Speaker 1: they're like, oh, you should go talk to this company
Speaker 1: called n y C And Company, but we'll give you
Speaker 1: some freelance works. I just had a bunch of random
Speaker 1: event project coordination for a little while, and eventually worked
Speaker 1: for NYC and Company, not the fashion company, but the
Speaker 1: Convention and Visitors Bureau doing events for them. And my
Speaker 1: boss is Barbara Lorber, I mean one of my She
Speaker 1: taught me a lot and she was amazing. She she
Speaker 1: she's my Jewish aunt. And so we did a random
Speaker 1: events and we also worked in the NYC twenty twelve
Speaker 1: Olympic bid. So that was pretty cool to to be
Speaker 1: able to work on that. This was in two thousand
Speaker 1: and four, and I remember I walked into this room
Speaker 1: and it's like Dan dr Off all these all these
Speaker 1: like people in New York that have the power to
Speaker 1: do crazy things. I'm like, hey, guys, how is this
Speaker 1: logistically possible? You have to get people from Staten Island
Speaker 1: to Queens to Brooklyn. You're even doing some ship in
Speaker 1: New Jersey, Like, this doesn't seem feasible. For like when
Speaker 1: a million people congregated together, this seems impossible. And so anyway,
Speaker 1: I was an invited to those meetings after that, but
Speaker 1: we worked on a bunch of events. We did, like
Speaker 1: a culture Fest in Battery Park, which was just about
Speaker 1: bringing all the performing arts and other art, art organizations,
Speaker 1: music and so on, down to one big sort of
Speaker 1: festival in the park at Great Perks. I go to
Speaker 1: any museum free. I could go to any dance show
Speaker 1: or art show or music show for free, because because
Speaker 1: I knew all all those people, so it was awesome.
Speaker 1: Didn't get paid a whole lot. Yeah, it was. It
Speaker 1: was great. It was great to experience New York, complete
Speaker 1: opposite of New Orleans, just the polar opposite, polar opposite.
Speaker 1: So from there, I mean there, there's so many things
Speaker 1: that probably happened in between starting what you didn't even
Speaker 1: know Twitch was going to exist, but going over to
Speaker 1: you were a part of social cam and justin TV
Speaker 1: and all the stuff. How did you meet which would
Speaker 1: later be dubbed the Twitch mafia? Okay, how did we
Speaker 1: meet them? All? Right? So I met a bunch of
Speaker 1: these dudes in college. Funny enough, I didn't know Emmett
Speaker 1: at all in college. Maybe we ran across each other
Speaker 1: at some point, but I certainly didn't know the guy.
Speaker 1: And now he's my you know, co founder and one
Speaker 1: of my best buds. But Michael Seibel I knew very
Speaker 1: well at Yale. You have all these residential colleges. I
Speaker 1: was in one called Ezra Styles, which was like basically
Speaker 1: in bump New Haven, Connecticut. No one ever went to
Speaker 1: hang out there, so I was super lazy, so I
Speaker 1: end up just crashing on my friends couches in Branford.
Speaker 1: Branford was much more central on campus, and I had
Speaker 1: met this dude named David Waite who lived with Michael
Speaker 1: and a bunch of our other friends. They called themselves
Speaker 1: as a God Quad because that was like the name
Speaker 1: of the suite they lived in in Branford. Michael's just
Speaker 1: like big football player hit a huge beautiful afro in
Speaker 1: college too, was amazing, and he was living with them.
Speaker 1: But I met David at this random time when he's
Speaker 1: American Society event that I went to my freshman year,
Speaker 1: and he was standing there like he had this like
Speaker 1: he looked super proper, slicked hair, slicked back, tall dude
Speaker 1: from Texas, you know, black slacks, this like maroon button
Speaker 1: up shirt. And he's like, Hey, I'm David, I'm Kevin.
Speaker 1: Where are you from. I'm from Texas. I was like, oh, fun,
Speaker 1: I'm from Louisiana. Like didn't think I've met any from
Speaker 1: the South like that. Quickly here, and so we hit
Speaker 1: it off. And then I eventually met his sweet mates,
Speaker 1: of which Michael was one, And so Michael and I
Speaker 1: became quite close friends, and we were We just played
Speaker 1: video games together all the time, played a variety of games.
Speaker 1: They played a lot of Command and Conquered Generals. We
Speaker 1: played a lot of Time Splitters, James Spawned, and so on.
Speaker 1: So we just we just hang out and play video
Speaker 1: games together, throw some parties together here every now and then.
Speaker 1: So Michael and I stayed in touch. We ended up
Speaker 1: being quite close junior senior year. He ended up staying
Speaker 1: one extra year, and all the while, Justin Khan, who
Speaker 1: was one year younger than than we were at the time,
Speaker 1: he was oh five, we were oh four. We'd run
Speaker 1: into each other all the time, loved him like always.
Speaker 1: We never we weren't honestly, were not super close close
Speaker 1: in in college, but certainly ran in in ran into
Speaker 1: each other all the time. So flash four. A couple
Speaker 1: of years two thousand and six, I just moved to
Speaker 1: San Francisco and I was working for a beverage company. Eventually,
Speaker 1: like uh, like in the middle of six. I remember
Speaker 1: exactly what time of year I think was spring. Justin
Speaker 1: and Emmett after graduation. They graduate two thousand and five.
Speaker 1: They had built a calendar company called Kiko Calendar. It
Speaker 1: was before Google. Calendar was like an Ajax type of calendar.
Speaker 1: They sold it on eBay. They saw their company on
Speaker 1: eBay for like twood Bucks first, I think first and
Speaker 1: still only company to be sold on eBay to a
Speaker 1: company called Two Cows. Packed up their stuff, drove across
Speaker 1: the country with Mike. Michael was working for Quasium Fume
Speaker 1: raising money for a Senate campaign in Baltimore his year
Speaker 1: after graduation, but they kept in touch. They got together,
Speaker 1: drove drove Acrostic country and I was house sitting from
Speaker 1: my old boss at the beverage company, at the CEO
Speaker 1: of the beverage company, Flora's son, who was also a
Speaker 1: great boss. And my I just come over. No one's there,
Speaker 1: I was. I was really dog sitting. It just happened
Speaker 1: to be at their house. There did this beautiful black
Speaker 1: lab named Loki. It's like when you stay out there
Speaker 1: to take care of him, so invite him over for
Speaker 1: a barbecue. Was hanging out in the hot tub and
Speaker 1: and Justin's like, I got we got this idea for
Speaker 1: a business. I was like, okay, what we're gonna stream
Speaker 1: my life? Seven? And could you imagine one of your
Speaker 1: friends being like I have this genius idea. You guys
Speaker 1: are gonna stream my life? Yeah? Yeah, no. And it's
Speaker 1: just like you know, you look, I'm just like sitting there, like,
Speaker 1: you know, I really like you guys, and it's awesome,
Speaker 1: a really happier moving to San Francisco. And I really
Speaker 1: don't want to discourage you or offer anything that might
Speaker 1: prevent you from starting your dream, but that idea is
Speaker 1: really kind of the worst, and like why would you
Speaker 1: do this to yourself? And they explained it and like okay, cool. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, like they had they raised they were raising
Speaker 1: money from angels and a lot. They already had this
Speaker 1: idea in motion. They were already starting to talk to
Speaker 1: people about it, and and I was like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: like let me know if I can help you know,
Speaker 1: like I I is this a hot tub conversation was
Speaker 1: one of the hob and Barbecue conversation. Okay, so let's
Speaker 1: just let's pretend everyone's in the hot tub. So it's
Speaker 1: justin Cohn, Emateer, Michael Cybob and Kevin Lynn, and they
Speaker 1: were like I think a couple of other people, but
Speaker 1: I was so zoned in on this conversation, just thinking
Speaker 1: through like what in blaze? What could this act? So
Speaker 1: Justin's pitching you in the hot tub? Yeah, totally, this
Speaker 1: is this is the pitching this genius idea. He's already
Speaker 1: spoken to angel investors, so it's not like he's like
Speaker 1: brewing the idea and running and already tested it. He
Speaker 1: tested testing it with many people and people are like, yeah, sure,
Speaker 1: we'll give you money for that. And you got to remember,
Speaker 1: like in in like the early two thousands, there was
Speaker 1: all kinds of weird experimental stuff that was happening in
Speaker 1: live video. I don't know if you've seen this movie
Speaker 1: called We'd Of in Public un you should watch Actually,
Speaker 1: you know what, save it. I'll come over to your
Speaker 1: house and we'll watch it together with Colin and we
Speaker 1: won't be stoned. It'll blow your mind. You might want
Speaker 1: to be slightly stoned. We will definitely. Yeah, if there
Speaker 1: as a child comes out smoking sounds excellent. I will
Speaker 1: be there anyway. So a lot of people were experimenting
Speaker 1: with like you know now, with the with the with
Speaker 1: the promise of the Internet, like the ability to just
Speaker 1: do whatever you want and demonstrate that to whoever feels
Speaker 1: like watching you, was tested a lot before that, but
Speaker 1: the technology wasn't there, the infrastructure wasn't there, So the
Speaker 1: timing window around when they decided to start dreaming and
Speaker 1: walking around San Francisco's two thousand and seven, it was
Speaker 1: still e V D oh you know, if you're lucky
Speaker 1: bits per second, So it's still choppy video, low quality. Um.
