What Went Wrong at Atrium? Founder Kan Speaks Up
Fueled with $75 million in venture capital, Atrium was a high-profile effort to apply the lessons of Silicon Valley to the legal industry. Then Justin Kan pulled the plug.
January 08, 2021 at 09:39 AM
5 minute read
Fueled with $75 million in venture capital, Atrium was a high-profile effort to apply the lessons of Silicon Valley to the legal industry. Then serial tech entrepreneur Justin Kan pulled the plug. Nearly a year later, he revisited some of his missteps. Want to weigh in? Email me here. Want this dispatch in your inbox every Thursday? Sign up here.
What Went Wrong at Atrium?
I spent part of my holiday break reading Anna Wiener's Uncanny Valley. It's a terrific book, particularly for those curious about the tech industry's desire to muscle in on other established sectors of the economy, from retail to transportation to medicine to the law. The deftness with which Wiener punctures the hubris of the 20-something startup founders who believe they've found a better way to do, well, pretty much everything, made me self-conscious about the title of this briefing. (But I haven't talked to anyone about changing it.)
So it seemed timely when I saw that serial tech entrepreneur Justin Kan, a year after the collapse of his bid to disrupt the legal industry via hybrid law firm/legal tech outfit Atrium, was on Reddit Tuesday. Kan, who hit pay dirt in founding live streaming platform Twitch before selling it to Amazon for $970 million in 2014, was answering questions to promote his new podcast project The Quest.
To his credit, Kan took some time to address what went wrong at Atrium. Let's quickly review the details, for those who've forgotten.
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