Justin Kan, Cofounder, Twitch

24:04Justin Kan:We were like, we suck. After that, we were like, hey, we're okay. We don't suck. We're not great. but we're, we could keep doing this. And so then we went to pitch Paul for another company. Cause he was actually, Paul was also super encouraging. Cause he was like, Hey, do you have any other ideas for like another company to do next? And we were like, you would fund another company of ours based on this experience. Like that's an amazing, like, like, thank you for believing us. You know, we were like, that's crazy. So after we had sold the company, we went over to his back to, where was it? It was at Avon Street, his house.

24:44Yeah, I was at Avon Street, yeah. Because I walked in during the meeting.

24:48Justin Kan:Yeah, we were at his house. And I'll never forget this. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Why? Why will you never forget it? Because they were meeting in his kitchen, and I walked into the kitchen, and Paul's like, hey, Jessica, wait till you hear Justin and Emmett's new crazy idea. Justin's going to wear a camera on his head and broadcast his life in a reality TV show. And I remember, I think I said like, well, that's a dumb idea. Yeah, yeah. I mean, everyone, that was a consensus opinion. Yeah, but Paul liked it. Paul is like a savant at ideas. He's like so good at ideas. He was like, he tapped into, like I think something that I kind of understood, which is like people are interested in other people and they want to learn and follow other people.

25:35Justin Kan:And that was like the precursor to social media. Well, let's go into this for a minute because was this like leading up to the idea of Justin TV? Was it one of those things where everyone's like, oh, my gosh, Justin has such a crazy, interesting life? Or is it more like you guys sat down, had this idea, and you're like, I'm going to be crazy and interesting? Yeah, it was more of the latter because basically I was a shy extrovert. You know, I've like kind of grown into myself now and people are surprised to hear that. but like maybe you remember at Y Combinator I was pretty shy I wasn't like out there I was not there yeah but I was I was like intimidated by all these other people who I thought were way smarter than me and I always wanted to like be more out there but I didn't like really know how so that idea of Justin TV was kind of my own way of like forcing myself to like go do interesting stuff and be out there in the world how did you talk yourself into that you were just like this is this is like the next version of myself yeah I'm just like fuck it I'll try anything I'll try anything.

26:33Justin Kan:I don't know. I'm really good at forcing myself to do uncomfortable things for, you know, just because. Like I fast five days of no food every year in January, like for the last five years. Wow. And I was like, just I wanted to do that one year. And I was like, I've always wanted to do it. So I just YOLO. Let's try it. And then I've found it to be like a really interesting experience. You must feel amazing if you've done it five years in a row. afterwards yeah during really not great like dying my wife says it looks like the the the joy has spark has left my eyes i'm like starving to death but like afterwards i feel great anyways i'm sorry that's a total tangent but i'm just i just like to throw myself in the deep end on things you know yeah well this this idea was the deep end i mean you literally had a camera on your head and emmet and Kyle, who've both been on the show, talked a lot about how technically it was very difficult.

27:35This is back before there were reliable cellular connections and things. And broadcasting the video in real time was really hard. But you were sort of responsible for making sure the content was kind of interesting.

27:50Justin Kan:Yes, which I did not do a good job of, to be clear. You were the talent. That was the talent. I feel like I want to beg to differ. And I know you got a lot of early complaints like oh we're just watching you know justin's guy sleep or eat breakfast but i what i remember were many of the highlights that i sort of felt like i participated in my favorite with michael seibel um the startup school at stanford yeah where in bomb threat bomb threat and we were like two speakers before the event was over we had like hundreds of people and the head of security at Stanford was like, we got to evacuate. We got to evacuate.

28:29And Michael Seibel and I were like, no, please, please trust us when we say this is a prank. This is all a result of Justin TV. And this is a hoax. And the guy was like, I can't be taking these hoax. I'm like, please. And then we were on the last speaker and Carolyn, you'll appreciate this. It was our wonderful patent attorney in Boston. And he and I was like, Joel, man, you got to keep this quick because they don't really want to hear about patents. So just keep it succinct. He's like, no problem. This is going to be the shortest speech in all of startup school. It was like the longest talk in all of startup school.

29:06I literally was like crawling up onto the stage because I had the security guy breathing down my neck and I was like, Joel, be done. It was so stressful, Justin. But the one that I really want you to tell is when someone like swatted you and you were like the police came to your apartment and like, didn't they like kick down the door with a gun? Will you tell that story? Yeah, yeah.