Speaker 1: But as we were growing up, the timing was just right. Um.
Speaker 1: But really they actually did this show for a while.
Speaker 1: Justin streamed himself sleeping, waking up and getting ready, going
Speaker 1: to the bathroom, sitting and working, walking around San Francis.
Speaker 1: Are you involved at this point or I'm like on
Speaker 1: the periphery, I'm still I had just you know, I
Speaker 1: moved in two thousand and six in San Francisco, so
Speaker 1: I didn't want to. You know, they didn't ask me too,
Speaker 1: because I was frankly, would have been completely useless to them,
Speaker 1: questionable if I was ever actually useful to them. Um.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I was delivering beverages and I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I want to help these guys, and so I go
Speaker 1: to there like that. You know, Michael was originally the producer.
Speaker 1: His title was a producer. Justin was CEO, and Michael
Speaker 1: would cook for everybody every day, cooking all these delicious meals.
Speaker 1: He loves cooking, but he what he was doing was
Speaker 1: really gathering people around what they were up to. And
Speaker 1: so friends from Dropbox, Airbnb like at the time, all
Speaker 1: would just come hang out over dinners. So we would
Speaker 1: go hang out with those guys and meanwhile, you know,
Speaker 1: go work in the warehouse and deliver sugar water on
Speaker 1: the Bay Area. And I was like, I gotta help them.
Speaker 1: So if we eventually I found a sponsor for them,
Speaker 1: Balls Energy Drink, which was just an in kind sponsor.
Speaker 1: They sent one thousand and twenty four bottles of Balls
Speaker 1: to them. Um, but help them, help them get stuff
Speaker 1: like that. We were one of the distributors there in
Speaker 1: San Francisco for that. They actually contacted Balls. But then
Speaker 1: Balls hit me up and they hey, you're like our
Speaker 1: distributor here, like will you hook these guys up? And
Speaker 1: I was like, oh great, there's there's a sponsorship. So
Speaker 1: they were starting to like, you know, quote unquote define
Speaker 1: the business model, so to speak, not really because it
Speaker 1: was just energy drink, but still so ahead of your
Speaker 1: time to even be doing that. Yeah, they were just
Speaker 1: so they were yeah. And so the show went on
Speaker 1: for a while and eventually the feedback from the audience was, hey,
Speaker 1: we want to do this too, like is it possible?
Speaker 1: And so I remember there was one day Justin went
Speaker 1: off offline for the first time during the show and
Speaker 1: this girl I Justine, had come up to San Francisco
Speaker 1: to take the to take the gear, the backpack and
Speaker 1: the camera and just to do that day. And so
Speaker 1: she did one day of streaming and then it went
Speaker 1: back to Justin. You know, then as uh laptops got
Speaker 1: a bit small, Like there was this Sony Vaio laptop
Speaker 1: that had a cellular chip inside UH and this was
Speaker 1: like back when it was like singular and and and
Speaker 1: sprint and so on, primarily for those those laptops. And
Speaker 1: that made it a bit easier to instead of carrying
Speaker 1: on like eighty pounds of batteries like Justin originally had
Speaker 1: to carry around. Became a little bit more feasible. So
Speaker 1: we started shipping those laptops to people. But there's but
Speaker 1: the original intention was not for others to stream. Was
Speaker 1: the original intention just Justin is creating this huge production.
Speaker 1: The original idea was just yeah, there was no okay,
Speaker 1: because it would make sense if he was like, I'm
Speaker 1: going to spearhead the movement and then other people are
Speaker 1: going to want to be a part of it. He
Speaker 1: pictured to you guys, as we're going to stream my
Speaker 1: life end of sentence. Yes, that was the pitch. You know,
Speaker 1: probably in the back of their minds, they're thinking about
Speaker 1: it the way they you know, the big picture, Yes,
Speaker 1: just thinking through and the investors certainly we're thinking about that, right.
Speaker 1: Just okay, if you need to do this, there's actually
Speaker 1: a whole crap ton of technology you need to build.
Speaker 1: It doesn't exist today. That technology doesn't exist today. So um,
Speaker 1: there is a real there's a real tech business here
Speaker 1: so to speak, behind the show as a as a
Speaker 1: business front. But you know, the original pitch was definitely
Speaker 1: Justin TV. But all the guys that are involved, if
Speaker 1: you think about it, are such forward thinking people that
Speaker 1: of course they thought that this would go beyond otherwise
Speaker 1: I don't think that would be worth their time, right.
Speaker 1: So okay, So now other people are You're starting to
Speaker 1: ship out these smaller laptops. You are still on the
Speaker 1: sidelines at this point, just kind of homies with everybody
Speaker 1: watching everything happen. What are you thinking as this is
Speaker 1: kind of expanding before your eyes at this It's funny
Speaker 1: because like Michael was such a good friend and he'd
Speaker 1: tell me what was going on, and I'm just like,
Speaker 1: guys are like, what is it? What are you doing?
Speaker 1: You guys are crazy? Like is this going to work?
Speaker 1: Like how how is this business going to really build?
Speaker 1: How are you going to make money? Does someone buy you?
Speaker 1: Like what really happens? And you know, I'm just I
Speaker 1: had moved to San Francisco not for tech, and I
Speaker 1: had no no knowledge of the industry. I didn't know
Speaker 1: how it worked. I didn't know how fundraising work. I
Speaker 1: didn't know how monetization worked. I didn't know I didn't
Speaker 1: know how the internet worked. Honestly, I knew that it
Speaker 1: worked and it was awesome, but I didn't really study it.
Speaker 1: I wasn't obsessed with it in that way. And so
Speaker 1: to me, on the periphery, I just saw justin popping
Speaker 1: up on like Today show, on the front page of
Speaker 1: the s F Chronicle, like doing all this stuff, kind
Speaker 1: of doing it like becoming this internet celebrity by streaming
Speaker 1: himself to me for something. And it's just like that's
Speaker 1: so wild because I tune in and I'm like, this
Speaker 1: is the most boring shit ever, and you're just sitting
Speaker 1: there just like looking at this laptop, like why do
Speaker 1: people watch this? But it was for these moments, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden something would happen and that was enough.
Speaker 1: Like one day they bumped into Dave Chappelle and that
Speaker 1: was a big deal, right, So it was cool to
Speaker 1: start see to start to see like, Okay, I see
Speaker 1: that people will tune in to wait for these things.
Speaker 1: But guess what they weren't just doing that. They were
Speaker 1: talking with each other. They're talking to Justin. Justin's responding
Speaker 1: to them and chat. So it's actually not as boring
Speaker 1: as as if you digg just one tiny little bit
Speaker 1: layer deeper. People were just hanging out and that was
Speaker 1: that was what I finally realized, was like this, this
Speaker 1: power of this platform that they were building was it's
Speaker 1: a way for people just to hang out with other
Speaker 1: people when they're alone or with other people, but mostly
Speaker 1: for when you're alone, you know, you when you're walking
Speaker 1: around somewhere you're doing your errands or whatever. Wouldn't be
Speaker 1: nice if you could just chat with somebody, you know,
Speaker 1: if you don't have somebody to be there with you.
