Justin Kan is a serial founder and investor. In 2007 he co-founded Justin.tv, the livestreaming platform he launched by broadcasting his own life around the clock from a camera strapped to his head. Four years later, the company pivoted into Twitch, which Amazon acquired for $970 million in 2014. He has since founded a string of companies. Today, Justin co-runs the venture firm Goat Capital while building Rye, an API for AI-driven commerce, and Stash, a “Shopify for games.” Having traded a functional drinking habit for sobriety, and a relentless need to prove himself for a more joyful kind of ambition, he is unusually candid about what selling a company for nearly a billion dollars did and didn’t fix. In our conversation, Justin traces the turbulence he sees coming across economics, politics, technology, and more.
Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts
We discuss
The “insane backlash” coming as AI cuts white-collar jobs
Why he’s betting on a Mamdani-style president in 2028
What’s next for education when “~25% of Harvard post-grads are unemployed”
Why there’s a “moral imperative” to have kids
Fixing America’s “cost disease”
Conspiracy Corner: Jedi Powers, and AGI gods
Timestamps
00:00 Introduction
01:23 Why selling Twitch for $970M didn’t heal him
03:50 What ayahuasca revealed about Justin, and getting sober
06:20 The coming wave of AI job dislocation 07:53 His bet: a Mamdani-style president in 2028
08:19 Does the American experiment survive AGI?
09:54 What’s next for education when “~25% of Harvard post-grads are unemployed”
13:10 What people get wrong about the Luddites
14:00 The French Revolution parallel he sees today
16:07 Can democracy survive this media environment?
18:00 Could AI agents glue society back together?
21:07 The one-way door of automating cognitive work
24:54 Robots, gain-of-function, and aging populations
26:39 The moral case for having kids
27:47 Are we the woolly mammoths?
30:18 The housing theory of everything
32:58 NIMBYs and the zucchinis
34:30 Conspiracy Corner: Jedi Powers and AGI gods