29:28Justin Kan:So we all moved. We moved to San Francisco for starting Justin TV. So after Paul funded Justin TV, which is the idea of like, let's do a 24 hour seven live stream. We moved to SF because we were like, our next startup should be in SF. So we moved to this building. We found this building that a bunch of YC companies eventually moved into called the Y Scraper. That wasn't the real name of the building. Wait, you were the first people. Yeah, we were the first people. Moved into Crystal Towers is what it was called. To Crystal Tower, yeah. And it was month-to-month furnished apartments in San Francisco.

29:59Justin Kan:So it was very convenient for startups where you might move somewhere else afterwards. And so we moved in there. The guys from Zobny, the email thing, like Matt Brazina and Adam Smith, Dropbox guys, Reddit, Weebly. So there were a bunch of companies there. And we'd, like, have dinner once in a while together, like, every week. People would hang out. So we launched our show, you know, six months later in 2007, March 2007. And, you know, obviously people were pranking us. They were, like, trying to interact with the stream. All these things that happened to live streams today on Twitch or whatever, you know, were happening to us.

30:32Justin Kan:And so one of the things that people like to do to mess with us is they would call in bomb threats or, like, call fire department on us. They were, like, always, like, reporting fires at Crystal Towers. and so they called like a stabbing into our apartment which was super not cool but um we would keep our door unlocked because it was like people you know friends would just come and walk in you know it's kind of like seinfeld or something and so we had our door unlocked and i heard we heard this someone like a bang on the door one like four days into our stream like we just launched the stream someone's banging on the door and they're like open up sf police and And we thought it sounded like Matt Brazina, who's another YC founder.

31:18And so we were like, fuck off, basically.

31:21Justin Kan:And they kick open the door because the door is actually unlocked. So legally, they can enter. So they just opened it. And then the guy had his gun drawn. Kyle's like sitting right here. The gun is like right here. And we're like, yo. It's like an apartment full of nerds working on their computers. right so we're like and you can see it on the camera i'm like put my hands up like this i remember you had your hands yeah and uh we were like after that you know obviously they were like oh there's no body in here there's just a bunch of nerds nerds working on a startup and so they left and we were like yo first of all we told the emergency dispatch or whatever eventually after they called like a fire in on our poker night they called like there was like five fire trucks outside, you know, there's like a four alarm fire or whatever.

32:11Justin Kan:They were, they were, we, we, the 911 dispatcher was like, Hey, next time we get a call to this address, we're going to call you, Michael Seibel, you know, my co-founder and see if it's real. We were like, the fact that EMS works like that, like you're just going to call him. And if he doesn't like say it's like actually an emergency, then you're not going to send anyone is crazy. But like, that's a good solution. And so then we were like, do we, should we cancel our show? This is like way too intense, you know? Like someone could have gotten him, people got killed in swatting. Like there was, I didn't even know what a swatting was until like, you know, this was like early internet, right?

32:52Justin Kan:2006. So anyways, they, we ended up being like, okay, we're going to keep going. And, you know, that was, that was a crazy moment, but kind of died down after that. How long did you do Justin TV where you're actually you are the entertainment? Well, we were streaming for six months. But basically what happened was like the first like four weeks was like crazy. Like it was like just viral and building on itself. And like we were on MTV and the Today Show and trying to make content. But like but the retention was really bad. People would come and be like, this is interesting. But this guy's actually not that interesting.

33:26Justin Kan:Also, the format of watching someone just walk around for all the time is like not actually that interesting. So, you know, we kind of hit this viral moment. but it wasn't retentative. And so we ended up being like, we need to pivot to something. Lots of people had asked, Hey, can I create my own stream? And so we ended up building a platform for anyone to stream kind of like YouTube for live video, but it took us six months to actually retool to build that. So we ended up honestly probably should have been faster, but like there wasn't, we had to like kind of build all this infrastructure. So we ended up streaming while we were building this new platform.

