Justin Kan

On March 19, 2007, Kan began streaming his life live, 24 hours a day, from a head-mounted webcam. The project, called Justin.tv, would lead to the emergence of one of the largest video platforms in the world. Justin.tv then recruited more streamers, with iJustine as its second star, and eventually brought on about 60 live-streamers, aiming to build a network of reality stars whose entire lives were broadcast online.⁠[1][1][1][1][1]

In October 2007, Justin.tv opened itself up so that any user could set up a live stream, which gave audience growth a huge boost; within eight months it had 1 million registered users. It was one of the first services to put live video next to live chat, and it let users stream their own webcam, computer, and television feeds well before 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 allowed its users to do so. The founders, however, felt they had no clear sense of where they were headed or how to make money at scale.⁠[1][1][2]

Much of Justin.tv’s popularity came from users streaming live sports feeds from around the world.⁠[2]

In February 2011, Socialcam, Justin.tv’s upcoming mobile video-sharing app, was in a very limited beta. Kan explained that phone videos were hard to share with friends: email attachments were too large, MMS badly degraded video quality, and posting video to Facebook was harder than it should be, which is why the company began building the app in the fall of 2010. It was the company’s first product dedicated exclusively to recorded footage rather than live streams.⁠[3][3][3][3]

In June 2011, the team decided to focus on the most popular part of Justin.tv, users broadcasting and watching live video gaming, and launched Twitch.tv, a new site dedicated to gaming streams, which quickly grew into a global phenomenon. Kan is one of Twitch’s co-founders.⁠[1][4][5]

Kan later recalled that the team nearly pursued the TikTok-like Socialcam instead of Twitch and that the pivot to Twitch nearly broke the company; the key moment came from users who wanted to earn money by streaming.⁠[6][6]

In 2012, Exec, an errand service founded by Kan and others, was spun out of Y Combinator. It initially promised to help users with any errand, such as deliveries, furniture assembly, and rides, but most people used it to book house cleaners, which quickly became its sole focus.⁠[7][7][7]

On January 15, 2014, the home services platform Handybook announced that it had acquired Exec; a person familiar with the deal said the price was under $10 million and paid entirely in Handybook stock, and Exec’s investors had put in more than $3 million. Kan said that despite promotions Exec had not found a “magic bullet for growth,” that Handybook had already built what Exec was trying to iterate on, but better, and that the sale was the right decision for the company and its shareholders.⁠[7][7][7][7][7]

In February 2014, Justin.tv rebranded the entire company as Twitch Interactive. On August 5 of that year, the company announced the immediate closure of the Justin.tv website, mobile apps, and API, advising users to move their accounts to Twitch by September 5.⁠[1][2][2]

On August 25, 2014, Amazon announced that it would acquire Twitch Interactive for about $970 million in cash. In July of that year, more than 55 million unique visitors had watched more than 15 billion minutes of content on Twitch produced by more than 1 million broadcasters. Kan later recounted that the team had earlier walked away from a $1 billion deal to sell Twitch to Google and that he learned of the sale to Amazon at Burning Man.⁠[4][4][4][6][6][6]

In 2017, Kan founded the legal technology company Atrium LTS (for “Legal Technology Services”), and in June he confirmed a $10.5 million round led by General Catalyst with nearly 100 institutional and angel investors. He said that as a heavy user of legal services over a decade as a founder and as an investor and adviser through Y Combinator, he was frustrated by how little technology law firms used, and that much corporate legal work consists of repeatable processes that technology could make more efficient.⁠[8][8][8][8][8][9]

On September 10, 2018, Atrium announced a $65 million round led by Andreessen Horowitz; a16z partner Andrew Chen took a board seat, Marc AndreessenMarc AndreessenMarc Andreessen is an American entrepreneur and venture capitalist, a co-founder and general partner of the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). While in college he helped develop the graphical web browser Mosaic, then co-founded Netscape and Loudcloud (later renamed Opsware), and has long served as a director of Meta; he has also published essays such as “Why Software Is Eating the World.”Open the full entry joined as a board observer, and Y Combinator’s Michael SeibelMichael SeibelMichael Seibel is an American entrepreneur and investor and a co-founder of Justin.tv (which became Twitch) and Socialcam. He led the Y Combinator startup accelerator from 2016 to 2024 and became a Partner Emeritus in March 2025. He has been a director of Reddit since June 2020 and a director of Dropbox since the same year.Open the full entry also joined the board. Atrium then had 110 employees and 250 clients and used machine learning to digitize legal documents, building applications on top to speed up fundraising, commercial contracts, equity distribution, and employment matters. Kan later acknowledged that co-founders Chris Smoak, the CTO, and BeBe Chueh, the legal partner, had left several months before the funding.⁠[10][10][10][10][10][10]

On March 3, 2020, Kan announced that Atrium was shutting down because it had failed to deliver better efficiency than a traditional law firm; the company laid off all of its just over 100 employees and planned to return some of its $75.5 million in funding to investors including Series B lead Andreessen Horowitz, while the separate Atrium law firm continued to operate. Kan said that many companies with a verticalized law firm model like Atrium had not managed to make a dent in operational efficiency.⁠[9][9][9]

In January 2020, Atrium had attempted a pivot, laying off its in-house lawyers to become a purer software company with better margins, and some of its lawyers formed a separate firm that took on former Atrium clients. Some customers criticized the change as chaotic, saying it left them unsure of their legal representation; further layoffs followed as divisions connected to those lawyers were eliminated.⁠[9][9]

Kan responded that it had been tough to regain momentum after the change; on X he thanked clients, investors, and the team and said that things had not worked out as planned and that this was his responsibility.⁠[9][9]

In early 2021, Kan started a YouTube channel to tell behind-the-scenes stories from Justin.tv and Twitch; in February 2021 he minted his first videos as NFTs called “Certified Justin Kan Stories,” auctioning or selling limited editions on OpenSea, the first of which told the story of how he and Reddit CEO Steve Huffman were arrested in the early days of Justin.tv. He said at the time that he was running the venture capital firm Goat Capital and the podcast The Quest.⁠[6][6][6][6][6]

Kan was formerly a partner at the startup incubator Y Combinator. He runs the venture capital firm Goat Capital with Robin Chan.⁠[6][11][6]

Kan co-founded Stash with Robin Chan and former Google engineer Dan Borstelmann; the company provides personalized storefronts, in-game payments, and loyalty experiences that help game developers sell directly to players, and it is backed by a16z Games. As of October 2026, Kan described himself as working on making videos.⁠[12][12][12][5]

X: Public account: https://x.com/justinkan (opens in a new window)⁠[5]

Goat Capital: Official website: http://goat.vc/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]

Stash: Official website: https://stash.gg/ (opens in a new window).⁠[5]