This Week in Startups · Thursday, October 1, 2026
Justin Kan recounted how Google considered acquiring Justin.tv in 2010, offering a substantial price. However, after interviewing the entire team, Google rejected the acquisition, stating the team wasn't 'good enough' and lacked the 'Googley' quality. This rejection was a significant setback, motivating the Justin.tv team to re-evaluate their strategy, which eventually led to the creation of Twitch.
“uh google came around and was like we're interested in acquiring uh, Justin TV. And it was a very high price, to be honest. But they basically long story short, we talked to them, we talked to them.”
“they interviewed our team and then they were like, your team's not good enough. goodbye wow yeah which was like the most demoralizing gut punch of 2010 or 2000 whenever i think was 2010.”
“thanks for letting us come in uh, we regret to inform you your team sucks exactly google's people are smarter than yours we would never let you in the you would be like significantly lowering the bar for the people at google basically right we would never let you on campus yeah like literally on a sunday the justin tv like you have to work out of the sales office except you're not good enough to work there so we can't acquire a company”