how much did kevin chou donate to uc berkeley

Who is Kevin Chou?

The only child of Taiwanese immigrants, Kevin Chou grew up bored and lonely in Moorpark, a sleepy middle-class suburb of Los Angeles. As he recalls it, he spent much of the ’80s in his parents’ dining room playing 8-bit floppy disk games on his father’s IBM XT. “I had no friends. I had video games,” Chou says today with a wry laugh.

What does Eric Chou do now?

Former home of The Tonight Show, Blizzard now hosted a sold-out tournament between the Dallas Fuel and Seoul Dynasty, a South Korean esports team that Chou purchased in 2017 for $20 million. Like Jerry Jones in the NFL and Steve Ballmer in the NBA, Chou has become a sporting mogul.

What makes Chou Hall the greenest building in America?

Billed by the busi­ness school as a “state-of-the-art learning laboratory,” Chou Hall is also the greenest aca­demic build­ing in Amer­ica: certified LEED Plati­num and Zero Waste.

Where did Kevin Chou grow up?

The only child of Taiwanese immigrants, Kevin Chou grew up bored and lonely in Moorpark, a sleepy middle-class suburb of Los Angeles.

What did Chou say about his childhood?

In that secure environment, Chou recounted his childhood. “I just remember being bored,” he said. “But I was lucky to be bored, and to have no pressure on what to do or who to be.”

What does Chou say about not working?

“Not working,” he says, “has helped me realize that by far the most important thing is finding that voice in your head that’s truly, authentically you. It’s not easy. Sometimes, just from the pressure of growing up in a certain way, you have all these voices in your head that are other people’s voices. You may think they’re your own, but they’re not.”

How long did Chou take off?

Feeling adrift, Chou took six months off. He rode his motor­cycle up and down High­way 1. He visited family in Taiwan. He played Play­Station in his pajamas.

How long did Chou enthuse on Chun Li?

Chou enthused on Chun-Li’s strengths and weaknesses for nearly four minutes. In the end, he summarized her as “a relatively simple character.” What made her special, he said, was her “timing, and understanding how to interrupt all the other characters’ moves.” Chou himself seems a relatively simple character—with some spectacular abilities.

What was Chou's favorite game?

His favorite was Microsoft Decathlon, one of the first multiplayer games ever released, which featured gold medalist Bruce (now Caitlyn) Jenner as a character. Every couple of weeks, Chou’s cousin Holly Liu, MIMS ’03, would visit and they’d spend hours crouched over a shared keyboard, Chou smashing the 1 and 2 keys on the left, Liu thumping the + and - keys on the right, as they raced jagged white and pale-blue dots around a track, or hurled pink, globular shot puts. The graphics look Precambrian today, but to Chou “it was magical that you could do this incredibly competitive Olympic thing from home.”

What did Haas say about his 12 months in investment banking?

His 12 months in investment banking were “some of the most miserable in my life,” he told graduates (no doubt many of them soon-to-be investment bankers) in his Haas commencement speech in 2016. “Where I expected to do complex financial models, I spent all my sleepless days and nights changing font sizes and colors in a PowerPoint presentation.”

Lesson 3 (from Mike): Start early better than late

If you want to be an entrepreneur, starting early is better than late, because you are more risk-endure early on. Failure is not gonna devastate your future earning potential but probably helps you with the things.

Where do you see the game industry going?

I think now half of the track and focus is on NFT and crypto. One of the biggest trends in gaming is definitely AR/VR or metaverse. The virtual worlds allow people to be in a different place, to visit, have an identity, and have a presence to interact with people.

What is your hook when talking to investors?

Art of being authentic and almost being vulnerable when talking to investors.

How much do the things you learn in school prepare you for your entrepreneurial journey?

Mike said, “ [It was] not a specific coding language I learned in Berkeley [that prepared me, but] more just the way to think, the tenacity to power through a problem in a scrappy way is what ended up powering our entrepreneurship career”.

Advice you would give to college students?

Looking back in our lives definitely encourages you to take more risks early in life, when you don’t have much responsibility for your family, your children, and other responsibilities that come with that.

What is your motivation? What kept you going so far, and any wisdom you want to share?

Mike said, “I always enjoy the process of making something. Making something from scratch, so building startups definitely gives me pleasure although it is very difficult.”