Selling to Jeff Bezos and catching a Shark
TQD: Issue 05
Welcome to The Quest Digest 👋🏼
You’ll receive exclusive insights from Justin Kan 🧠, opportunities to work with us 📣, make useful connections with our community 🌎 , and news / announcements about The Quest!
Know anyone that would love to join over 18,000 smart, curious, and interesting listeners?
In this issue:
An exciting announcement for our upcoming guest (hint: 🦈 💵 🏀)
Justin shares his lessons from selling Twitch to Jeff Bezos 💰
Deep-dive feature into one of our Quest Fellows who runs a psychedelic mushrooms company! Oh, and she’s got a job for you. 🍄
Over the past few weeks, I’ve had the pleasure of chatting with our Quest community members and Fellows on Discord. I’m confident in saying that our channel is home to some of the most interesting and driven people you’ll ever met. These are stories, knowledge, and lessons you won’t find anywhere else.
Do you have FOMO yet? Don’t worry! We’re still rolling out 👾 Discord and 🏠 Clubhouse invites!
Shotuout to our Quest Fellows, who are absolutely killing it:
Asking great questions to our guests during live interviews
Running insightful weekly Clubhouse conversations and masterclasses in our Quest Clubhouse room
All while running their startups and working on other projects!
What’s new on The Quest?
🦈 Coming up…
Guest announcements for the coming week are usually left until the end of our issues.
But I couldn’t help myself this time - I’m too excited.
Mark. Cuban.
Billionaire entrepreneur, Shark Tank investor, owner of the NBA’s Dallas Mavericks, and media mogul. Episode drops Tuesday 16 Feb. 9AM PST.
Mark your calendars!
💵 Justin’s lessons from selling Twitch to Amazon
We ended last week on a bit of a cliff-hanger - what exactly happened after Justin and Emmett walked away from a $1 billion deal with Google?
It wasn’t long before the other big dogs in Sillicon Valley caught wind of Google’s interest in Twitch, and they all wanted a piece. Twitch started getting offers left and right from some big players, including Mark 'the Zucc’ Zuckerberg. They even received an offer from Yahoo! for $1.25 billion.
Justin and Emmett eventually received an offer from Amazon for $970 million, to which they quickly agreed. Years of hard work and months of paperwork finally paid off on August 25th 2014 when Justin woke up in a pool of water at Burning Man. Desperately searching for a phone signal, he received a text message that would change his life forever: the deal went through.
Here’s what he learned:
Don’t get too wrapped up in selling your company
Justin and his partners tried to sell Twitch three separate times, and the deal fell through on each occassion. The outcome isn’t always in your control, and it doesn’t define your worth as an individual. Don’t get too attached to results even in life. Detaching yourself from outcomes will make you feel free.
Equity is a gamble
A deal could result in a life changing payout, or you could see it fall straight into the crushing void of nothingness. Only make this gamble if you can afford it. This usually means being young and having lesser opportunity cost.
It’s a trap!
Don’t get caught in the endless loop of thinking that accumulating more and more will bring you happiness. Justin wasn’t any happier after closing the deal - he had enough to live before, and he just had more after. Nothing really changed in his day to day. After a certain point, no amount of external accumulation (money, fame will fix your internal struggles. Peace comes from finding intrinsic motivation, not from endlessly chasing things!
Oh, and in case you were wondering, Justin shares the first thing he spent his money on after the Amazon deal.
Actual security footage of Justin walking out of a Prada outlet in Italy:
Justin’s hair looks so much better there, he should definitely go blonde again. Brb, going to watch Clueless again.
Fellows Feature: Stefany Nieto aka The Mushroom Queen 🍄
What's your origin story?
My origin story goes back to Venezuela. I lived there until I was 5 years old and then country hopped to Trinidad & Tobago, USA (Virginia), and then to Canada where I now reside. Growing up, my parents separated, which left my mom, brother, and I to fend for ourselves. My single, immigrant mother took the first job that paid a decent salary to put food on the table. My brother and her both took on many hardships. Our household was one walking on eggshells, but it brought us together.
Despite having set my eyes on climbing the corporate ladder through business school, I fell in love with social enterprises and impact challenges while beekeeping with African killer bees in Kenya. I developed a social venture, Green Iglu, in my second year of university that builds geodesic dome greenhouses in the most remote parts of Canada, including the Arctic. Our structure has won several awards, including the Google Impact Challenge. This 7-year long journey has gifted me extraordinary experiences and it has taught me more about myself than I could imagine.
During COVID-19 as I saw the world changing at a rapid pace. I reflect a ton on what I wanted in my future and so I pivoted. I recently joined Gwella, a mushroom company, as a co-founder and COO. As a psychedelic and adaptogenic fan, it was a perfect fit. I’m working on Gwella and Green Iglu full-time, and I teach entrepreneurship to low-income women and newcomers to Canada on a weekly basis.
Where do you want to go from here?
Up.
I really just want to continue to strive for my own personal happiness. I’ve learned that it’s equal parts work-life balance. This means self-care, fostering good relationships with my family, friends, and partner, and making life for people across the globe more liveable. In Gwella’s case, I think psychedelics and mushrooms, can achieve that through both day-to-day adaptogens but also through meaningful and intentional psychedelic trips. The whole dilution of the ego and understanding of your place in this world among our planet, society, and personal relationships is something that I think everyone should be able to experience.
What’s your purpose?
I think everyone’s purpose changes continuously, as people tend to do. My purpose for now is around accessible psychedelics and finding/sharing balance along the entrepreneurship journey. Particularly as a women-identifying entrepreneur, I find balance is often forgotten or pushed aside as we work tirelessly to be taken seriously with our work.
You can connect with Stefany on LinkedIn, our Discord Channel, and on Clubhouse & Twitter @stefanyvie.
Gwella is hiring!
Stefany is looking for a full-time Brand Manager @ Gwella.
About Gwella:
Gwella’s vision is to be humanity’s first step towards modern mushrooms. As a company rooted in the wellness and betterment of humans, we focus on adaptogenic, medicinal and psychedelic mushrooms that optimize three critical aspects of wellbeing: Mind, Body, and Spirit.
The role would be to help develop a brand strategy for our various products. You will oversee a wide array of business functions including branding, communication channels, product development, marketing spend, online and offline promotions, and market research.
You will often conduct market research on existing and new brands. This involves finding relieving surveys and polling demographics, determining the demand for products, and other relevant field research.
Click here to apply on the Gwella website.
Our community is filled with amazing people like Stefany! Apply to be a Quest Fellow for exclusive access to our community, and connect with these trailblazers.
