Justin Kan

Justin Kan is an American entrepreneur, investor, and web developer that was born on July 16, 1983 in Seattle, Washington. Kan was a former partner of the seed incubator Y Combinator, and has founded several successful technology companies that include Atrium, Twitch, Justin.tv, Socialcam, and Exec. He has also founded his own startup incubator called Zero-F.

Education

Evergreen Middle School.

Justin Kan attended Evergreen Middle School in Spokane Valley, Washington.

Yale University

Justin Kan attended Yale University from 2001 to 2005. He graduated with a bachelor of arts double major in physics and philosophy.

Entrepreneurship

Kiko

In 2003 Justin Kan and Emmet Shear founded an online calendar web application called Kiko. The company received $70,000 in funding from investors after the founding of the company, and in 2006 Justin Kan decided to sell the company on Ebay for a final selling price of $258,000. The company shutdown operations in May 2008, and was headquartered in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Justin.tv

On October 1, 2006 Justin.tv was founded in San Francisco, California by Justin Kan and Kyle Vogt. Justin.tv was an online community for broadcasting its users livestreams. The platform originally only had one live streaming channel for several months with a webcam attached to his head following the launch of the company. The channel focused on a 24/7 live stream, or 'lifecast', of the companies co-founder Justin Kan, and is responsible for popularizing the term 'lifecasting'. Justin.tv's second live stream channel, called iJustine, launched on April 18, 2007 and was for a popular video blogger named Justin Ezarik. The company shutdown on August 5, 2013 for the founders Justin Kan and Kyle Vogt to focus on pivoting the companies focus towards growing Justin.tv's parent company Twitch; a social live streaming service dedicated to gaming.

Twitch

Justin Kan, Emmet Shear, Kyle Vogt, and Omar Javed founded Twitch in 2007. It is a social live streaming platform for gamers that is headquartered in San Francisco, California. The company was purchased by Amazon on August 25, 2014 for $970 million in cash.

Socialcam

Justin Kan co-founded a social video recording, editing, and sharing mobile application Socialcam with Kyle Vogt and Guillaume Luccisano in 2011 called Socialcam. The company was purchased by Autodesk on December 4, 2018 for $60 million.

Exec

Exec is an on-demand service for the completion of simple tasks for a $25/hr flat fee that was founded in 2012 by Justin Kan. The company reportedly dropped the price of home cleaning services in each of the nine markets it was available in. Handy, a competitor of Exec, noticed the success Exec was having and purchased the company on January 14, 2014 in an equity deal worth less than $10 million.

Whale

In July 2016 Justin Kan, James Zhang, Ranidu Lankage, and Vicc Alexander founded an online question and answer (Q&A) community headquartered in San Francisco, California called Whale. The platform allows its users to engage with influencers, experts, and celebrities through an online Q&A community.

The Drop

The Drop is an online community forum for helping people discover electronic dance music that was founded by Justin Kan in 2015. Kan founded The Drop with the goal "to create a constant stream of new electronic music tracks everyday", and built the music streaming service using the SoundCloud API and an open-source curation interface known as Telescope. Justin Kan told reporters he made the company for fun and admitted:

I don't think it's ever really going to make money. It's not a business, it's just a site. I don't think the music business is a very good business to be in. I'll be happy if it just sources me good music for a long time.

Zero-F

In 2017 Justin Kan left Y Combinator as a partner to start his own startup incubator celled Zero-F. He said the idea behind the name is to take a company from "zero to funding". The company is headquarters in San Francisco, California, and plans to incubate three new business per year.

Atrium

Atrium is a company focused on automating legal workflows that is headquartered in San Francisco, California and was founded by Justing Kan, Augie Rakow, Bebe Chueh, and Chris Smoak in April 2017. Justin Kan has been the CEO of Atrium since April 2017, and founded the company to solve many problems he faced as the founder of several technology companies. Kan told reporters:

Over the years, I have been an involuntary power user of the legal industry. While I valued the counsel of my attorney, I was frustrated by the delivery of service, and there were many things I wanted to see done differently. The biggest headache for me was that no one could tell me when to use legal service [or] how much to use.

According to the companies website, Kan founded Atrium with the goal of "making legal faster and more transparent with upfront pricing". Kan's influence made the company use alternative pricing strategies to ease the concerns of its customers searching for legal guidance. The company does not charge hourly rates, instead they use a monthly subscription for their Atrium Counsel service (a service that takes care of day to day legal needs suing a dedicated attorney and paralegal team) and a flat fee for their Atrium Financing service (a service that takes care of legal advisory for startups during their venture capital fundraising).

Jobs

Russel Investment Group

From May 2005 to August 2006 (1 year and 4 months), Justin Khan was an intern at Russel Investment Group.

Y Combinator

From March 2014 to March 2017 (3 years and 1 month), Justin Kan was a Y Combinator partner.

Investing

According to AngelList, Justin Kan has made 63 personal investments and made 9 exits (Parse, Tilt, Cruise, Freshplum, Interviewed, Kimono Labs, Listrunner, MessageMe, and Say Media).

Board memberships and advisory roles

Justin Kan has served, or is currently serving, on the board or as an adviser for the following companies: AirHelp, Kickback, Bitaccess, Screenleap, Cleanly, Founders Den, FightCamp, ResumeGem, Submittable, Monogram, Phenomenon Ventures, DoseDr, Atrium, Twitch, Seekmi, ZeroCater, and Trip Alder.

Family

Justin Kan is married to Christine Oh.