I co-founded and was the CEO of three startups, starting with V-Extreme in 1995, where we developed low bandwidth streaming video technology that was sold to Microsoft for $75 million in 1997.

When Netflix started in 1997, we focused on customer needs and recognized that the DVD rental model would eventually transition to streaming as the internet improved.

We made our revenue by leveraging our consumer network to offer corporations a more cost-effective way to communicate with their employees through streaming.

The early days of the internet involved connecting to bulletin boards via modems, where communities formed around shared interests, including programming and gaming.

I invested in Justin.tv, which aimed to livestream everything, and while it struggled initially, it eventually pivoted to Twitch, focusing on video game streaming, which became a huge success.

My first company was a digital media platform that gathered thought leaders to contribute expert articles, focusing on personal growth and development.

Back in 2005, when YouTube was founded by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim, broadband was just emerging in the United States, and it wasn't clear that the internet could even support video, let alone at the massive scale we take for granted today. YouTube was a longshot idea, and initially, almost no one noticed it.

After launching Justin.tv, we quickly realized that while we gained initial excitement and media coverage, we struggled with viewer retention and decided to pivot to a tech company that opened the platform for everyone instead of trying to create entertainment ourselves.

In 2005, it became common to see people huddled around laptops watching the latest viral videos, marking a dawning era of the internet, with videos like a Saturday Night Live clip and a Nike ad reaching a million views, while we also realized that YouTube was consuming a significant portion of the internet's bandwidth, a technical achievement that many didn't fully understand at the time.