The Way I Work: Justin Kan of Justin.tv

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Lunch gets delivered to the office every day at noon. We asked our former office manager to order lunch every day, because I didn't want to worry about it. I just wanted food to show up. He did it for a year before starting his own business, which now provides this service for us and for other start-ups in the area, too. Even though it costs the company to feed everyone, it saves us in the long run -- if your engineer can get back to his desk 10 minutes earlier by eating in the office, that's great. Plus, I think eating together helps us bond as a team.

I like to have meetings in the early afternoon. When we're starting a new project, I'll first meet with one or two people. I try to keep the meetings small, especially when we're doing product design. If you have eight people in the design meeting, it doesn't work. Everybody has an opinion. Everyone wants to weigh in on what the font should look like. The end product becomes the average of eight opinions. You don't get excellent work, just average.

We have a pretty open office environment. There aren't a lot of conference areas. If someone wants to talk privately, I often suggest walking around the block. Or we'll go to the coffee shop around the corner. It's nice to get some fresh air. A lot of important decisions have been made at this company as we walk around the block. And the funny thing is, everyone at the office does it. I'll be at the coffee shop talking with Mike about new business-development ideas and wind up seeing a couple of the employees having a meeting at a nearby table.

I don't read a ton of business books, but Shogun -- a novel about a Japanese warlord-adventurer who basically conquers Japan -- has been fundamental to our company philosophy. Mike and I have each read the book many times. So when we think about business strategy, we often ask ourselves, What would Shogun do? In one scene, Shogun has to make a time-sensitive decision. And he decides to wait. We've followed his example more than once and found that waiting led to more options.

We believe in open discourse. I know I've made a lot of mistakes -- probably as recently as yesterday -- but my goal is, learn from those mistakes and make Justin.tv a better place to work. Every six to 12 weeks, we have reviews in which we ask employees questions like, "What can we do to make you more productive?" and "What would make you feel more ownership of your project?" A few months ago, an employee complained that our office wasn't very professional. It's true -- it's pretty casual. There's no dress code, and most of the employees are about 25 years old. And I could probably work on my professionalism. After that criticism, we wound up hiring someone to keep the office more tidy. I also started wearing a tie to work. It wasn't so bad. I actually like dressing professionally.

In the late afternoons, I usually take the notes from my meetings and write up specs for the engineers. Then, sometimes, I sneak off to nap. We have a lounge chair on the second floor. At least once a week, I'll crash there for 15 minutes or more. If people need me, they will call my cell phone.

I usually have dinner at the office. We order food for the staff every night. It arrives around 6:30. We try to get a variety. One night it will be Indian, then Chinese, then Thai, then burgers or something. I'm not very picky. What's important to me is that everybody else is happy with it. I want to eat something and get back to work.

Some nights, I'll leave at 7:30 or so. Other nights, I'll stay until 11. I typically stay late because that's when I can find time to write some code. I don't do any of the complex programming. It's usually just some of the easier features of the site. I'm certainly not the best programmer. If I were, then I would be programming full time and somebody else would be managing. But I like coding. It helps keep me sharp. Plus, I find it hard to manage somebody's work unless I have an intimate knowledge of how to do it myself. Otherwise, how can you differentiate a good idea from a bad one or know how long something is going to take?

A lot of us work pretty late. Sometimes at night, a few of us take a break and play a German board game called The Settlers of Catan. Four people can play, and the goal is to colonize an island. It involves probabilistic game theory. A lot of it comes down to the roll of the dice, but there's strategy, too. Unlike chess, in which how good you are depends on your ability to think like a computer, winning Settlers has more to do with instinct.

Since the launch, I haven't taken very many vacations. The last long one I took was in Hawaii, when I had a camera strapped to my head. I did go by myself to Vancouver last May for four days. I left my phone and computer behind and went kayaking and mountain biking. I didn't talk to anyone the entire trip.

When I get home from work, sometimes I'll grab a beer with Emmett or one of our other roommates. When I'm home, I don't do any real work. Usually, I wind down by reading Hacker News and TechCrunch. I also like to read books in the evenings before I take a melatonin, put on some nature sounds, and go to sleep. Right now, I am into Iain M. Banks, a Scottish science-fiction writer. I also like reading books about psychology. Influence is my favorite book -- it's about how people influence each other. I bought 10 copies for the office.

I tend to dive into things. I go through waves. I'll get really into a book or really into motorcycles or really into working on this one project. And then I move on to the next thing. I think that's one of my greatest strengths. I'm the type of guy who's going to come up with an idea, really hammer it home, and then move on to the next idea.

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