Speaker 1: So that that's that's when we started to resonate. But
Speaker 1: that was you know, it really was like it was
Speaker 1: just crazy to see. It was crazy to see that
Speaker 1: people were really paying attention to it too, and just
Speaker 1: like really intensively curious about it, and that their audience
Speaker 1: was continuing to grow. Like it wasn't huge. You know,
Speaker 1: there's like tens of thousands of people will tune in
Speaker 1: here and there, but it wasn't like millions and millions
Speaker 1: of people just yet. But once they once they started
Speaker 1: to open it up for other people, I guess that's
Speaker 1: when that's when they were like, okay, we forget you
Speaker 1: know now that the tech works let shut down the
Speaker 1: show and let other people do it. Was that social cam?
Speaker 1: Or was that justin justin TV? Okay, so it's justin TV?
Speaker 1: How are you? How's everybody making money? How is everybody
Speaker 1: paying rent? They raised money from a bunch of angels
Speaker 1: and company are a VC called Alsop Louis. They saw it,
Speaker 1: you know, they're like, okay, behind this crazy show. Idea
Speaker 1: is a bunch of tech and as all the other
Speaker 1: Angel investors did, I think some people just invested on
Speaker 1: the sheer boldness of the idea and and just In,
Speaker 1: Justin and Emmett and Michael, because they're just insanely smart,
Speaker 1: crazy people. And so it's rare to see someone like
Speaker 1: that roll up in Silicon Valley and just be like, Hey,
Speaker 1: we're gonna do some weird stuff here. So they raised money,
Speaker 1: and so they were they were paying each other or
Speaker 1: paying themselves salary from vc K a year in San Francisco,
Speaker 1: which back in two thousand two nine was not six ten,
Speaker 1: was still not a lot of money, right, It's it's
Speaker 1: not it's not great these days, a lot of young
Speaker 1: kids pay themselves way too much money and don't have
Speaker 1: the urgency of busting asked to to win. But that's
Speaker 1: how we, you know, we we we kept a pretty
Speaker 1: shoe string for everything, shoestring budget for for the office.
Speaker 1: We eventually did food and stuff for this. You're saying,
Speaker 1: so at this point, okay, so I should tell you
Speaker 1: that that origin story, right. Okay, So Michael calls me
Speaker 1: one day, I'm like working at this beverage company. And
Speaker 1: he's like, I need to do some math. You're like,
Speaker 1: I know matth. I was once asked should be in
Speaker 1: a math Yes? Yes, I was like, okay, someone once
Speaker 1: told me I'm good at math. So he's like, I
Speaker 1: need you to come help me put together like a model.
Speaker 1: I need to put a set of projections together and
Speaker 1: to go out and raise money. And so it's like, okay, cool,
Speaker 1: I can help you put that together. But I'm like, dude,
Speaker 1: I don't know anything about the internet. I don't know
Speaker 1: how it works. I don't know what it costs. I
Speaker 1: don't know how you make money. And he's like, no,
Speaker 1: I just need your help to come. And so I
Speaker 1: was like, Okay, I have to meet you at seven
Speaker 1: am because I have this other job I have to
Speaker 1: go to. So can you meet me at seven I
Speaker 1: honestly thought he wasn't gonna show up. But he shows up.
Speaker 1: I show up somehow, both of us. I mean, the
Speaker 1: fact that we both showed up was nothing short of a
Speaker 1: a miracle. So we go show up and we start research,
Speaker 1: researching for like a week, just scouring the internet for
Speaker 1: how the internet works, and we built these projections and
Speaker 1: helped him kind of mess with his pitch deck a
Speaker 1: little bit. I'm like, okay, cool, Like I'm gonna go
Speaker 1: back to my normal job now. Good luck keep me
Speaker 1: posted if I can help. And then one day Justin's like, hey,
Speaker 1: come have lunch with us. So they take me to
Speaker 1: Louisiana Fried Chicken, which was right across from the ballpark
Speaker 1: on King King and third, which was right around the
Speaker 1: corner from the office. The office was it. It was
Speaker 1: like an old art gallery cannery building and nothing. They're
Speaker 1: a great place, though, And so we go there and
Speaker 1: we order food. Before I can even sit down, Justin'
Speaker 1: just like you should join us. And I told him, look,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna tell you the samething. I told Michael. I'm like,
Speaker 1: they're literally tens of thousands, if not more, of people
Speaker 1: who are way more qualified to do anything for you,
Speaker 1: Guys that know how the internet works, who've been there,
Speaker 1: who've done that, who understand the business, who have a network.
Speaker 1: And Justin was like, I don't care. We just want
Speaker 1: to work with people we like and trust. And I
Speaker 1: was like, okay, cool, that's that sounds like an ideal
Speaker 1: place to be. I thought about it for a couple
Speaker 1: of days, and joined the left the world of sugar Water,
Speaker 1: and and and and joining the joining the Internet a
Speaker 1: far far cry from being about yeah no totally that
Speaker 1: completely didn't work out, That didn't happen at all. What
Speaker 1: kind of content was on Justin TV at that point?
Speaker 1: Was it similar to what Justin was doing or yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a lot of what Justin was doing. So
Speaker 1: the channels back then were people like Paris Harris, which
Speaker 1: was this like fashion fashionista guy down in l A.
Speaker 1: I think it was in l A. He was all
Speaker 1: over the place, but he would go and stream fashion
Speaker 1: shows and just do walk abouts around cities, but his
Speaker 1: focus was fashion. There was this guy named Moon Cricket Beto. Um.
Speaker 1: He did a lot of interesting like B boys subculture stuff,
Speaker 1: be boy stuff, roller skating, like a lot of dance
Speaker 1: and music. Um, but very sort of underground feel. And
Speaker 1: part of it is his Justin TV experience, which is
Speaker 1: really cool that they he captured this like really dark
Speaker 1: moment in his life on Justin TV. But there are
Speaker 1: lots of lots of different streamers like that that. We
Speaker 1: had farm camps, like people literally just set up a
Speaker 1: camera on their chicken coop. We had mud truck TV,
Speaker 1: which we could never I don't think it was live,
Speaker 1: but it was just clips of mud trucks, trucks driving
Speaker 1: through mud as promised by the name UM, and a
Speaker 1: bunch of random stuff, super obscure stuff, anything like people's
Speaker 1: desk cams, lots of different shows. What were you at
Speaker 1: that point thinking about just people's use of the internet?
Speaker 1: It was that was that opening your mind up to
Speaker 1: other possibilities and inspiring other things that you thought this
Speaker 1: could be much bigger than any of us could imagine. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean we were, you know, we started
Speaker 1: thinking about different ways to use the platform. YouTube was
Speaker 1: skyrocketing then and then eventually got acquired UM and became
Speaker 1: this like level of aspiration for us. Right Instagram, same
Speaker 1: timing UM. And around two eight that's YouTube was doing
Speaker 1: partner programs. So were you guys seeing the partner programs
Speaker 1: that YouTube and thinking maybe we should be doing a
Speaker 1: partner program Yes, for sure. We didn't really do partnerships.
Speaker 1: Actually in the very beginning, we just we were it
Speaker 1: was moving too fast and we were too small of
Speaker 1: a team. But we so two thousand either recession hits,
Speaker 1: I think that was one of those, you know, it
Speaker 1: was hard, but it was one of the most important
Speaker 1: things we that that could happen to the company, which
Speaker 1: was realized. We had to figure out how to monetize
Speaker 1: because our costs were starting to get out of control
Speaker 1: because the traffic was running so quickly and it's global traffic,
Speaker 1: and certain countries are just way more expensive to deliver
Speaker 1: continent too. But we're starting to spend. You know, in
Speaker 1: theory we could get very quickly to millions of dollars
Speaker 1: of costs per month, and we hadn't raised that much money.
