Then They Came For The Lawyers

Twitch co-founder Justin Kan has raised $75 million for his attorney-rental company

- Max Chafkin

When Silicon Valley companies go looking for legal counsel, they generally choose from a shortlist of well-respected partnerships. There’s 99-year-old Cooley LLP, 58-year-old Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati, and 24-year-old Gunderson Dettmer. All are run by graduates of prestigious law schools who have decades of experience at big firms. Then there’s 2-year-old startup Atrium, whose chief executive officer, Justin Kan, has no formal legal training but once starred in an online reality show.

Wearing a baseball cap with a camera attached to it, Kan filmed himself 24/7 for a few months in 2007, writing code, drinking beer with his friends, and sleeping. The show, Justin.TV, eventually morphed into a video game streaming service, Twitch, which sold itself to Amazon.com Inc. for $1 billion, vaulting Kan into the tech-bro pantheon. “Sometimes I wonder, What would the Justin of 10 years ago have thought of the Justin of today?” says Kan, who’s now 36, married, and no longer drinking. “He would have thought it was super lame.”