33:57Justin Kan:And then in October 2007, we pivoted to be the platform. Yeah. Okay. And were there like, there were like early influencers before influencer was a word. Weren't there like Justine? Yeah, I think. Yeah, exactly. This is kind of like the core insight I think of Justin TV was people want to follow other people and they're curious about other people's lives. And if you give them a window, they're interested. they're interested and i think it's most analogous to kind of like the stories feature of instagram or snapchat where people are like you know putting up brief video clips or photos of what they're doing and it turns out in someone's 24-hour day only like one minute is potentially interesting so like we were streaming and creating content for like 24 hours per 24 hours and it should have been like one minute per 24 hours but i do think there was like a core insight in there that people want to follow other people and if we were smarter we would create a different app or something but that's you know well it worked out i was gonna say it turns out you were smarter because you ultimately pivoted to twitch do you remember that yeah so so what happened was like you know i'll give you the bridge version but basically we had this site that anyone could stream anything and people would stream all sorts of different stuff and um after a couple years there was like one category that we're really into which was gaming it really wasn't a big internal debate but emmet was the one who's like loved gaming the most.

35:24Justin Kan:And he was like, really, he was like, this is the only content that I care about and think is good on our site. So we ended up kind of nurturing that part of it and growing it. And it kind of eventually became Twitch, you know. Which is huge. And then you got sold for like a billion dollars to Amazon, which for YC, like I was like, this is amazing. It was the biggest exit that had happened, I think. I think at the time, yeah. At the time. Yeah, at the time, yeah. Remind us what year that was? 2014. Had you left Twitch before the acquisition or are you still involved at the time? I left before the acquisition.

35:59Justin Kan:I was just on the board. We started this other company that YC Funded that was called Exec. It was kind of like TaskRabbit. I don't know if you remember that. I remember because I loved Exec. I was a busy working mom with toddlers. Well, you should tell the origin story because if I'm remembering correctly, it's very entertaining. Yeah, the origin story. So this idea, so I, I mean, I was always thinking of ideas and like Emmett was really the one who was like running, you know, kind of building Twitch and, um, I contributed some, but like at the end of the day, I was like, okay, it's his product genius.

36:30Justin Kan:So like, let's, I gotta do something else. So I was thinking about this new startup. I had this idea. Um, well, so I was going to Burning Man, um, with the guys from Dropbox. Drew brought me to Burning Man for the first time and, uh, with a bunch of other YC founders in 2011. 11. And then I think the next year is when I thought of it. Cause in 2012, we were going to burning man and one of the guys had left his ticket at his house and we were like already in Reno or something. And so he was like trying to figure out how to get his ticket. I'm like, Hey, you should, there's another friend of ours leaving, but you need to get a ticket from like what point, you know, your lobby of your house to like this other friend before that person leaves.

37:11Justin Kan:It was like call an Uber, send them to Uber had existed then. So I send them to, you know, your address, call the guy, tell him, pick up this thing and bring it to here. And then he did that and it worked. And so after that, I was like, you know, there should be an app where you can just hire someone in the real world to do something immediately, whatever it is. Like TaskRabbit, you know, they had a long lead time. Oftentimes it was like hours or days before you like hired someone. And I was just like someone, there should just be like a pool of people on call to do whatever people want to do.

37:44Justin Kan:What? Why does my memory of that story involve a pizza where there was no pizza, there was no message. There was another time when we were trying to, when Twitch was down. This was like in the early days of Twitch. We had like one engineer doing every system. So like Kyle did all the video system. And there was like no one else who knew how it worked. like Emmett did the website no one else knew how to work there was like another guy did chat no redundancies there was no redundancy there's no documentation nothing so if like that guy got hit by bus we were screwed so we were like hey um Kyle went on vacation he's like I'm gonna go to Tahoe and I'll see you guys like on Monday or whatever you know this is a time when we were working like every day so um we're like you're going on vacation dude what the fuck like so he was like, I'm okay, I'm going to go on vacation.

38:36Justin Kan:And he was like, here's my, you know, you have my cell phone. So like, call me if you need something. So we like, of course, on Saturday, our busiest time was a weekend, because that's when like, more people were out of school or work or whatever. So we're watching. So the site goes down. And we're like, calling Kyle and call him like 10 times, no answer. So we knew where he was staying. So we called a pizza place. And we were like, hey, can you go to this address? We'll pay you for a pizza. We'll go to this address and tell the person the website is down. And the guy was like on the phone. He was like, what kind of pizza do you want?

39:15We're like, we don't want a pizza.

