The Quest Pod with Justin Kan

I started The Quest to share the stories and lessons that I wish I had heard 15 years ago. Building and selling Twitch was an inflection point for me in the past decade. I worked my ass off, made money, took vacations and felt like I was on top of the world. I blew past the goals I had set for myself in the beginning.  But what was fascinating was that while I felt more accomplished, I wasn’t any happier. I was just holding on to more things. The desire to go bigger and make more nagged constantly at me. After a year and a half at Y Combinator, I left and set out to build another company in the most mercenary way I can think of, then lost millions when it fell apart.  On this episode, I reflect on the trap of the hedonic treadmill. It led me down a dangerous path chasing material possessions and peer approval - things I thought would fulfil me, but only made me feel perpetually dissatisfied.  🎥 Watch The Quest with video: https://www.youtube.com/TheQuestwithJustinKan🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🎧 Transcripts (soon): https://justin.quest​🌎 Everything Quest: https://listen.justin.quest​

If social media is a game, Josh Richards would have won it before learning how to drive. He isn't just doing the numbers: on top of 24 million followers on TikTok, Josh co-founded an energy drink company, built a creator house and made his name in venture capital as one of the most watched Gen Z VCs.  But there's much more to his story. Having streamed 4 hours daily for 2 years on a platform that eventually died, Josh grew up knowing the career he chose could end any minute. Though only 19, he has learned his share of life lessons that with a great platform comes great responsibility - despite not having even made it to prom.  In this conversation we talk about moving to LA, breaking into venture, proving his worth as a board member, and helping shape the creators universe. You can find Josh Richards on TikTok, Instagram and Twitter.  🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🎧 Transcripts (soon): https://justin.quest​🌎 Everything Quest: https://listen.justin.quest​

Born and raised in Germany, Laura Behrens Wu came to Silicon Valley at 22 to intern at a Y Combinator-backed startup. In just 4 years, she decided to 'figure out shipping' and built Shippo, an E-commerce software startup which raised more than $57 million in funding and now serves one-third of businesses exporting from the U.S.  I met Laura in 2017 and witnessed her incredible growth from a YC intern to a WTO speaker alongside Jack Ma. As the CEO of a 170-person company, she’s had big expectations to live up to. Her struggles as an entrepreneur remind me of the early days of Justin.tv, and her story breaking into the Valley as an outsider is a testament to all young founders worldwide hoping to make it big. 🙏 Shoutout to Asian Hustle Network! We live-streamed this interview with our first community partner Asian Hustle Network, a 70K-strong community empowering Asian entrepreneurial voices. You can check out their podcast here.  🎥 Watch this episode with video: https://youtu.be/Ew9bmI5aWLc🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🎧 Transcripts (soon): https://justin.quest​🌎 Everything Quest: https://listen.justin.quest​

Mark Cuban needs no introduction. With a net worth of $4.3 billion, he walks around and things just sort themselves out. I have always looked up to Mark as a pioneer in Internet streaming: he was one of the first investors we cold-emailed when building Justin.tv. He did not invest - we were too small for shark food!  A lot of things changed since then, yet Mark managed to always stay ahead of the curve. His empire grew beyond sports and media into pharmacy, networks and blockchains. He became a father of 3 and considered running for president. I've always wondered how he does it all and I'm very excited to share our conversation with you all.  🎥 Watch this episode with video: https://youtu.be/4twNOeiZ3XM🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🌎 Check out our website: https://justinkan.club​

Carole Robin changed my life. She is my leadership coach and taught the most popular elective at Stanford Graduate School of Business, Interpersonal Dynamics (nicknamed Touchy Feely) for 17 years. Her T-group has helped many of my founder friends, including Jason Tan and Dan Kan (my brother), grow into great leaders at multi-million dollar companies. I most admire Carole for her vulnerability-first leadership. Going through her program, Leaders In Tech, helped me learn to label my emotions, and gave me the vocabulary to connect and relate to others without a mask. This is my core mission at The Quest, and I am super excited about her new book 'Connect', where she shares her teachings with the world.Connect with Carole on LinkedIn and purchase her book here (releasing today)!Feedback? DM or @ us on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook or LinkedInStrapped for time? Sign up to The Quest Digest to get a takeaways summary!

