About Kevin

Kevin Chou's entrepreneurial journey began in 2006 when he co-founded Kabam, a leading mobile gaming company. As CEO, he guided Kabam from a startup to a global powerhouse, achieving over $400 million in annual revenue and serving more than 500 million players worldwide. Under his leadership, Kabam secured partnerships with major entertainment brands like Disney, Marvel, and Warner Brothers. In 2017, Kabam was sold in parts to Netmarble, 21st Century Fox, and GAEA, generating nearly $1 billion in value. Following Kabam's success, Chou ventured into esports by founding Gen.G in 2017, an organization bridging Asia and North America. Gen.G owns several successful esports teams, including the Seoul Dynasty in the Overwatch League and the 2017 League of Legends world champions. In 2018, Chou expanded into the blockchain space, co-founding Rally, a platform focused on empowering content creators and their communities. He served as CEO of Rally for two years, during which time the company's market cap grew to over $3 billion. Chou's entrepreneurial spirit led him to found Forte in 2019, a blockchain platform for the gaming industry. He initially served as CEO before transitioning to the role of chairman. Most recently, in 2021, Chou co-founded SuperLayer, a crypto venture studio aimed at building easy-to-use consumer crypto products to bring the next 100 million people into the crypto ecosystem

Chou has been recognized for his achievements. He was named in Fortune's 40 Under 40, CNN's Smartest People in Tech, and Business Insider's Silicon Valley Top 100 lists. In 2019, he was honored as UC Berkeley's Alumnus of the Year. Chou remains actively involved with UC Berkeley, serving on the Board of Trustees for the UC Berkeley Foundation. He and his wife, Connie Chen, made the largest gift ever received by UC Berkeley from alumni under 40 to fund the Connie & Kevin Chou Hall at Berkeley Haas.

Q&A w/ Kevin

In this conversation with Kevin, he shares his initial motivation for starting his first company, along with tips and insights into what makes a successful founder and business.

886: Why were you motivated to start your own company?

Kevin: “I've always cared about financial independence and making enough money so that I could do whatever I wanted without having to work for other people or companies I didn't want to. I thought doing a startup was a way to do that. I also really enjoyed the small company feel; I can talk to the customers, I know who’s making the product, I know who’s making the decisions. I really liked the culture - I feel like I’m making an impact and I understand how the work I’m doing today fits into the mission of the overall company.”

886: How do you find product-market fit? What’s the secret sauce?

Kevin: “Finding product market fit is the hardest part about founding a company. There’s no magic to product-market fit: founders just need to keep trying, building their expertise and accumulating experience, and if it takes off it takes off. There is no real metric by which to measure product-market fit, it just feels right.”

886: What does success look like to you?

Kevin: “If you start a business for financial reasons and you achieve financial success, you need to replace that financial reason with something else that you care about. For me, building a new company and products is a creative process. Something I find a lot of joy in is starting with an idea and taking it and building a product, and then seeing how that product impacts people’s lives - there’s the human aspect to it. There’s the feeling of ‘Okay, I created a company that employed a lot of people and allowed them to buy their first house, make their first downpayment, start their lives…’”

886: What are some characteristics of successful founders?

Kevin: “The biggest thing is that these founders know how to build a big enough company that investors want to invest in. They follow the news (even just people on Twitter), meeting successful ex-founders, and networking with and engaging experienced individuals, and carefully considering feedback.”

“The one thing that I find more common than most things is that the founder has generally overcome some significant challenges in their lives, often unrelated to business. They were immigrants and had to deal with the challenges of being immigrants, they had to take care of their family because their parents died, or they have these amazing stories… they are just generally not normal people.”

Reading Recommendations:

• The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz
• TechMeme
• Hacker News by Y Combinator

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