39:18Justin Kan:We'll pay you for any kind of pizza. We don't want a pizza. Don't wait until the pizza is made. Just go now. Send a delivery driver right now to read this message to whoever answers the door. So they did that. It was like after explaining it for another five minutes, we're like, okay, we got it. We, they, you know, and then Kyle, like it's a, there's a ring on the doorbell. He like wakes up, he's sleeping in the other, his phone's in the other room, he's taking a nap. And the guy's like, the website is down. And then he was like, calls us, you know, five minutes later, he's like, after he just logged in, pressed one button, restart, went back up, of course.

39:52Justin Kan:And then he calls us, he's like, why didn't you send the pizza? Damn it. I had a nap and now I want a snack. Yeah. So he, anyways, he'd like, that was, that was another instance where it was like, well, we want to hire someone, you know, immediately to do something. And so, so the, that's what kind of came up with the idea for exec. And, you know, I know that didn't work. We ended up pivoting to house cleaning of all things, but like, it turns out people wanted certain categories of things. We should have picked delivering food or groceries because that was an obvious one that turned into Instacart and DoorDash.

40:26Justin Kan:But instead, we picked house cleaning, which was dumb for a lot of reasons. Yeah. Anyway, so that was another attempt to build something. And you started that with Daniel, your brother, right? Started with my brother and our other friend Amir, childhood friend. And yeah, we worked on that for about two years. Clearly, the house cleaning side, the problem with house cleaning is I think what we learned, you know and I thought a lot of other Silicon Valley people learned this over the years is like services doesn't necessarily scale as well like especially when they're powered by humans as technology uh despite the fact that you wanted to and so there's just like a huge amount of like errors and edge cases when it came to having human cleaners in people's houses to make the margin you know the margins didn't really work very well and then the user acquisition costs were like too high for the to make the the business work really well and so at the end of two years we were like okay let's just we sold it actually we ended up making money like a little bit it was kind of like a kiko's like situation but we had raised like three million dollars or three and a half million dollars but we ended up selling it to a competitor that's ended up selling themselves to angie's list years later and oh wow we got some cash out of it oh nice but i mean justin i'm looking i like sort of scribbled down a list of all you've you've started a lot of companies because then I've probably started like 15 companies it's going through all of them would take forever which one is there one that we should ask you about is there one that there's some interesting stories or lessons about I've learned so many lessons I think you know I guess that services not scaling one is one so like definitely I think one what one thing that happened in the arc of Silicon Valley was like people made a bunch of money with mobile and building things, you know, different mobile things.

42:19Justin Kan:That was kind of like in the era. There was first a bunch of like Web 2.0 things. Maybe you could consider Twitch that. And then there were a bunch of mobile things like Uber and Instagram. And then people started being like, Uber, let's do like the Uberization of everything. And then a lot of things are more services than they are technologies to scale. And I think I made my mistake probably multiple times once with Exec and then with atrium our legal startup we're trying to scale kind of like systematize and productize the legal services you know as carolyn probably could have told me and saved me multiple years of my life like did you tell him carolyn probably probably probably like people want their lawyer to be like a consigliere like that knows everything about them and like is like super deep with them and they are more cost agnostic especially the people who are actually the customers you want yeah the clients you want.

43:07Yeah.

43:08Justin Kan:And so, you know, trying to scale that more as a technology play, but it, you know, that was not the answer at the time. Maybe it would have worked with LLMs now. This is a little bit of an aside from all your entrepreneurial ventures, but we were talking about this before the show started. You had this era, and I remember this distinctly because my kids were so into watching you, where you would like, and we couldn't remember what platform this was. Snapchat. Oh, Snapchat. How did we forget? Yes. You, you were big on Snapchat. Like, yeah, that was so fun. Yeah. So I was at YC at the time. I'm like, um, you know, so after exact and we sold Twitch, I, right when Twitch was selling, I joined YC, um, and I was a partner for a couple of years, which was like really fun.

43:52But, um, by the way, it was fun. I love doing interviews with you yeah unfun what i see was it like 2014 to 2017 2014 to 2016 end of 2016 so

44:03Justin Kan:like right okay two years batch started two years i think it was five batches in the house i know it's great it's great good very good justin brings great energy yeah and a great voice and a great thank you yes yeah i loved there were so many people who i love doing it with like i i loved it when michael and i got to because we it was like being co-founders but without the drama and stress of like actually our company failing actively, you know? And then Gary and I always worked really well together and it was so much fun. Well, go back to Snapchat though. I saw Snapchat had blown up with stories because DJ Khaled, who's this rapper, you know, music producer had like gotten lost on his jet ski and he had been like recording Snapchats of it, like him in Miami, like being like, oh my God, I don't know if I'm going to make it.