Emmett Shear is my co-founder and the CEO of Twitch, the world's biggest live-streaming platform. Growing up, Emmett and I never lived more than a mile and a half away from each other. We've always wanted to build things: from dreaming of our own Scientology-like religion to launching an experiment with NASA into space (which we actually did as high school students). Many of these experiments failed, one turned out different - and we sold it to Amazon for a billion dollars.  On this episode, we reminisce on how the past 10 years went. We talk about writing web applications, building Kiko and Justin.tv, what we learned as investors, and whether capitalism works. Being a CEO is challenging - it's especially great to hear Emmett share some of his learnings, many of which I resonate with deeply. 🎥 Watch this episode with video: https://youtu.be/XCzPh-nq4bM🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🎧 Transcripts (soon): https://justin.quest​🌎 Everything Quest: https://listen.justin.quest​

Bryce Hall is the star that Justin.tv (and later Twitch) had hoped to create. At 21 years old, he is a social media phenom with 25M+ followers across platforms such as TikTok and YouTube. Bryce's rise to superstardom started with a yearning for connection: he started live-streaming after being bullied in high school, and in 6 years took over all the headlines and now lives 24/7 in his haters' head, rent-free. I knew Bryce from appearing on his podcast, Capital University. I loved his determination and hustle, and invited him to come on The Quest. We talked about making viral content, building a fanbase through the demise of Vine and YouNow, founding Sway House and Ani Energy, and finding TikTok hacks. Bryce is our youngest guest on The Quest, and this was a great crash course on Gen Z for me. 🎥 Watch this episode with video: https://youtu.be/OViNnS2r-20🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🌎 Check out our website: https://justinkan.club

Hi guys! The Quest team here. We are supposed to be dropping an episode today on politics, philanthropy and psychedelics. However, that episode is too good that we want to spend a bit more time polishing it up (it's recorded outside, so the audio is not as smooth).We want to instead launch the first of a mini-series we are doing: Justin's Quest University. Since many of us are attending university via Zoom nowadays, why can't we do it over podcast? We've booked you a 1:1 slot with Justin talking about a Questie-favourite topic: forming habits. In 10 short minutes, listen to Justin's summary of Atomic Habits, a New York Times Best-Seller by James Clear, and his tips on implementing James' tips in your own lives (from home gyms to keto). We hope you enjoy this short tutorial, and will see you again when the semester starts! 🎥 Watch The Quest with video: https://www.youtube.com/TheQuestwithJustinKan🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🌎 Everything Quest: https://justinkan.club

Jaeson Ma is the most interesting person in the world. He is celebrated as one of the most prominent Asian media moguls of our time, as the founder of East West Ventures, co-founder of 88rising and Stampede Ventures, as well as the Principal of Triller.But Jaeson is much more: he defies every definition of what the road to success should look like. After selling drugs as a kid, he found Christ, then worked for MC Hammer and later became a missionary and occasional exorcist. He's also recorded an EP with Bruno Mars and led prayers for Jeremy Lin on his first big night before #Linsanity broke out.Our editor had a hard time choosing what stories to leave out, so we've decided to give you the full Jaeson Ma experience. This is the wildest conversation I've had at The Quest, and I hope you get to enjoy it as much as I did.🎥 Watch this episode with video: https://youtu.be/VcfrVZSy29s🍎 iTunes: https://apple.co/3lU3fZs🎵 Spotify: https://spoti.fi/3srzJwq✍️ Newsletter: https://thequestpod.substack.com🌎 Check out our website: https://justinkan.club

LA has always been a tale of two cities. Prophet grew up in the less fortunate one, and spent his formative years in a prision cell. At 16, he served 6 years behind bars, with 9 months in solitary confinement for refusing to stab an inmate. Luckily, he never lost his soul. Instead, Prophet became an engineer at 22, ran for office at 26 and founded Treehouse, LA's first co-living startup project, at 32. He made it out of the hood - then came back, to build communities, using concrete. For this, he was invited to join First Lady at the State of the Union address in 2015. I want to kick off 2021 with this story because it is such an incredible journey, and it shows what's possible with hard work, dedication and patience: you get to grow roses, from concrete. P.S. I did an AMA this week! We've just launched the Quest Fellows application too: you can apply at justin.quest. Link to AMA: here. Quest Fellows application: here.