Justin Kan

Justin Kan
Justin Kan speaking at Gnomedex in 2007
Born	1983 (age 33–34)
Alma mater	Yale University
Known for	Co-founding Twitch

Justin Kan (born 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch.tv, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He is a partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator. His attempt to broadcast his entire life at Justin.tv popularized the term "lifecasting". Kan also started a Reddit-style electronic music discovery platform, The Drop.

He also contributes to the technology news site TechCrunch and co-founded Kiko Software, the first ajax based online calendar, with Emmett Shear. Kan graduated from Yale University in 2005 with degrees in physics and philosophy.

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.

Kan's "lifecasting" lasted about eight months. The novelty of 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 also spontaneous situations (being invited into the local Scientology center by a sidewalk recruiter).

Afterward, the company decided to transition to providing a live video platform so anyone could publish a live video stream. Justin.tv, the platform, launched in 2007 and was one of the largest live video platforms in the world with more than 30 million unique users every month.

Justin.tv was closed on August 5, 2014, in an effort to focus further on Justin.tv's parent company, Twitch.

After Justin.tv launched in 2007, the site quickly began building subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, Gaming and others. Gaming, in particular, grew very fast and became the most popular content on the site.