Speaker 1: And meanwhile, our competitor, you Stream, where Colin was at. Yes,
Speaker 1: I was going to say to you, what what point
Speaker 1: does you stream enter the picture, because you guys were first. Yeah,
Speaker 1: the timing was pretty close. We so we raised some
Speaker 1: money in two thousand and eight, in two thousand and
Speaker 1: nine and two trenches, but we had only raised I
Speaker 1: think it was about twelve million total. Then you Stream
Speaker 1: goes out and raises sixty million dollars and moves actually
Speaker 1: their office to a vantage point of ours, like a
Speaker 1: really nice new building that literally looked onto our shitty
Speaker 1: barn door, and we're like, okay, like, what are we
Speaker 1: gonna do? We either go out and try to raise
Speaker 1: more money, or we just battened down the hatches and
Speaker 1: figure out how to get costs under control and how
Speaker 1: to make money. So we made a number of critical
Speaker 1: hires than Kyle what co founder, who was our requisite
Speaker 1: college dropout. I was gonna say another person who casually
Speaker 1: got into m I T and just decided, Yeah, he
Speaker 1: was like a robotics he's a genius. He's in general,
Speaker 1: I mean he is a true, true renaissance man, like
Speaker 1: true also casually the nicest human I've ever met, super nice,
Speaker 1: super generous, and he eventually built Cruise Automation and sold
Speaker 1: GM in like two years for just two casual billion
Speaker 1: dollar a chill. Yeah, you know. You know anyway, Kyle,
Speaker 1: like you know, one of the m I T Safe
Speaker 1: Cracking competition, he like participated wait stop he did. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and he participated in battle bots at like the tender
Speaker 1: age of fourteen. Your crew is hands out, I always
Speaker 1: tell people, and that's why I referred to it as
Speaker 1: the Twitch mafia. You guys are just every single one
Speaker 1: of you is so interesting, has done so much amazing
Speaker 1: ship and you just happened to be nice, Which is
Speaker 1: weird because a lot of people in your positions would
Speaker 1: be like kiss my feet please, But you're the polar opposite,
Speaker 1: every single one of you. I mean, it's how we
Speaker 1: wish together friends that makes me really happy. Okay, let's
Speaker 1: keep going. Before so we start making some critical hires
Speaker 1: John Shipman, for instance, who built YouTube Youtubes' infrastructure, built
Speaker 1: a bunch of structure for eBay and PayPal. We try
Speaker 1: to hire some sales people to do ads. We just
Speaker 1: figured it out. Like all of us, we all spent
Speaker 1: time every day thinking about how do we do advertising,
Speaker 1: how do we do subscriptions. So we started just reaching out,
Speaker 1: going going to events, networking in the ad world, and
Speaker 1: we figured out between two thousand two nine how to
Speaker 1: make money and we actually became profitable. And so in
Speaker 1: two thousand nine we go back to our view season, like, hey,
Speaker 1: we made it through the like, well, it still feels
Speaker 1: like the recession. We don't know what's gonna end, but hey,
Speaker 1: like we're making money now and like that's awesome. Like
Speaker 1: maybe we should think about selling, Maybe we should see
Speaker 1: testing acquisition offers. And so we did into that early
Speaker 1: and didn't feel right, and you know, it just didn't
Speaker 1: feel like it was it was the right time. But
Speaker 1: by becoming profitable, it allowed us to really start to
Speaker 1: think about what we could do with the platform to
Speaker 1: your question earlier, and so we thought of many different directions,
Speaker 1: like do we go compete with YouTube? Do we focus
Speaker 1: on on on demand in addition to Live? Realized nope,
Speaker 1: you know, Live is just our d n A, that's
Speaker 1: what we like, and it's gonna be really hard to
Speaker 1: compete with YouTube now that they're part of Google and
Speaker 1: so on, so let's just do our thing. So this
Speaker 1: type of thinking happens between two thousand nine and two
Speaker 1: thousand eleven, and people are drifting constantly in and out,
Speaker 1: in and out doing other things. Justin and I started
Speaker 1: a fashion company. I should say Justin started and asked
Speaker 1: me to help him. Is his idea called Saboteur. It
Speaker 1: was hilarious. Actually there was a He made a jacket
Speaker 1: called Invincible, which is a waterproof blazer. Looks like a
Speaker 1: blazer where to a nice party, silver insides like nice redlining,
Speaker 1: You button up and you know it's waterproof. We're clearly
Speaker 1: getting distracted. Something is happening, and we as a team
Speaker 1: are getting distracted. Okay, so real quick on that Invincible jacket.
Speaker 1: Justin's like, how do we market this thing? And I
Speaker 1: was like, why don't we go through a car wash
Speaker 1: with you wearing it? And so we did at uh
Speaker 1: and it was a terrible idea of the videos. Somewhere
Speaker 1: I should find it and send it to you. Um,
Speaker 1: but it totally worked. All Right, we're doing a live
Speaker 1: test of the Invincible jacket. We're going to find out
Speaker 1: today how waterproof it actually is by running through a
Speaker 1: car wash. Okay, let's Jesus Christ gonna check the jacket.
Speaker 1: But check the jacket. It's looking good. It's looking good.
Speaker 1: I'm actually surprisingly dry underneath. He was completely dry except
Speaker 1: for the rest of his body. Um. So uh So anyway,
Speaker 1: we're drifting, were drifting and we're like, okay, what are
Speaker 1: we gonna do? And we started talking about mobile. I
Speaker 1: remember having all these baits where half the team was like, no,
Speaker 1: let's not do mobile. That's stupid, it's bullshit, and then
Speaker 1: other happy and like, no, mobile obviously is the future.
Speaker 1: Let's do something there. And so we started to test
Speaker 1: JTV broadcasting. So Kyle built our first sort of mobile
Speaker 1: broadcasting app, and that was from your mobile phones. So
Speaker 1: you walk around now there's three G. Right, it's like
Speaker 1: the on the cusp of three G before LT, so
Speaker 1: you theoretically could work. So there's this JTV mobile broadcasting tool,
Speaker 1: live broadcasting from your phone from wherever you are. What
Speaker 1: we learned from that was that no one was tuning
Speaker 1: in during the live mobile broadcast. It was too short.
Speaker 1: People were only streaming for a few minutes. My theory
Speaker 1: was just because it got tiring holding out of the phone,
Speaker 1: but you know, just it was probably multiple multitude of things,
Speaker 1: signal cutting in and out. You know, it's a really
Speaker 1: quick momentary capture. But what people were doing was they
Speaker 1: were sharing afterwards and people were watching the clips, and
Speaker 1: so like, okay, let's turn that into just a clip
Speaker 1: sharing app. So that became social camp Instagram for video
Speaker 1: as we called it. Meanwhile, we're playing a bunch of
Speaker 1: video games in the office. A street Fighter was like
Speaker 1: kind of one of those always on games, like this
Speaker 1: is droning street Fighter background music that was always on
Speaker 1: in the office. Then one day StarCraft to Beta comes out.
Speaker 1: This was in Mayo intent. Somehow we got access to
Speaker 1: it and we were already thinking about games. But then
Speaker 1: this game comes out, we get it and we were
Speaker 1: playing it non stop and we're watching we realized that
Speaker 1: we're going home and watching videos on YouTube trying to
Speaker 1: get better learning, and we're like, huh, this should be live,
Speaker 1: Like why would this not be live? And sure enough
Speaker 1: we had a We had a small community of gamers
Speaker 1: back in the day. This was like Kaiba four player
Speaker 1: podcast you stream had a bunch of Lord Cat and
Speaker 1: so on, and so there was there was a small
Speaker 1: community of game streamers on a variety of platforms, and
Speaker 1: so we started reaching out what can we build for you?
Speaker 1: And a lot of people that we reached out to
Speaker 1: in the beginning that we eventually like eventually worked with
Speaker 1: us or became a partner where like you guys are terrible,
Speaker 1: we hate you does and TV brand sucks, like go
Speaker 1: away and like no, no no, please, like let us ask
Speaker 1: you some questions and we promise will go away, but
Speaker 1: we might build some stuff for you. Will let you
Speaker 1: know that. Just continue to to sort of positively spiral
Speaker 1: more conversations, more feature development. We branched out the subdomain
Speaker 1: called JTV gaming and that became like the home. That
Speaker 1: was one of the big pieces of feedback we got
Speaker 1: was the first one being we got to figure out
Speaker 1: how to make money. Then there all these technical features
Speaker 1: like transcoding, high quality, blah blah blah, all these important
Speaker 1: things that we we had to build very quickly. But
Speaker 1: the big thing was they like, we want a home.
