Biography

Justin Kan

by David,

Co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, Justin Kan is an American entrepreneur and investor. The Yale University graduate started his entrepreneurship in his 20s & now stands among the inspiring figure among youth entrepreneurs. Most recently, from April 2017 to March 2020, Justin was CEO of the co-founded law-tech company Atrium.

For 3 years, the Kiko Software co-founder Kan was a partner at Silicon Valley incubator Y Combinator (2014- 2017). Without a doubt, he has seen a drastic rise in his fortune through his successful ventures & is a multi-millionaire.

Family Background, Education & Early Career

Justin Kan was born on July 16, 1983, in Seattle, Washington D.C, the USA. His parents are Chinese immigrants. He has 2 brothers: Daniel Kan, an entrepreneur & co-founder of Cruise, while another brother Damien works as a software engineer at Alto Pharmacy.

Kan went to Evergreen Middle School in Spokane Valley, Washington and enrolled at Yale University in 2001. In 2005, he graduated with a double major degree in physics and philosophy. As a University student, he worked as an intern in Russell Investment Group for 4 months until August 2004.

With Emmett Shear, Justin made an online calendar Kiko in 2003 that received  $70,000 in funding. By May 2005, they established Kiko Software Inc. and sold the company for $258,000 in August 2006; the company shut down permanently later in 2008.

How Old Is Justin Now?

As of September 2020, Justin Kan is 37 years old.

Entrepreneurship Success With Twitch & Other Ventures

In October 2006, Kan and his partners Emmett, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt co-founded Justin.tv, a live video platform with 24-7 feed about Justin's daily routine. It instantly went famous all over the internet & saw a different content category such as Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, all by 2007.

Since there were such huge demands for live games streaming on Justin.tv, Justin & his friends made separate game-content streaming TwitchTV. It launched on June 6, 2011, headquartered in San Francisco, California, which became Kan's major breakthrough in entrepreneurship.

By 2013, Twitch saw 35 million unique visitors every month & has over 100 employees. Amazon acquired Twitch in August 2014 for $970 million. It is considered the 4th most expensive acquisition of Amazon and is ahead of Jamie Siminoff's Ring. The top-3 are Whole Foods Market (#1, $13.7 billion), Zappos (#2, founded by Nick Swinmurn), and Zoox (#3), the latter two for $1.2 billion each.

CAPTION: Entrepreneur Justin Kan co-founded Twitch in 2011 as a separate division for game streaming of now-defunct Justin.tv, a video streaming service SOURCE: Tech Crunch

After a year of the launch of Socialcam, a social video application for iPhone and Android, it was acquired by Autodesk on July 17, 2012, for $60 million.

On  February 29, 2012, with his brother Daniel and Amir Ghazvinian, he founded Exec, an on-demand personal a s sistant and cleaning service with the allowance to outsource anything for $25 per hour. Justin served as the CE of Exec until January 2014, when it sold to Handybook.

In 2015, he has co-founded a music discovery platform called The Drop.

What Is Justin Kan Currently Doing?

A former partner at Y Combinator from 2014 to 2017, Justin left the company & founded his own investment firm named Zero-F. In April 2017, Justin founded law-tech firm Atrium in partnership with Augie Rakow, Bebe Chueh, and Chris Smoak. As per the report of Forbes, the company raised a total of $65million in Series-B funding in September 2018, following $10 million in Series-A funding in 2017.

Since Atrium established, Kan a s sumed the role of CEO & stepped down in March 2020.

Meanwhile, Justin Kan records over 44 investments, with the most notable & recent investment of $5 million in Seed Round - LAIKA on July 9, 2020. Some of his investment portfolios include:

  • Sweatcoin
  • Scale AI
  • Gecko Robotics
  • Abacus
  • Releaf
  • BLADE
  • Mercury
  • Digits

What  Is Justin Kan's Net Worth In 2020?

According to Celebrity Net Worth, Justin Kan has a net worth of $100 million as of September 2020. Mainly, Kan earns from his investments and entrepreneurship. When Twitch sold to Amazon in 2014 for $970 million, each of the co-founders including Justin was believed to own a 12.5% stake, which totals $120 million before the tax cut.

Relationship Status Of Justin Kan

Justin Kan is a married man but prefers to keep his personal life low-key. Currently, he lives with his wife  Christine Oh in San Franciso, California

Got this money tree (that’s actually what it’s called) from @LeonAndGeorge for our anniversary! pic.twitter.com/hY76DCxego

— Justin Kan (@justinkan) October 2, 2018

In July 2019, Kan mentioned about being a father on his Twitter, however, has not opened up further details.