44:48Justin Kan:Like, where am I? And it's like, the sun is setting. He's like driving around a jet ski. And it was like kind of a viral internet moment where people like this is hilarious and i had i was like what is the stories feature and it turns out you know you're just like posting it's like in instagram stories you're just posting these video snippets or whatever and so i was trying to like figure it out and so i just started posting my own stories and i was like what's up it's justin i'm here like gonna tell you some startup knowledge or whatever and so i was telling people about like life advice or like how to start companies or, you know, stuff like we'd tell.

45:21I remember when my kids showed me you were like on your exercise bike.

45:24Justin Kan:Yeah. So then I started, I started like being like fitness is the first step to greatness. And I'd be like, you got to work out to like feel good. And so I'd be like, you know, on my exercise bike, like working out, it was kind of fun, you know, it was a creative side. And so I'd make these stories every day and it grew. I was kind of like big in Silicon Valley. It was like not big for like real celebrity Snapchat, but I was like locally in Silicon Valley, people were following it. I think no one had like really created any like tech influence, you know, business content or whatever. And so people like that.

45:56Justin Kan:They like the startup content. I had a lot of fun doing it, but the Snapchat as a platform kind of got killed by Instagram for the stories component. And so I didn't want to rebuild it on Instagram. And then I stopped. And years later, I started doing YouTube as a way to create content around tech and things I learned about living life. I watched one of those today. Yeah. I watched you talk about your biggest moments in your life. Yeah. I basically made a YouTube video about everything I have an opinion on. And then I ran out of – I was like, okay, I already made one on meditation. I already made one on fasting.

46:33Justin Kan:I made one on how to start a startup or how to pitch your startup or whatever. And then I ran out of topics and now I haven't really made them very often in a couple, couple years. Will you tell us about ayahuasca? Oh yeah. Yeah. It was on one of your like important life moments, right? Yeah. Yeah. I, um, so, you know, I learned a lot about myself through all these startups and I've considered myself like really blessed to have had this journey with like being able to kind to do all these amazing things and like really learn about my, like put myself in the, this uncomfortable moments, like startups are the ultimate, like uncomfortable moment to stretch yourself and learn.

47:15Justin Kan:And I remember after starting Twitch, I was like, it didn't feel like enough. You know, I'd always thought, Oh, if we just like, I think a lot of startup founders are like, if I just get to this milestone, then I'll finally be good. You know? And that's like, first it's like, if I just get my product launch, I'll be like able to take a breath. And it's like, if I get a series, a seed, you know, if I get into Y Combinator, if I get a series A, if I get a series B, if I get this customer deal, if I sell my company. And I had went through that whole journey for like seven, eight years. And then we sold the company and I was still like, I was like happy for like a month.

47:47And then I was like, well, now, now what, now what am I supposed

47:51Justin Kan:to do? So ended up going to Y Combinator, but that didn't feel like I like to be more hands-on, You know, ultimately I like need to do things myself. And then I was, then I went to, um, then I started another company at Atrium and this company, it was like a legal services company. It's like, I only started because I thought it was a good business idea, but it wasn't like my passion. Right. I just thought this could be a big company. You know, I was like looking at all my friends who were more successful, the Brian Armstrong's of the world or Brian Chesky or Drew or whatever, and being like, Oh, I should have done better.

48:22Justin Kan:I can like make more, build a bigger company or whatever. And I was like always dissatisfied. and so that was my motivator, and then randomly a friend invited me to ayahuasca, and I, you know, just as I've described, it's like, I'll try anything once, you know, just to see what happens, and I'd heard about it, didn't really know much. He described it as doing a thousand hours of therapy in one night, and a lot of people would hear that and be like, I'm good, but I heard that, And I was like, all right, like YOLO, let's, I'd love to try it. And so a month later, he invited me to, um, this ceremony, ayahuasca ceremony that we're doing at this house in Big Sur.