Speaker 1: We want a place where we can go and hang
Speaker 1: out with other gamers, not all this other weird stuff,
Speaker 1: not all his noise. We want a home for gamers.
Speaker 1: And so that's how really the idea started to come
Speaker 1: to be. We were toying with it as justin t
Speaker 1: JTV gaming. We didn't launch as that. We just did it.
Speaker 1: We built, just built a brand, but we didn't really
Speaker 1: make noise about it. Then on June eleven eleven, we
Speaker 1: launched Twitch TV. It was this old like heavy metal
Speaker 1: space theme logo with a little TV with a ghost
Speaker 1: in it that Jacob design. Why Twitch A variety of
Speaker 1: stories is how we got there. But we were combing
Speaker 1: the Internet for pronounceable, single syllable domain names that were
Speaker 1: available for sale. So Bill who built chat and among
Speaker 1: many other things that at the company, Bill Morier Bill
Speaker 1: Bland back then was his name. So he built this
Speaker 1: like domain crawler where he crawled all available domains that
Speaker 1: were like theoretically single syllable, so roughly a vowel in
Speaker 1: the middle that seemed pronounceable, that were available for sale,
Speaker 1: and one of the first that popped on the list
Speaker 1: for all of us was and it was available. We
Speaker 1: looked up on Urban Dictionary. It means like the supreme
Speaker 1: state of being awesome or something like that. So that
Speaker 1: seems okay but impossible to spell. What do you do
Speaker 1: with that? But we came up with all these ideas arthlings,
Speaker 1: like users could be Zarthlings. It was hilarious, but we're like,
Speaker 1: that's not that's not right. Then one day m it's like,
Speaker 1: all right, guys, if no one comes up with anything better,
Speaker 1: we're gonna use zarth And that's when we're like, okay, scramble.
Speaker 1: So we're like figuring out all these other brands and
Speaker 1: then the word twitch comes up for for like I think,
Speaker 1: so I don't to me. When it popped into my head,
Speaker 1: we were talking about like what do things gamers need
Speaker 1: to be good? And so it's like fast twitch muscles,
Speaker 1: blah blah blah, but really that we're just kind of
Speaker 1: stuck in all of ourselves. Perfect. It was perfect. It
Speaker 1: was an empty vessel. You could tell you know, there's
Speaker 1: a story there about games, but it's just a word
Speaker 1: we liked. We bought Twitch dot tv. We tried to
Speaker 1: buy Twitch dot com. Email the dude and I I
Speaker 1: gotta get on the phone call with him, and I'm like, hey, man, like,
Speaker 1: we've got ten thous dollars with your name on it
Speaker 1: if you sell us this domain. And he's like, wow,
Speaker 1: ed Ev from Twitter? Do you know from Twitter? He
Speaker 1: tried to buy this domain from me, you know, like
Speaker 1: years ago. He offered me like three hundred thousand dollars
Speaker 1: and I didn't take that. I was like, cool, congratulations,
Speaker 1: I've still got ten thousand dollars with your name on it.
Speaker 1: And he's like, let me think about it. Comes back
Speaker 1: he asked for like seven grams, Like okay, screw. So
Speaker 1: we just stuck with the dot tv dommain. That's how
Speaker 1: it came to be. That's how it started, and we
Speaker 1: designed to Tacob designed the logo and then one year
Speaker 1: later two twelve launched the new logo that you see today.
Speaker 1: That that that that that more retro homage logo, and
Speaker 1: initially it was like green, silver and black like our
Speaker 1: original logo. We launched and people really embraced it, you know,
Speaker 1: they're like, great, it's only for gamers, awesome, and we
Speaker 1: just took off it really just we were just like
Speaker 1: the fastest growing website in the world, I think for
Speaker 1: like eighteen months straight from that moment on until two
Speaker 1: at this point. So you're you're, you know, an exact
Speaker 1: over at Justin TV, but then also Twitches launching. So
Speaker 1: how do you guys kind of separate who focusing on what?
Speaker 1: Because it feels like two very separate companies. So we
Speaker 1: split up, yep, So we in in. We we made
Speaker 1: the decision and talked to the board in two thousand
Speaker 1: and ten and two thousand and eleven about splitting the company.
Speaker 1: So Social Camp split off. Michael continued to be a
Speaker 1: co founder of that, and you have two other co
Speaker 1: founders a'm on and g and then Twitch myself and
Speaker 1: Emmett did so and obviously the other founders are all
Speaker 1: still heavily involved along the way. Eventually, you know, Justin
Speaker 1: started a bunch of other companies. Kyle left and started Cruise,
Speaker 1: Michael that went and sold Social Cam and eventually joined
Speaker 1: y C. So yeah, but that's how we split. So
Speaker 1: we recapped the business raised money for both sides, But
Speaker 1: it was tough. It was a hard decision, you know,
Speaker 1: it's like it sucks to kind of split up, but
Speaker 1: it felt it was the right thing to do. And
Speaker 1: obviously we all went off and did a bunch of random,
Speaker 1: crazy stuff, but it was cool. It was it was
Speaker 1: it was cool if the board was was down for that,
Speaker 1: but we had to be fair to write make sure
Speaker 1: all the shareholders our whole when you when you just split.
Speaker 1: And so after you split, though, Justin TV was around
Speaker 1: for a little bit longer before what did you How
Speaker 1: did you guys make that decision on Justin TV to
Speaker 1: kind of let that fizz. Yeah, so the think about
Speaker 1: justin TV. It was still making money, so we didn't
Speaker 1: want to just totally shut it down, but we didn't
Speaker 1: really want to do too much with it because we
Speaker 1: want to make sure the resources. We promised the new
Speaker 1: investors that Um the resources we would we would put
Speaker 1: the resources towards Twitch primarily that's our primary business now,
Speaker 1: and so we just maintained justin TV. That's actually when
Speaker 1: we met Um. We found out about him as he
Speaker 1: was at you stream and I remember actually driving to
Speaker 1: like the Elephant Bar near SFO. It was some random
Speaker 1: bar off like the airport side road and met him
Speaker 1: before like he left town or was like just coming
Speaker 1: into town. We just sort of sniped him before he
Speaker 1: did anything else, sat him down, brought an offer letter like, dude,
Speaker 1: you need to join us. I remember this day to
Speaker 1: just coming crystal clear. He was like, they met me,
Speaker 1: they made an offer the same day, and I was like,
Speaker 1: who are these people? Because also we're living in l A.
Speaker 1: You know, you stream had an l A office. We
Speaker 1: had no idea, but it sounded like an exciting opportunity.
Speaker 1: He really liked you guys. At the end of the day,
Speaker 1: he took the job because of you guys. I mean,
Speaker 1: it's the fact. And we we like, we were completely
Speaker 1: smitten right the moment we met him. And didn't you
Speaker 1: write an offer letter on their napkin or something like?
Speaker 1: We were like sketching it all out, but we came
Speaker 1: with that actual print out. So and then Colin came
Speaker 1: in and helped maintain us in TV and put together
Speaker 1: the plan to actually sunset it. The odd thing is
Speaker 1: we sunset it like right before acquisitions. So a lot
Speaker 1: of people thought that's why, I know, we were like
Speaker 1: we were intending to do so for a while. We
Speaker 1: just want to make sure that community had an alternative
Speaker 1: place to go. We didn't want to just abandon them immediately,
Speaker 1: so we want to make sure they had time to
Speaker 1: figure out where they were going to end up. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it was it was a you know, it was it
Speaker 1: was quite a day inn at history, I think, and
Speaker 1: and you know, it was sad to see it go away,
Speaker 1: but it was the right decision for us as a business.
Speaker 1: I mean, you have to make very hard decisions like
Speaker 1: that in this world, at the speed that the internet
Speaker 1: moves like you have to be very quick about focused
Speaker 1: decisions and do the right thing. But it was great.
Speaker 1: I mean, Justin TV is the reason why all these
Speaker 1: platforms exist. It was a testing ground for all the
Speaker 1: tech that's behind it. We learned so much throughout the process. Um, again,
Speaker 1: super sad to see it go, but I don't see
Speaker 1: it as a sad Obviously you're more emotionally invested than me.
