87: What it Takes to Sell Your Company to Amazon for $970m with Justin Kan from Twitch.tv

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Justin Kan doesn’t come off as the type who lives for the spotlight. Which is funny, because at one point he live-streamed his life, 24/7 for the whole world to see, for months.

That may seem like an unlikely path to a billion-dollar sale, but in fact, the early experiment in the world of live video got Kan and his partner Emmett Shear part of the way there. That unconventional level of dedication and curiosity is a testament to how these two have been willing to dive into the opportunities before them, leading them through a flurry of tech business successes.

Kan’s CV speaks for itself: He co-founded hit companies Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam, Exec, and is now a partner at startup incubator Y Combinator, which invests millions annually into tech companies.

A native of Seattle’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, Kan was not an obvious candidate for someone who would succeed in tech. He has a certain natural charisma, but studied physics and philosophy at Yale, neither of which is necessarily a match for a career in startups. However, he received a crash course in entrepreneurship from an early age by watching his mother run her own real estate business, and it seems to have stuck.

From there, Kan experienced his share of losses and ridiculously spectacular wins, developing a series of products that define the chapters of his fascinating career in tech startups.

In this interview you will learn:

• The exact process of coming up with, developing and selling your startup idea
• When to pivot and the signs to look out for
• What startup accelerators like Y Combinator are looking out for
• How to hustle harder than everyone else around you and gain the competitive advantage
• Why you should bet on the founders and not the startup itself and the wins that come with it
• & much more!