49:05Justin Kan:And I remember showing up. First of all, I brought my wife who, it was funny because she had no idea what this was. She was like, Hey, we haven't seen each other. We've been, I've been traveling the last couple of weekends. Like we haven't seen each other for a while. Like let's hang out this weekend. And I'm like, Oh, well, I want to go to this ayahuasca ceremony. Why don't you just come? and so without context she ended up coming and we show up there and walk in this house and um nothing no idea what to expect the first thing i saw i remember was this guy who's now a good friend a matthew um who's kind of like a white stanford educated kid and he was i had this like hipster mustache and i was like he was wearing a robin hood hoodie like the stock trading app because that was like friends of his and he was like one of the facilitators and i was like this is some Silicon Valley shit right here.

49:54Justin Kan:Still, this is Silicon Valley. And he, you know, so we're sitting there. We're all kind of gathered in this house. And they're like, you know, William, the shaman, comes out. And he was saying, like, we're going to do the ceremony in Spanish. He didn't speak any English from Peru. And we're like, okay, what does that mean? That's no context for any of this. And so we sit around and end up one by one. You go up and it looks at you, kind of eyeballs you, and then pours a couple of eyeballs and hands it to you and drink this thing. It's kind of like the worst jungle cough syrup I've ever had. I kind of choked it down, sit down, and then they turn out all the lights, and we're just sitting in the dark in a circle for 45 minutes.

50:43And I'm like, what's going to happen? nothing happens that's too much anticipation 45 yeah i know i know it was intense i'm like is

50:53Justin Kan:anything gonna happen in the dark we're sitting in the dark and then at a certain point they start doing icaros which are these traditional chants um and they're doing these chants it's supposed to bring out the medicine and i'm just sitting there nothing happens and then after about 40 minutes of that 45 minutes of that they say hey if anybody wants to come up and get a second cup of medicine, you're welcome to over opening the second cup and you can come up. And I remember someone had said earlier, like before it started, they were like, you know, there's going to be a ceremony and they can have multiple cups.

51:27Justin Kan:And like, if you could even conceive of standing up, walking to the front and getting a cup, then you can have, you should have another one. Because you're not, you're not, you haven't had enough of anything. Yeah. You haven't had enough. Okay. So I just like jump up. I'm like, and I'm the first one at the front of the room. And then through the Matthews translating it from Spanish, William is like, how does it feel? And I was like, I don't feel anything yet.

51:58Justin Kan:That's a rookie move. He looks at me and he pours a giant second cup. It's like, boom. And I drink it, sit down. And then five minutes later, I'm like, start coming up super hard. And I was like, oh, no, that was for sure the first one. Because like, there's no way it had gone into my system. Oh, no. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, no. Basically, I went into this crazy second dimension or whatever, where I'm like, yeah, I felt like Tron. The room is completely blacked out, right? Dark. And I felt like everything was lit up. I'm flying through this alien space city where, like, everything's lit up.

52:42Christine's still there, right?

52:44Justin Kan:Yeah. She's in another dimension, though. She's standing next to me, like, five feet away. But, like, she could have been in Mexico, like, or on the other side of the planet. I was like, this is – I am only worried about myself right now. And so then I'm, you know, I'm having these visions of people in my life. And I remember my dad appearing in front of me. And I'm screaming at him. I'm like, why aren't you proud of me? I've done so much stuff. Like what is going, you know, for like an hour. And, um, and then there's this other moment where I remember I'm holding this bucket and, uh, ayahuasca is a purgative sometimes.

53:22Justin Kan:So I'm like, I felt like I'm, I'm pulling this bucket. I'm like throwing up in this bucket. And it's like my stomach, esophagus, mouth, and this bucket are one organism designed to just pump liquid this way. And I'm like, oh my God. I felt like I was so sick and I was going to die out of the chaos. It's a crazy story. I remember Matthew came over and he touched me. I'm like kind of yelling, rocking to myself, like vocalizing a lot. And people are mostly like sitting there quietly. And I'm like freaking out, having like a full-on meltdown. And so he comes over and he touches my arm and he's like, hey, Justin, we're worried about you making a lot of noise.

54:03Justin Kan:how are you doing? And I was like, I don't think I can do this. Like I can this, I don't know if I'm going to make it. I think I'm going to die. And he's like, Hey, you're a strong person. Take a deep breath and be calm. And I took this breath like, and I went, it was like the, it felt like the first breath that I'd taken in a thousand years. And I went from the worst I'd ever felt in my life to immediately calm and centered. And I'll always remember that moment because it taught me that no matter what's happening in the outside world, there's like inside your natural experience is calm. It's like nothing.