Speaker 1: But it seemed like a new chapter from something else.
Speaker 1: It was like a birthing process, almost totally, totally a
Speaker 1: birthing process. Yeah, so Justin TV gave birth to Twitch
Speaker 1: and then casually Bezos is like, hey, a couple of
Speaker 1: years later he was he really liked the idea, and
Speaker 1: you guys got acquired by Amazon. How many years after
Speaker 1: Twitch was born? So Twitch eleven we were purchased in
Speaker 1: two and fourteen. Is that somebody who has invested in
Speaker 1: many startups and launched startups? Is that pretty quick turnaround?
Speaker 1: As a brand? That is an incredibly fast turnaround. The
Speaker 1: reality is the tech had been starting to be built
Speaker 1: since two thousand and seven. So if you if you
Speaker 1: consider the justin TV era side of this, and without
Speaker 1: the learnings of advertising and subscriptions and so on, we
Speaker 1: couldn't have done Twitch, not not that fast anyway. So
Speaker 1: if you count that, that's like about a seven year spread,
Speaker 1: and you have to count that. I think the common
Speaker 1: misconception with Twitches, oh my god, they came out of
Speaker 1: nowhere and two and a half years or three years
Speaker 1: later they got they get bobbed for over a billion
Speaker 1: dollars and people don't realize this was many, many iterations
Speaker 1: in the works, almost a decade. Almost a decade. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so right, so it was it was a while. But
Speaker 1: from the brand's perspective, yeah, it's about a little over
Speaker 1: three years that we got acquired, but from from an
Speaker 1: actual businessing perspective seven years and as somebody who us
Speaker 1: you know and exactly the company did? You guys have
Speaker 1: a bunch of offers and obviously we're not going to
Speaker 1: discuss who, but how did you know that Amazon was
Speaker 1: the right one? Because I'm sure you had other offers.
Speaker 1: We talked to all kinds of people. I mean, it was,
Speaker 1: it was. It was fascinating because the people from all
Speaker 1: over the world, companies from all over the world and
Speaker 1: from different industries, some of which were unexpected potential like acquirers,
Speaker 1: all reached out. They all started to reach out in
Speaker 1: two thousand and fourteen, and you know, we were not
Speaker 1: naive about it, but we're kind of like, yeah, we're
Speaker 1: not really interested in selling right now. Everything is going
Speaker 1: so well. We just raised our serious c and h
Speaker 1: let's just meet Let's just meet them because it'd be
Speaker 1: cool just to see what's up. And you know, it's
Speaker 1: like all you know, it doesn't matter all CEOs of
Speaker 1: media companies that come to reaching out, and so we
Speaker 1: have all these meetings and we go through a variety
Speaker 1: of processes, learn a lot along the way. But Amazon
Speaker 1: felt right for many reasons, so a lot of people
Speaker 1: were surprised. But at the time they told us these
Speaker 1: are all public now. But they had this whole game
Speaker 1: thesis that they around, this ecosystem idea that they were
Speaker 1: building involved a game engine which eventually launched a lumber yard.
Speaker 1: It involved a bunch of first party games studios at Amazon.
Speaker 1: The Amazon was funding that they were building on this
Speaker 1: this game engine. The idea being many game companies use
Speaker 1: AWS and increasingly more so, how do they make it
Speaker 1: easier and better for game companies? Then they have Amazon Retail.
Speaker 1: While they weren't huge on digital, there was you know,
Speaker 1: some desire to do so obviously, and there was all
Speaker 1: this other stuff they were doing around Amazon Prime Video.
Speaker 1: So like, okay, cool, this kind of makes sense. We
Speaker 1: are the thesis with them when it came to game development,
Speaker 1: future game sales made a lot of sense, and it
Speaker 1: felt right, you know, we we weren't gonna be a cog.
Speaker 1: We were so perpendicular to anything that they were doing
Speaker 1: at the time that it felt like they would let
Speaker 1: us do our thing. And so in as we discussed
Speaker 1: with them, they're like, yeah, totally, like we don't none
Speaker 1: of us do anything close what you guys do, You
Speaker 1: would want you to do your thing, will resource you
Speaker 1: up um, love for you to work with other other
Speaker 1: teams at Amazon over time as as you desire, but
Speaker 1: no pressure, just do your thing. We just really like
Speaker 1: what you guys are up to, and so it just
Speaker 1: made sense. And but that's that's a very unique situation
Speaker 1: also because a lot of companies when they get acquired,
Speaker 1: they kind of sell their souls in a sense. And
Speaker 1: I remember asking Colin, is this going to change twitches?
Speaker 1: The community going to be upset? Are they going to
Speaker 1: start making you do things that don't really make sense
Speaker 1: for the gaming community? And he was like, they're awesome.
Speaker 1: They just want us to do our thing, and they did.
Speaker 1: They really let you do your thing into this day.
Speaker 1: That's pretty awesome and it worked out on Amazon's killing it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so you guys kind of everything. You made
Speaker 1: the right decision. I don't think you need me to
Speaker 1: tell you that. Super lucky, very fortunate, right, Like super
Speaker 1: there's a lot of lucky in the business, and we're
Speaker 1: very lucky. We picked right. It wasn't easy, I'll be honest.
Speaker 1: And there are like the learnings of becoming part of
Speaker 1: a large corporation are hard, but no, they always trusted
Speaker 1: us just to continue to do our thing. To me,
Speaker 1: it's all efficiency. I like. I I'm much rather work
Speaker 1: with the frankly, a small team, move fast, iterate experiment.
Speaker 1: That's just it just my my style a bit more so,
Speaker 1: it's like and that's for a lot of people that
Speaker 1: grew up with Twitch right in Twitch as part of
Speaker 1: the team, so learning that was not the easiest thing
Speaker 1: to do, but we figured it out. So there might
Speaker 1: be a founder of a startup listening right now who
Speaker 1: is potentially considering an acquisition. There's a lot to weigh out.
Speaker 1: Is there a piece of advice now in hindsight, since
Speaker 1: you've been through the whole process with a really big deal,
Speaker 1: that you would give that person prior to making a
Speaker 1: huge decision like that. Yeah, Number one, really think through
Speaker 1: and accept. Make sure you accept the fact that everything
Speaker 1: will change for you. It is no longer your company.
Speaker 1: While it does happen that acquisitions are managed well and
Speaker 1: the teams stay happy, that is unfortunately the rare state.
Speaker 1: So that's number one. Make sure you know that if
Speaker 1: you're going to sell, you lose control, you lose you
Speaker 1: lose that and it's not really about control. Control is wrong.
Speaker 1: It's not your baby anymore. It is in a sense
Speaker 1: of like the longevity. You still want it to work,
Speaker 1: you still want it to be the thing that you
Speaker 1: wanted to be, but it's not yours. The second is
Speaker 1: talk to people who have been through it before. Definitely
Speaker 1: get advice. Everyone's willing to share really about that process
Speaker 1: and mentor you through it again. On the on point
Speaker 1: one like, really know that this is an irreversible decision.
Speaker 1: Do you want to continue to build this forever with
Speaker 1: the hopes of making money and maybe never but enjoying
Speaker 1: it all a while, or sell it and risk not
Speaker 1: enjoying it anymore. That's basically in a simple binary way
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. But talk to people at a
Speaker 1: certain scale, like if you're selling for hundreds of millions
Speaker 1: and up talked about banker, it's not the worst thing
Speaker 1: that you don't necessarily have to hire them. Jimmy Kim
Speaker 1: from Catalyst, who worked with us, was awesome. He got
Speaker 1: to know us super early, helped us network, coached us
Speaker 1: through a number of things, including fundraises, Like he was
Speaker 1: just a super awesome nice guy that we trust. It
Speaker 1: like most times founders meet bankers like fun, I don't,
Speaker 1: I don't, I don't like I don't like these guys.
