559: How a $100M Exit Left This 30 Year Old Lost | Jake Kassan

The Foundr Podcast with Nathan Chan

Nathan Chan

Marketing, Entrepreneurship, Business

4.9 • 665 Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What You’ll Learn in This Episode In this episode, Jake Kassan, co-founder of MVMT Watches, reveals the emotional rollercoaster of building and selling a business for $100M—and what came after. He shares: • How he scaled Movement from a $5,000 credit card to a $100M exit • The loneliness and identity crisis he faced after selling • Why chasing money alone didn’t fulfill him • The creative spark that led him to YouTube • His advice for founders struggling with burnout or searching for meaning If you’re a founder chasing big goals, feeling stuck, or wondering what comes next—this episode is packed with raw, honest insights that rarely get shared. Foundr Community Offers Want 1-on-1 mentorship to launch or scale your brand faster? Apply for eCommerce coaching: → Starting your ecom biz? Click here → Already selling and want to scale? Click here Want all-access to step-by-step training from 7, 8 & 9-figure founders? Start your Foundr+ $1 trial today → Click here Omnisend | Get 50% off your first 3 months of email and SMS marketing with Omnisend with the code FOUNDR50. Click here to get started. Connect With Nathan Chan Instagram → Click Here LinkedIn → Click here Connect With Jake Kassan Instagram → Click here YouTube → Click here Follow Foundr for More Business Growth Strategies YouTube → Click here Website → Click here Instagram → Click here Facebook → Click here Twitter → Click here LinkedIn → Click here Podcast → Click here

Transcript

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0:00.0	Our first year we did a million, second year we did seven, 30, 75, and then sold it after like six and a half years for 100 million.
0:07.2	And you'd never been more miserable.
0:11.5	Yeah.
0:12.4	Jake Casson, co-founder of movement.
0:14.5	The brand that redefined modern watches and built a multi-million dollar empire.
0:18.8	Renowned for the direct-to-consumer approach.
0:20.6	Your mastery of influencer marketing.
0:22.7	Movement was sold for an insane $100 million in 2018.
0:26.2	You wake up and your bank account, it looks like a phone number.
0:30.5	There's gratitude.
0:31.3	You're grateful for what you did.
0:32.8	Your phone starts blowing up.
0:34.0	But all the mental power that was going into this thing I was building now churned.
0:39.1	I just overanalyzed everything, every person, my whole life, and yeah, just put me into a pretty dark hole.
0:44.9	If you have unique skills that you know how to grow brands, why wouldn't you go again?
0:53.3	Hear the stories. Learn the proven methods and accelerate your growth and future through
0:59.2	entrepreneurship. Welcome to the founder podcast with Nathan Chan.
1:07.0	So you recently just posted incredible YouTube video where you made $100 million from selling your business and you'd never been more miserable. Can you tell us about that?
1:22.5	Yeah. So I started the company when I was 21 movement. I sold it when I was 28 and I think I just
1:31.9	didn't really think about what I would do, what I wanted to do, why I wanted kind of money
1:40.1	to begin with. And when I sold it, I, there was a moment in time where I had all these still meetings,
1:47.9	which was people on my calendar. And I realized, I don't need to take these meetings anymore.
	...

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