54:43Justin Kan:It's inert. There's nothing happening. You're just observing all of these different, you know, phenomenon in your mind. And it was relevant because a year later, I ended up breaking both my arms in a bicycle accident. Like I flipped I shattered my left elbow and I broke my right elbow. Oh, my God. As I was like lying there in the street and then in the ambulances or taking me to the hospital, I was like perfectly fine. I'm like calm. And I was grateful. I was like I'm just – I'm alive and like I can survive anything. Did you remember the ayahuasca experience? Yeah, and I went back to that experience.

55:16It was like just be calm.

55:18Justin Kan:You have the ability to be calm no matter what's happening in the world. So back to ayahuasca though. I wake up. At a certain point, they're like we're going to close this ceremony. Please sit up. And I'm like, there's no way I can sit up. I'm lying in a fetal position. Sweat has soaked through all my clothes. My arm's in the wrong hole of my jacket. I've been trying to put it on. So it was like, but I didn't have the like capability of figuring out like how to put on a jacket. So I just like had it wrapped on myself because ayahuasca can make you cold and hot, like have temperature regulation difficulties.

55:52Justin Kan:Right. And so I'm like, kind of like freezing cold in this like fetal position. and they're, they close the ceremony, which means that like they stop, everybody's getting food and stuff. I'm just like lying there like, yo, that was crazy. And Christine also had a similar like crazy one. We get up hours later, everyone's like gone to bed. We're like, get up, grab some bread and coconut water. We'd been fasting for, you know, since the noon or whatever. So, and then we go to this tent, we're staying in like a glamp on this property, going to this tent and we're like why do people do this we need to go home right now like we should get in our car and drive back to san francisco now but it was 5 a.m so we're like that's crazy because you know three hours or whatever we should just sleep then tomorrow we're just gonna get in and we're gonna go and um they were we wake up we're like feeling better you know a little bit better they had prepared this like really beautiful spread uh food from big store bakery and we're like all right we'll stay for lunch it would be like messed up to like not stay for lunch so we're at lunch and then people are like hey you know everyone's different every ceremony is different you know you need to do a couple in a row because we had been planned to do two nights and so they do it one night and then you do it the next night like you know you should stay and so over the course of lunch we're like kind of talked into like staying again and so or like stay and i remember that feeling that next night we're like do the same thing sit drink it and this time it like starts to hit more quickly so like in 30 minutes or so i start to come up and the whole uh room is kind of like glowing green like night vision goggles like zero dark 30 like yeah and i was like why did i do this again like what did i why did i make this decision Why are you doing this again?

57:46Justin Kan:Yeah, this is insane. So that one was crazy too. Next day though, I feel incredible. I felt incredible. And I was like, wow, I feel amazing. Why? How did you feel amazing? Like why? Like physically, I felt like there was like, I'd gone through this deep catharsis. It felt like I had, yeah, like let go of something. And I remember that in the months after, weeks and months after I came to realize from that vision I saw with my dad, I'm screaming at my dad, why aren't you proud of me yet? I realized what that symbolizes. First of all, my dad is a great dad and he, you know, was, this is not, I didn't even know I had any of these feelings, but really he was representative of my like friends and peers and my parents.

58:30Justin Kan:When I was a kid, I didn't feel like I got the approval that I needed from the outside world. And every decision I'd ever made in my adult life to start a company, to try to be a famous founder, to make all these social media things to like try to care what people thought about me was all because I really wanted the approval of the external world. And that was like driving my, the driving force of my life subconsciously. I wouldn't have been able to articulate it before, but I realized that about myself. And that was a deep source of my own unhappiness in that I, you know, thought if I sell my company for a billion dollars or I have another unicorn or whatever, then I'll finally be happy.

59:06Justin Kan:And I went through that whole process and I realized two things. One is that I could love and accept that part of myself, even though it's not that attractive to admit that I just really care what other people think about me. It's like, I can accept that. And it helped me, you know, it helped me become successful, helped me have all these amazing experiences, even have the experience of doing ayahuasca, number one. And then number two is it helped. I didn't have to show up that way in the world if I didn't want to anymore. And so I could show up in a different way. And for me, the consequence has been realizing that like people will like me, not for my successes or whatever, but if I just show up as a good friend, as somebody who's like genuinely interested in curious and on the people around me, people love me for who I am, number one.