Speaker 1: I don't like these people will like go away. But
Speaker 1: if you find the right banker that you drive with,
Speaker 1: you trust like they don't necessarily expect you to hire them,
Speaker 1: but they'll help you. And so we were really lucky
Speaker 1: to have gotten to know Jimmy over the course of
Speaker 1: several years. Uh And eventually he's like, look, I know
Speaker 1: what's going on. Let me just let me help you,
Speaker 1: no zero presumption. And eventually we're like, Okay, dude, please
Speaker 1: do please do this for us. But also just really
Speaker 1: ask a lot of questions of your potential acquire What
Speaker 1: are they gonna do with the company, what's the future vision?
Speaker 1: Make sure they have a plan that it's not some
Speaker 1: short term thing. It's not some short term opportunity because
Speaker 1: some facet of some industries growing quick. Many many entreprenees
Speaker 1: that just build the flip right, they just want to
Speaker 1: build something that they know solves for a gap in
Speaker 1: the market with the hope that fit into it fits
Speaker 1: into another business. That's great. But if if that's not
Speaker 1: your ambition with your company, just make sure you know
Speaker 1: what they're gonna do with it right, ask the ask
Speaker 1: the right questions. Number one thing I think you need
Speaker 1: a mentor, a mentor someone who can really tell it
Speaker 1: like it is, give you real raw feedback. Also ideally
Speaker 1: open up networks and just general knowledge for you. But
Speaker 1: it's really about asking for help. I mean, there were
Speaker 1: moments in our career where we almost had to close
Speaker 1: the doors, you know, like they're definitely moments where like,
Speaker 1: how are we going to pay salary next month? Like
Speaker 1: it was like pretty tight sometimes and it was with
Speaker 1: the help of a lot of friends and a lot
Speaker 1: of business partners, investors, advisors, part like and everything in
Speaker 1: between that got us through everything. And so you've got
Speaker 1: to be able to reach out though, and this community,
Speaker 1: if like they like you and your idea and what
Speaker 1: you're building, people will help. It's very unusual versus other
Speaker 1: industry like the beverage industry. It's all fight for shelf space.
Speaker 1: There's some knowledge sharing, but not nearly as much as
Speaker 1: as as as in the internet world. But it's hard,
Speaker 1: and you know, it's hard, and companies fail and it's
Speaker 1: okay to fail. Well, a lot more companies failed than
Speaker 1: our successful and I think I mean, I can speak
Speaker 1: for myself. I'm even jaded by you guys, like your
Speaker 1: group of friends, because it seems like everything you touch
Speaker 1: turns to gold, you know. And if you think about
Speaker 1: your circle of friends, from Kyle to Justin to you
Speaker 1: to Michael and Collin's doing things like everyone's kind of
Speaker 1: has their hands and some really cool stuff. And I
Speaker 1: think a lot of it is attributed to your relationships
Speaker 1: with each other, because I think that you guys advise
Speaker 1: each other, you help each other. Do you think that
Speaker 1: you're at a wild advantage because of your circle of friends?
Speaker 1: I think now are our lives are just yes, fundamentally
Speaker 1: different now right, We've built a lot of knowledge, we
Speaker 1: built a lot of experience, a lot of grit, and
Speaker 1: a lot of different network than we had when we started.
Speaker 1: So back then, you know, we had to just talk
Speaker 1: to people. I remember once Michael was like, why do
Speaker 1: you talk to everyone? And I'm like, I don't know,
Speaker 1: like why not, Like everyone's doing cool stuff out there.
Speaker 1: And it wasn't that it wasn't like a negative accused
Speaker 1: or anything, because like what do you do? You know,
Speaker 1: you seem to like anyone who will email you'll just
Speaker 1: like take a quick phone call with them, just see
Speaker 1: what see what they're up to. Why I'm like, well,
Speaker 1: I don't know, I'm learning. That's that's the way I learned.
Speaker 1: So it's really about like making sure you're you're absorbing
Speaker 1: as much information as possible along the way and building
Speaker 1: a network. That's so critical and a lot of people
Speaker 1: don't think about that in early entrepreneur age. Is what
Speaker 1: you're really doing over time too, is getting to know people,
Speaker 1: learning about their expertise, helping them as they help you,
Speaker 1: and so on. And that's how good community building happens.
Speaker 1: But that's for your career, you know, that's really important
Speaker 1: for you. You never know when you're gonna meet someone
Speaker 1: who might invest in you, who might become a paid partner,
Speaker 1: who might mentor you one day like that. You don't know,
Speaker 1: and so it's good to keep an open mind. Obviously
Speaker 1: you have to focus and not be too distracted, but
Speaker 1: if you find those sort of right paths, it's it's
Speaker 1: it's okay to do that. But it's that networking that
Speaker 1: we have now where we this group right justin Michael Emmett, Kyle,
Speaker 1: Colin John and so on, like we all Jacob, we
Speaker 1: all still talk and help each other and share ideas.
Speaker 1: We send each other interesting companies, not necessarily with the
Speaker 1: you know, presumption of investing, but just hey, like, this
Speaker 1: is really cool group of entrepreneurs. I'd like for you
Speaker 1: to meet your background uniquely you can be helpful to them,
Speaker 1: So help them, you know. It's a lot of giving
Speaker 1: back to really well, that's That's one of the things
Speaker 1: that I love about you most is you have done
Speaker 1: a lot of collaborating along the way, and you have
Speaker 1: networked with a lot of people along the way. But
Speaker 1: you seem to just keep up with everything and you
Speaker 1: give back. You're not just taking and saying, oh, I
Speaker 1: know all these like powerful people and I'm a powerful person.
Speaker 1: You really go out of your way to give back.
Speaker 1: My mind is always boggled by your specific network, not
Speaker 1: just your little group of friends, but like you have
Speaker 1: a huge, huge network of people. How do you keep
Speaker 1: up with all these people and no one's ever pissed
Speaker 1: at you? Like you managed to be there for every
Speaker 1: single person. I wonder when you sleep or eat. I
Speaker 1: know you find ways to get that taco bell postmated,
Speaker 1: But I mean I text a lot texts like a
Speaker 1: good good way to keep in touch, ask quick questions
Speaker 1: and so on, particularly for like startups that need help,
Speaker 1: like those text me stuff. Just text text me. If
Speaker 1: I need to call you explain, I'll call you, like
Speaker 1: real quick. But and so I think that's that's really
Speaker 1: powerful tool to meet emails like so old and kind
Speaker 1: of antiquated. Now it's just too slow. So I like that,
Speaker 1: But I don't know, I do feel bad. I feel
Speaker 1: bad a lot, Like there's a lot of people I
Speaker 1: I lost touch with, you know, in the last eleven years,
Speaker 1: like just being so focused on on work as a personally, yeah,
Speaker 1: imbalance in life, Like I lost touch with a lot
Speaker 1: of really great friends from high school and college, and
Speaker 1: some of those are irreparable unfortunately. So I think these
Speaker 1: days I try to be a bit more conscious of it.
Speaker 1: I don't know. For me, I don't sleep a lot,
Speaker 1: so I'm trying to. I'm trying to get seven hours.
Speaker 1: I think it's very important to roughly sleep the human average.
Speaker 1: But I don't see a lot to siend up like,
Speaker 1: you know, staying up late, texting, I bond with I
Speaker 1: connect with friends over video games. I'll you know, go
Speaker 1: go to events and stuff like that. But when I
Speaker 1: go like I try to just not think about anything,
Speaker 1: but typically if someone reaches out to a friend, I'll
Speaker 1: feel compelled to help if however I can, whether that's
Speaker 1: simple introductions or a phone call for advice. To me,
Speaker 1: it's just about lifting each other up. We had a
Speaker 1: lot of people that believed in us and helped us
Speaker 1: and without whom we would not be here today. Many
Speaker 1: partners who like the specifics of bailing us out, and
Speaker 1: when we needed money, we had a lot of people
Speaker 1: that helped us out. And that's part of the untold story.
Speaker 1: But that's the reality is you need help, you need
Speaker 1: people around you, and you have to reciprocate. So that's it.
Speaker 1: I don't know, I don't balance super well. I actually
Speaker 1: think there's space for a technological solution to this problem
Speaker 1: of how do you keep in touch with people better.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's like, you know, the social networks today,
Speaker 1: they are not what they were promised to be in
Speaker 1: the beginning, no longer, So I think there's space for that.
