Is It a Vice, Not a Virtue, to Start a Company?

Justin Kan is an entrepreneur and investor best known as the co-founder of Twitch. In 2006, Kan launched the live video service Justin.tv, a company that started when he strapped a camera to his head and streamed his life to the internet 24/7. Over the next 8 years, he and his co-founders turned the business into Twitch, which ultimately sold to Amazon in 2014 for $970 million. Kan has also founded half a dozen other companies, raising more than $500 million in venture capital, and invested in numerous startups, including Reddit, Cruise Automation, Bird, and Rippling. In this conversation with Stanford adjunct lecturer Ravi Belani, Kan discusses the highs and lows of his life in startups, and explores what both success and failure have taught him about building entrepreneurial resilience and finding satisfaction.