Quotes from Justin Kan

I feel like a lot of the technology that happens in gaming, starts in gaming and it goes broader than gaming.

The best way to sell your company for a lot of money is to have a good company.

People like the feeling of access that is very raw, unedited, and inspirational.

What I learned: if you've done something you think the public is going to react badly to, you can't delay it, hide from it, or ignore it. You have to address it head on and take your beating. Always take your beating.

I'm biased, but I see people who have great ideas and are working on things that could be successful, but they give up.

In fact, I've had many lawyers who I felt provided excellent advice and service during important decisions or difficult times. That being said, I always wondered why the law firms that serve the most innovative technology companies in the world rarely adopt innovative software or try to improve their business operations.

I'm kind of a life coach for thousands of people.

The big thing was realizing for myself that I had tied my ego to the outcomes and to startups.

I joined YC to recover from the brain damage of starting companies.

The hardest part about growing has been making sure we can support the community in the same ways that we were able to when TwitchTV was just starting out.

If you look at our original business model with the verticalized law firm, a lot of these companies that have this kind of full stack model are not going to survive. A lot of these companies, Atrium included, did not figure out how to make a dent in operational efficiency.

I was always so engrossed with being successful that that was my worth and my identity. And then when things weren't going well, I felt like I was worthless.

Snapchat built an elegant, incredibly well-thought-out tool to make it fun, simple, and frictionless for normal people to share snippets of their lives in an interesting way.

I want money to replace mental energy and physical effort.

Today, I have an understanding of the world, and of the entertainment and media industries, of how people consume content.

With Justin.TV, infinite people told us that it wouldn't work, and to some extent they were right. But it was still a good investment.

At TwitchTV, we think of ourselves as a technology product company, so when we set out to innovate, most often we're trying to improve or build better features for the platform that will improve things for the ecosystem.

I think when you start talking about selling a company or a company wants to buy you, then you start thinking about how much money you're going to have. That's insidious because it saps your will to continue.

I want to inspire the youth to become entrepreneurs.

I went to Yale and I was a physics and philosophy undergrad, graduated in 2005.

I've been an entrepreneur for the past 12 years, since I graduated from Yale undergrad with a degree in Physics and Philosophy, and realized I had no actual marketable job skills.

One of the things big law partners say when they talk about Atrium is that we get people who wouldn't make partner. And I say, they're the people who are doing the work for you anyway, but they transition out because they hate the lifestyle.

People want to use products where they feel like the people who deliver those products are invested in making it better for them.

It helps tremendously to have operating startup experience when advising startups. It is much easier to tell people how to talk to customers, build product, manage an engineering team, raise money from investors, and talk to press when you've done it before yourself.