Speaker 1: My most favorite time spent at Twitch was talking to
Speaker 1: creators about their show ideas, helping them really hone in
Speaker 1: on what they should do and how the tech can
Speaker 1: support that, you know, like I remember when people started
Speaker 1: using green screens for the first time on on Twitch
Speaker 1: and transporting themselves into the video game instead of having
Speaker 1: this like random wall back drop, and that seemingly small
Speaker 1: change was massive and and and that type of small iteration,
Speaker 1: but really talking. One of my favorite projects last year
Speaker 1: was talking to Bernie Sue about artificial So he did
Speaker 1: this crazy live scripted sci fi show they Just Want
Speaker 1: a Peabody, And it was just cool to think through
Speaker 1: how content and tech really intersect and how platforms like
Speaker 1: ours can really enable the next generation of television consumption.
Speaker 1: What does that look like? How is it interactive? How
Speaker 1: are users engaging with each other and engaging with the content.
Speaker 1: I like Twitch and where we're at because we let anyone.
Speaker 1: We really do give anyone the chance of success. And
Speaker 1: I like that kind of system where anyone can turn
Speaker 1: on a free stream on Twitch, broadcast to the whole
Speaker 1: world for free, and everyone in that world can watch
Speaker 1: you for free. So you're on this show because you're
Speaker 1: a tech influencer. Who is somebody that you look up
Speaker 1: to and you consider a tech influencer that we can stock.
Speaker 1: Aside from the homies, we've talked about already. Yes, somebody
Speaker 1: outside of the friend group, the intimate friend group, somebody
Speaker 1: that you kind of always have your your eyes on
Speaker 1: and you're like, oh, this person is doing something. Oh
Speaker 1: there's so many I mean, okay. So one of my
Speaker 1: most favorite people and one of my mentors throughout my career.
Speaker 1: I don't even think he realized he was being a
Speaker 1: mentor was Mike Mooreheim, who was the founder and up
Speaker 1: until recently CEO of Blizzard. They've made all of my
Speaker 1: favorite games, StarCraft, Diablo, Hearthstone, etcetera. And he was just
Speaker 1: like the sweetest guy. And you know, in today's terms
Speaker 1: in business, you describe him as like incredibly inclusive and
Speaker 1: so on. Like he just built this team of people
Speaker 1: who were super nice to each other, who drove each
Speaker 1: other so aggressively in the sense of let's move, let's
Speaker 1: build awesome things fast, and let's build them right for
Speaker 1: the users. And he kept the gamers as the heart
Speaker 1: of the company, just as we try to create creators
Speaker 1: treat creators as the heart of Twitch. He's one of
Speaker 1: my just favorite people and I'm always curious as to
Speaker 1: what he's up to, what he's thinking about, you know,
Speaker 1: there's one of my favorite people I've ever met was
Speaker 1: Adam bain Uh. He was CEO at Twitter and we
Speaker 1: were just talking about all these crazy ideas that Twitch
Speaker 1: and Twitter could do, and he eventually left because one
Speaker 1: of those dudes is so generous, super thoughtful, gave you
Speaker 1: advice when you didn't even ask for it. He could
Speaker 1: just almost detect what you were thinking about, what your
Speaker 1: business was going through. He just had those strong instincts.
Speaker 1: And then he started just to connect you with people
Speaker 1: for free, no presumption. All you listeners, if you find
Speaker 1: someone that says, yeah, I'll introduce some people, it's going
Speaker 1: to take some equity in your business to do that,
Speaker 1: don't talk to them. Please stay away from them. A
Speaker 1: good person, a good person who's actually trying to help you,
Speaker 1: will help you for free, with no presumption of getting
Speaker 1: any equity in your business. And there are some you
Speaker 1: should approach yourself that are particularly helpful and say, hey,
Speaker 1: I want to give you some advisory shares. Will you
Speaker 1: help me? And don't overpressure it. But like a rare
Speaker 1: occasion you want to do that. But for people that
Speaker 1: really want to help you, reward them, of course, but
Speaker 1: not only the presumption that they're gonna be rewarded for free.
Speaker 1: If people don't share their knowledge and share their networks
Speaker 1: to me, things break down and you can't really find
Speaker 1: that next great generation of people who are going to
Speaker 1: make a difference. I run into a lot of those
Speaker 1: people these days. I just said, he just gives me
Speaker 1: a bad feeling. And then in closing, you gave advice
Speaker 1: to these new startup kids, the kids kids, the kids?
Speaker 1: What advice would you give Kevin sitting in the basement
Speaker 1: playing magic in hindsight career wise? Like, what would be
Speaker 1: one token that you would like to just drop into
Speaker 1: little Kevin's brain? Uh? Wow, I've never been Okay, that's uh,
Speaker 1: you have all the info. Now what are you telling
Speaker 1: little Kevin with his Satanic cards? I think the thing
Speaker 1: I wish I did, honestly was was being able to
Speaker 1: talk to my parents about my experience growing up. It
Speaker 1: was so weird and stressful and depressing honestly at times,
Speaker 1: and my parents did know how to deal with it.
Speaker 1: You know. I think that's why my my my my
Speaker 1: brother is still kind of you know, not into going
Speaker 1: back ever. He went back with me recently, but he
Speaker 1: was just had such a traumatic experience. I think it's
Speaker 1: important for parents to be able to do that. And
Speaker 1: I don't believe my parents at all, and they were
Speaker 1: probably experiencing stuff that I didn't know about that they
Speaker 1: never talked to me about, And I kind of wish
Speaker 1: we could have talked through that, because you know, my
Speaker 1: identity throughout my life has changed so much in college
Speaker 1: heavily involved in Asian and Asian American groups and post
Speaker 1: college life, and when we were doing justin TV was
Speaker 1: so crazy busy. I felt bad. I felt this connection
Speaker 1: from that community, and now I'm working with that community
Speaker 1: again and it's great. But being able to talk about
Speaker 1: things like that identity with with parents and friends I
Speaker 1: think would have been valued and talk to my friends
Speaker 1: in New ormands that much about it for fear of backlash,
Speaker 1: for fear that people were like, well, yeah, of course
Speaker 1: people aren't you like that, right, And so I didn't
Speaker 1: know how people were reacted. Never tackled. I never tackled
Speaker 1: it until I was older, and so I kind of
Speaker 1: wish that because I think it would have opened up,
Speaker 1: it would have maybe enjoy my childhood there more because
Speaker 1: then I would have understood why I didn't understand why
Speaker 1: the bullying was happening, or that people were so at
Speaker 1: the time, I described stupid. Why are people so stupid?
Speaker 1: They weren't stupid. I just didn't know better. You know,
Speaker 1: maybe they're just poking fun because that's what you do
Speaker 1: as kids. But I translate in my head as like
Speaker 1: people hate me for X, Y or Z reason, and
Speaker 1: I never able was able to talk to anybody about that.
Speaker 1: So I think that's what I would tell kept to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, but it seems like despite all of that,
Speaker 1: you are still a very social person, very confident person.
Speaker 1: One of the most social confident people I know to date.
Speaker 1: So it worked out right. Thanks. Yeah, I still feel
Speaker 1: like I'm shy, but I don't. I mean, maybe it's
Speaker 1: just because I know you. Yeah, definitely open up. Hey,
Speaker 1: whatever happened along the way, it worked out. I think
Speaker 1: I've already taken up so much of your time. We
Speaker 1: probably could. I mean, there's so many layers to start
Speaker 1: up world. But I really liked learning the origin story
Speaker 1: because I think it's really helpful for people who are
Speaker 1: in that position right now. And just like the main
Speaker 1: message of what you start with will not be what
Speaker 1: you end up with, and that's okay, and it's actually awesome.
Speaker 1: But yeah, there's so many different things I could dabble
Speaker 1: into with you, but I feel like we'd be here
Speaker 1: for six hours and you probably have a hundred people
Speaker 1: to meet. Thanks for stopping by. I am so excited
Speaker 1: for everyone to hear this interview, and I'm sure you'll
Speaker 1: be back. They would love to love to come back. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 1: please do please do all right, Kevin, Kevin Lynne, everybody,
Speaker 1: Thank you, Thanks everybody, Thanks for listening. Thanks to appreciated anytime.
Speaker 1: Behind the Influence is a production of I Heart Radio
Speaker 1: and t DC Media