20VC: Twitch Founder & CEO Emmett Shear on When To Persist vs When To Give Up For Entrepreneurs, The Fundamental Tension When Scaling Orgs and How To Optimise Them & How The Role of CEO Fundamentally Changes with Scale
The Twenty Minute VC (20VC): Venture Capital | Startup Funding | The Pitch
The Twenty Minute VC
4.4 • 637 Ratings
🗓️ 21 February 2020
⏱️ 35 minutes
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Summary
Emmett Shear is the Co-Founder & CEO @ Twitch, the world's leading live streaming platform for gamers and the things we love. Prior to Twitch's exit to Amazon for a reported $970M, Emmett raised over $42M in funding from some of the best including Thrive Capital, Bessemer, Mike Maples, Aydin Senkut, Paul Graham and Y Combinator. Emmett is also a part-time Partner @ Y Combinator, advising YC companies on everything from fundraising strategy to product decisions to hiring and firing. Before Twitch, Emmett co-founded Kiko, a company he later sold on eBay for 6 figures.
In Today’s Episode You Will Learn:
1.) How Emmett made his way into the world of startups with Kiko? How he ended up selling that for 6 figures on eBay? How that led to the creation of Justin.TV & Twitch?
2.) Why does Emmett believe starting a startup is like "deciding to take on the burden of Sisyphus?" At what point in the journey does is start to get easier? Does Emmett agree with many on the show who say, "it does not get easier, it just gets different"? How does one know when to give up vs when to persist and follow the vision?
3.) How does Emmett think about structuring an org at 1,500 people? Why does Emmett believe there is a fundamental tension when scaling teams between centralisation and decentralisation? How does one structure a reorg without causing instability? How does one communicate the reorg to the team? Where does Emmett see many go wrong here?
4.) Does Emmett agree the best CEOs are the best resource allocators? How does Emmett approach internal resource allocation today between both functions and projects? What does he find most challenging here? What does the decision-making process look like? What are his taekaways from Apple, Amazon and Microsoft in how they determine and process resource allocation internally?
5.) How does Emmett believe he has changed and evolved as a leader over the last 10 years with Twitch? What elements has he found the most challenging to master? What has he done to combat those weaknesses? Where has he always been naturally strong? What makes him so good at those particular functions?
Items Mentioned In Today’s Show:
Emmett’s Fave Book: Order without Design: How Markets Shape Cities
As always you can follow Harry, The Twenty Minute VC and Emmett on Twitter here!
Likewise, you can follow Harry on Instagram here for mojito madness and all things 20VC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | You are listening to The 20 Minute VC and Founders Friday with me, Harry Stebbings, at H. Stebbings |
| 0:04.2 | 1996 with 2Bs on Instagram and my word, I've been so excited about this episode for quite a long time. |
| 0:09.8 | I've been lucky enough to have his co-founder, Justin Khan, on the show before. |
| 0:13.3 | And so with that, and totally giving it away there, I could not be more excited to welcome Emmett Shear, co-founder and CEO at Twitch, the world's leading live streaming platform |
| 0:21.7 | for gamers and the things we love. Prior to Twitch's exit to Amazon for a reported $970 million, |
| 0:27.9 | Emmett raised over $42 million in funding from some of the best in the business, including Thrive |
| 0:32.4 | Capital, Bessemer, Mike Maples, Iden Senkut, Paul Graham and Wai Combinator, to name a few. |
| 0:38.2 | Emmett's also a part-time partner at Y Combinator, advising YC companies on everything from |
| 0:42.5 | fundraising strategy to product decisions to hiring and firing. |
| 0:46.2 | And before Twitch, Emmett co-founded Kiko, a company he later sold on eBay for six figures, |
| 0:51.0 | an incredible story, and we do dive into that in this episode. And I'd also |
| 0:54.2 | want to say a huge thank you to Mike Maples, I'd Insenkud, Ethan Kurzweil at BVP, and Justin Kahn |
| 0:59.7 | for some fantastic questions suggestions today. I really do so appreciate that. But before we |
| 1:04.6 | dive into the show today, I'm sure you've heard about it, but my word, I just love the Carter product. |
| 1:09.2 | Carter simplifies how startups and investors |
| 1:11.5 | manage equity, track cap tables and get valuations. Go to Carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% |
| 1:18.5 | off. More than 800,000 employees and shareholders now use Carter to manage hundreds of billions of |
| 1:24.1 | dollars in equity and Carter now offers fund, so you can see real-time |
| 1:28.0 | data in the Carter platform and work with Carter's team of experienced fund accountants. |
| 1:32.4 | Again, go to carter.com forward slash 20 VC to get 10% off. I really do so love that product. |
| 1:39.0 | But to get a deal done, you really need to build that relationship, and there's nothing like meeting |
| 1:42.7 | face-to-face, and there's nothing like Zoom to make that happen. Zoom lets you connect and do business across |
... |
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