Kevin Chou

Chou, the only child of Taiwanese immigrants, grew up in Moorpark, California, a suburb of Los Angeles; his father worked as a scientist for the Department of Defense. He recalls being “bored and lonely” as a child and spending much of his time playing video games: “I had no friends. I had video games.”⁠[1][2]

Chou graduated from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, BerkeleyUniversity of California, BerkeleyThe University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) is a campus of the University of California system; the University of California was founded in 1868 through a merger of two institutions and moved to Berkeley, California, in 1873.Open the full entry, in 2002 with a B.A. in business administration, magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa; he was able to attend Berkeley after a financial aid administrator restructured his aid package.⁠[2][1]

After graduating he worked as an investment banker at Deutsche Bank and was laid off in 2003 during the recession; he then took six months off, spent a year at a consumer data startup and two years at a venture capital firm in Menlo Park.⁠[1]

In 2006 Chou started the social site Watercooler with Holly Liu, Michael Li and Wayne Chan, serving as its founding CEO. Watercooler began as a LinkedInLinkedInLinkedIn is a social networking platform for professionals. It was founded in 2002 by Reid Hoffman and others, launched in 2003, and listed on the New York Stock Exchange in 2011; after Microsoft acquired it for approximately $26.2 billion in 2016, it became a wholly owned Microsoft subsidiary. Its revenue comes from membership subscriptions, advertising, and recruitment solutions.Open the full entry competitor and, after struggling, was rebranded as an ad-supported sports app on Facebook; of that period Chou said, “Just because you build it, they won't come without a hook.”⁠[1][2]

In 2009 Watercooler was renamed Kabam. Kabam’s first game, Kingdoms of Camelot, was installed by more than 9.5 million users; the company earned $30 million in 2010 and signed gaming deals with Disney, LionsgateLionsgateLionsgate (Lionsgate Studios Corp.) is a film and television content company that listed on the New York Stock Exchange after separating from the STARZ business in 2025.Open the full entry, MGM, NBCUniversal, Paramount and Warner Bros. In 2011, as Facebook cut into its ad revenue, Kabam pivoted to mobile games.⁠[1]

In 2013 Kabam signed an $18 million contract with the University of California, Berkeley, that included naming rights to Kabam Field. In 2014, while still Kabam’s CEO, Chou was named to Fortune’s “40 under 40” list. In late 2016 he sold most of Kabam’s assets to South Korea’s Netmarble Games Corp. in a deal valued at $800 million.⁠[2][1]

Chou became a University of California, Berkeley trustee in 2015 and is one of 176 Berkeley entrepreneurs who signed the Berkeley Founders' Pledge. On March 8, 2017, Berkeley-Haas announced a gift of up to $25 million from him and his wife, Connie Chen: the couple pledged $15 million, with possible step-ups of $5 million or $10 million at the five-year mark, toward an 80,000-square-foot, $60 million student building named Connie & Kevin Chou Hall, which opened in fall 2017.⁠[2][1]

Explaining the gift, he said, “Beyond Yourself is a principle that really resonates with me today,” referring to one of the Haas School’s defining principles.⁠[2]

In 2017 Chou bought Seoul Dynasty, a South Korean Overwatch esports team, for $20 million, and co-founded its parent company, Gen.G Sports.⁠[1]

In 2018 Chou co-founded the blockchain gaming company Forte (Forte Labs), which enables cryptocurrency transactions for buying and selling game-related items, with transactions recorded on a public ledger to reduce fraud.⁠[1][3]

As CEO and co-founder, Chou introduced Rally as a blockchain project for creators, founded and led by former executives of Kabam, YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry, Facebook, Disney and Twitch, with a first phase planned for the third quarter of 2020 in which Twitch streamers would issue branded cryptocurrencies called “Creator Coins” to reward fans on higher subscription tiers and use them to build virtual economies, collectibles and loyalty programs.⁠[4]

Rally is an open network on EthereumEthereumEthereum is an open, general-purpose smart contract blockchain that launched in 2015, and its native asset is ether (ETH). The project was proposed by Vitalik Buterin and advanced jointly by eight co-founders; the network now uses proof of stake and centers on the EVM, the account model, a rollup scaling roadmap, and the open EIP process.Open the full entry where creators can launch social tokens; it offers creators white-labeled versions of its RLY coin, of which 15 billion were minted at an initial price of five cents each.⁠[5][3]

On March 9, 2020, Andreessen HorowitzAndreessen HorowitzAndreessen Horowitz (a16z) is a venture capital firm founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. It invests from the seed stage through the growth stage and provides operational support to its portfolio companies.Open the full entry published Chou’s a16z Summit talk “Monetization for Gamers in the New Cryptoeconomy” on its website, and the video was uploaded to the a16z YouTube channel the same day as “Gamers are Entering a New Era of Monetization.” The page introduces him as a veteran gamer with a background at Kabam who runs the esports team Gen.G.⁠[6][7]

The talk opened with how cloud, social and mobile turned gaming from a niche hobby into a massive industry, and covered how he uses blockchain to realign the economics between game developers and players and how crypto-economic models could improve monetization and engagement and foster new forms of collaboration, community and creativity.⁠[6]

On April 3, 2021, Andreessen Horowitz released the a16z podcast episode “The Creator Economy — NFTs and Beyond,” hosted by a16z general partner Chris DixonChris DixonChris Dixon is a programmer, entrepreneur, and venture capitalist, and the founder and managing partner of a16z crypto. He co-founded SiteAdvisor and Hunch, helped create Founder Collective, and later joined Andreessen Horowitz, investing in technology companies such as Coinbase. He is also the author of Read Write Own and has long written about blockchains, network ownership, the open internet, and the combination of AI and crypto.Open the full entry with Chou and Jesse Walden, founder of Mediachain and of the crypto venture fund Variant. They discussed the growth of NFTs from gaming tokens and their real-world uses, portability and security, the fractionalization of NFTs, the impact of NFTs and fungible tokens on musicians and writers, social tokens and NFTs as part of the same economy, and the role of big tech platforms.⁠[5]

On the episode Chou said, “There is no doubt in my mind that five years from now, maybe even sooner, your backstage pass will literally be an NFT.” He added, “We think of tokens and NFTs all operating together in a singular economy.”⁠[5]

Andreessen Horowitz and the Stanford Center for Blockchain Research co-hosted the NFT Virtual Summit, and on May 18, 2021, a16z compiled the summit videos on its website. In the session “Going Beyond Collectibles: The Future of Tokens for Creators,” Chou, as founder of Rally, talked with a16z general partner Chris Dixon about how fungible social tokens and NFTs interact to create new fan communities for creators, how new platforms make it easier for “musicians, athletes, video game streamers and other creators” to customize tokens to connect with fans, and how gaming, fashion and a richer metaverse fit into these trends.⁠[8]

The session video was uploaded to the a16z YouTube channel on May 24, 2021, as “Social Tokens for Creators Explained.”⁠[9][8]

In October 2021 SuperLayer, a venture studio founded by Chou, was unveiled with plans to create consumer projects using tokens tied to the RLY network its founders had created earlier, tokens that can be freely bought, sold or used to join other projects; it differs from studios such as Atomic, Science and Expa, whose companies sell equity to venture capital firms.⁠[3]

Discussing why investment firms must evolve to back token-based projects, Chou said, “We have to do that.” He added, “We’ve had to spend a lot of time with finance [teams] that [have] never done a crypto investment.”⁠[3]