59:53Justin Kan:And number two is like, I can do things for my own intrinsic reasons, you know? And it's funny because a lot of people are like, hey, you were starting companies and investing before ayahuasca, and now you're starting companies and investing. So like, did anything change? But it's like the place that I'm doing it from, it's like, now when I'm starting companies, it's not because I want to get to some outcome. I'm like, oh, it has to be a billion dollars. It has to be$10 billion. Now it's like, I'm doing it because the remote things I liked about entrepreneurship, right, which is like learning about new things.

1:00:22Justin Kan:I love mentoring other people. I love coming up with ideas and like applying my creative mind in business. And so I just try to do things from the intrinsic reasons now. And I find myself much happier. You know, the test I always use, which is actually what I advise other people often on is what if after today, if like everything I did today, like all the companies are advising or whatever I did amounted to like no money, they're all unsuccessful and no one ever found out about them. What I feel like I wasted today. Or would I just like, was it a good, still good use of time? And if the answer is yes, then I know I'm doing things right.

1:01:01Justin Kan:If the answer is no, then I'm like, I shouldn't be doing those things. That's a very insightful metric. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we love you no matter what. But it sounds like a very like, you know, positive way to approach life, you know. Do you think a therapist could have gotten you to the same place? Or do you, I'm just curious. Yeah, I think for sure. I, I, um, therapy is like, I went to a therapist for years too, especially at times when my companies were failing and I was like, how do I motivate myself? Or I felt like burnout. I'm a proponent of all of the, um, self-discovery modalities, you know, whether it's, um, like therapy or, um, you know, ayahuasca or meditation or there's so many different things.

1:01:47Justin Kan:And it wasn't like so much that I just did ayahuasca and then like was healed or something. It was more like I learned this insight and then I had to change things in my life to show up in a way that where I was like really happy with how I was showing up in the world. I love it. Maybe this is a good place to end. I think so. I think this is a very positive note. Yeah. Well, thank you guys. You know, you changed my life for sure. I loved like just sort of catching up with you because I feel like I saw you really briefly at the retreat last summer. I saw you really briefly at the 20th reunion because I was on like planet Mars.

1:02:24There's like a million people there.

1:02:26Justin Kan:There's like thousands and thousands of people. So it's – I like miss seeing you. Me too. Like I said before, you were such a fun coworker. Interacting and doing interviews. I was like Justin is so much fun. It was – I have only fond memories of all that. That was fun. I loved being at YC. There were so many great moments of it. Definitely good times. Well, thank you for coming on the show and sharing all your stories. And hopefully I'll see you around San Francisco when I'm there next. Yeah. This is going to be a great episode. Love it. All right. Thanks, guys. Bye. Bye. Justin Kahn. I love his voice.

1:03:09His voice is the best. And he's such a great guy. I was saying this, you know, but he was such a fun coworker. I have really fond memories of working with Justin. Fascinating hearing about all the ayahuasca stuff. I know, like, I know zero about it, just so you know. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love how he approaches talking about it. Like, he's not, he's just, he's an open book. He'll tell you anything. Like, it doesn't matter if it's, you know, I don't think he gets embarrassed. No. Or gets weird about anything. He's just like, this is what happened. This is, and he just like, he's, I just, it's so honest.

1:03:46It's like, I love it. And like, just as he mentioned, like there's 15 plus startups that he has on his, on his resume. It's just, that's like, it's amazing to just sort of embrace entrepreneurship like that and just keep like figuring out what, try to make something people want, figure out what you like to, you know, what you like to make, what you're interested in. like, I think he really has a good formula. He and Emmett were kind of like the purest data point of funding people who are young to sort of do what they were interested in. Because, you know, young people like that, kind of 23 year olds or whatever, embody future demand of things without knowing it, you know, sort of subconsciously.

1:04:34Well, and also, I think Justin, in particular, has the skill of knowing like how to hit on cultural moments. Yeah. So like start of social media, start of influencing the fact that he embraced, you know, he was telling the Snapchat story. Like he was always like someone who was, to me, felt like he was always there first, you know? Yeah. And that's a gift. I love it. It's going to be such a great episode. Yeah, he's great. All right, C. Levy, I will talk to you the next time. Okay, bye. Bye.

1:05:09to the AIDS