Born | |||||||||||
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Nationality | American | ||||||||||
Alma mater | Yale University | ||||||||||
Occupation | Investor | ||||||||||
Known for | Co-founding Twitch | ||||||||||
YouTube information | |||||||||||
Channel | |||||||||||
Subscribers | 166,000 [1] | ||||||||||
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Chinese name | |||||||||||
Traditional Chinese | 簡 彥 豪 | ||||||||||
Simplified Chinese | 简 彦 豪 | ||||||||||
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Last updated: June 18, 2021 | |||||||||||
Website | justinkan |
Justin Kan (born July 16, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. [2] He was also the co-founder and former CEO of law-tech company Atrium before it was shut down in March 2020. [3] [4] In 2021, he launched NFT marketplace Fractal, which was renamed to Stash in 2024. [5]
He was formerly a partner at Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator. [6] He gained widespread attention for his "lifecasting" experiment on Justin.tv, where he attempted to broadcast his entire life. Kan also started a Reddit-style electronic music discovery platform, The Drop.[ citation needed ]
In 2007, Justin Kan and partners Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt started Justin.tv, a 24–7 live video feed of Kan's life, broadcast via a webcam attached to his head. [7] Kan was 23 years old at the time.
Kan's "lifecasting" lasted about eight months. Kan's concept attracted media attention, and resulting interviews with him included one by Ann Curry on the Today Show . Viewers accompanied Kan as he walked the streets of San Francisco, sometimes involved in both pre-planned events (trapeze lesson, dance lesson) and spontaneous situations (being invited into the local Scientology center by a sidewalk recruiter).
Afterward, the company transitioned to providing a live video platform so anyone could publish a live video stream. Justin.tv, the platform, launched in 2007 [8] [9] and was one of the largest live video platforms globally with more than 30 million unique users every month.
Justin.tv was shut down on August 5, 2014, in an effort to focus further on Justin.tv's parent company, Twitch. [10] [11] [12]
After Justin.tv launched in 2007, the site added subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, Gaming and others. Gaming quickly grew to become the most popular content on the site. [13]
The company then decided to spin off the gaming content under a separate brand at a separate website. They named it TwitchTV, inspired by the term twitch gameplay. It launched officially in public beta on June 6, 2011.
Twitch was acquired by Amazon.com in August 2014 for $970 million. [14] [15]
In March 2011, Kan launched Socialcam, a smartphone application that allowed users to capture and share videos. Socialcam was bought by Autodesk in July 2012 for $60 million and was eventually shut down in October 2015. [16] [17] The application reached 16 million downloads before its acquisition. [18]
Kan launched Exec on February 29, 2012 with the goal of allowing anyone to outsource miscellaneous tasks for $25/hour. Exec was co-founded with his brother Daniel Kan, former head business development at UserVoice, and Amir Ghazvinian. [19]
In January 2014, Exec was purchased by Handybook, in an all-stock transaction. [20]
Kan was a member of the first batch of YC-funded startups in 2005 for Kiko Calendar, and was funded by YC again for Justin.tv [6] and Exec. [21] Kan became a partner at Y Combinator in March 2014, where he offered advice to the new startups. [22] In March 2017, Kan left Y Combinator to start his own incubator, Zero-F. [23]
The Drop is a Reddit-style electronic music discovery platform that launched in early 2015. Users can post and up-vote community-curated and sourced tracks. It was founded by Kan and his college friend Ranidu Lankage. [24]
In 2017, Kan launched technology-enabled law firm, Atrium. [25] Kan raised $10.5 million in an initial "party" round of investment led by General Catalyst. [26] In September 2018, Kan raised an additional $65 million funding round led by Andreessen Horowitz. At that time, Andrew Chen, Marc Andreessen and Michael Seibel joined the Atrium board of directors. [27] Atrium closed operations in March 2020. [28]
Justin Kan started a YouTube channel in 2021. [29] In February 2021 he announced that fans could collect his YouTube videos as non-fungible tokens on OpenSea. [30] [31]
Kan started Fractal.is in December 2021 as a marketplace for Solana-based NFTs. Players could buy NFTs directly from game companies or through peer-to-peer trading. In April 2022, Fractal raised $35 million in a seed round led by Paradigm and Multicoin Capital. Other investors include Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Solana Labs, Animoca Brands, Coinbase Ventures and Terraform Labs CEO Do Kwon, and others.
In 2024, Fractal was renamed to Stash, and pivoted to include a suite of products which allow game developers to interface directly with their customers. [32]
Y Combinator Management, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 4,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, expanded to San Francisco in 2019, and was entirely online during the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies started via Y Combinator include Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Reddit, Stripe, and Twitch.
Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to broadcast a wide variety of user-generated live video content, called "broadcasts".
Kevin Rose is an American Internet entrepreneur who co-founded Revision3, Digg, Pownce, and Milk. He also served as production assistant and co-host at TechTV's The Screen Savers. From 2012 to 2015, he was a venture partner at GV.
Lifestreaming is an act of documenting and sharing aspects of one's daily experiences online, via a lifestream website that publishes things of a person's choosing.
Livestreaming, live-streaming, or live streaming is the streaming of video or audio in real time or near real time. While often referred to simply as streaming, the real time nature of livestreaming differentiates it from other forms of streamed media, such as video-on-demand, vlogs, and YouTube videos.
Andreessen Horowitz is a private American venture capital firm, founded in 2009 by Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz. The company is headquartered in Menlo Park, California. As of April 2023, Andreessen Horowitz ranks first on the list of venture capital firms by assets under management, with $42 billion as of May 2024.
Twitch is an American video live-streaming service that focuses on video game live streaming, including broadcasts of esports competitions, in addition to offering music broadcasts, creative content, and "in real life" streams. Twitch is operated by Twitch Interactive, a subsidiary of Amazon. It was introduced in June 2011 as a spin-off of the general-interest streaming platform Justin.tv. Content on the site can be viewed either live or via video on demand. The games shown on Twitch's current homepage are listed according to audience preference and include genres such as real-time strategy games (RTS), fighting games, racing games, and first-person shooters.
Emmett Shear is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platform Justin.tv. He served as the chief executive officer of Twitch when it was spun off from Justin.tv until March 2023. In 2011, Shear was appointed as a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator. In November 2023, he briefly served as interim CEO of OpenAI.
9gag is an online platform and social media website based in Hong Kong, which allows its users to upload and share user-generated content or other content from external social media websites. Since the platform for collections of Internet memes was launched on April 11, 2008, it has grown in popularity across social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.
Exec was a company based in San Francisco, United States, that provided companies and individuals access to on-demand personal assistants and cleaning services. Started by Justin Kan, founder of Justin.tv, in February 2012 with co-founders Daniel Kan, his brother, and Amir Ghazvinian, Exec was backed by Y Combinator and other prominent investors. The company was acquired by Handy in January 2014.
Tilt.com, Inc. was a crowdfunding company founded in 2012 that allowed for groups and communities to collect, fundraise, or pool money online. James Beshara and Khaled Hussein launched the platform under the name Crowdtilt out of Y Combinator.
Namo Media was a technology startup providing in-stream advertisements for mobile applications. It was acquired by Twitter in June 2014 for between $50M and $100M.
Homejoy, Inc. was an online platform which connected customers with home service providers, including house cleaners and handymen. The company was based in San Francisco. Homejoy served the United States, Canada, and United Kingdom for a total of over 31 major cities. It charged a variable rate of $25–$35 per hour. Homejoy shut down on July 31, 2015.
Twice was an online marketplace for buying and selling secondhand apparel based in San Francisco, CA. The e-commerce platform was created to make selling used goods easier and shopping used like buying new. Twice manages the selling process for the customer, such as pricing, shipping and merchandising. Twice vets each item to ensure it meets “like new” standards. The company currently buys and sells men's and women's clothing as well as women’s shoes and handbags from popular retailers and brands.
Gigster provides a service that allows users to get tech projects built on demand. It was co-founded by Roger Dickey and Debo Olaosebikan and based in San Francisco, California. They received seed funding from Greylock Partners, Bloomberg Beta, as well as notable angel investors and founders Naval Ravikant of AngelList, Justin Waldron of Zynga, and Emmett Shear of Twitch, among others. They were a part of Y-Combinator's Summer 2015 class.
Michael Seibel is a partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of two startups – Justin.tv/Twitch and Socialcam. He first joined Y Combinator in 2013, advising hundreds of startups, and has been active in promoting diversity efforts among startup founders.
Kyle Vogt is an American businessman. In 2013, Vogt founded Cruise Automation, where he served as the company's President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer until resigning on November 19, 2023. Cruise develops self-driving car technology and, since being acquired in May 2016, operates as an independent subsidiary of General Motors.
Daniel Kan is an American entrepreneur and technology executive. He is the co-founder and chief operating officer of Cruise Automation. Kan and Cruise Senior Director Kyle Vogt are listed as number 7 on Fortune's 2016 40 Under 40 List.
OpenSea is an American non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace headquartered in New York City. The company was founded by Devin Finzer and Alex Atallah in 2017.