Twitch: Emmett Shear
How I Built This with Guy Raz
Guy Raz | Wondery
4.8 • 31.1K Ratings
🗓️ 18 July 2022
⏱️ 85 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In 2011, when Emmett Shear pivoted the live streaming service Justin.tv into the video game platform Twitch, people warned him that gaming was just a niche. But unlike his first two ventures, video games were something Emmett instinctively understood: he and his co-founder Justin Kan had been playing them together since they were kids. Emmett built a user base on Twitch by asking streamers exactly what they wanted and giving it to them: revenue opportunities, streamer fan clubs, customizable emoji. As it grew, Twitch attracted users from the darker corners of the web, but Emmett believes the site is first and foremost a way for people to come together and build supportive communities. In 2014, Emmett sold Twitch to Amazon for just under a billion dollars but stayed on as the CEO. Today, the platform has 31 million daily visitors who stream trillions of minutes of live video every year. Not bad for a niche business.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hey, Prime members, you can listen to how I built this early and ad-free on Amazon Music. |
| 0:07.0 | Download the app today. |
| 0:14.0 | There are lots of people who are saying, who would want to watch other people play video games on the internet? |
| 0:19.0 | I mean, how many times do people say that to you? |
| 0:22.0 | I mean, I used to get that question every interview. |
| 0:25.0 | Then usually what I would do actually is I'd ask them, |
| 0:27.0 | well, first of all, just tell me, what do you watch TV? |
| 0:30.0 | Oh, well, what do you watch? |
| 0:32.0 | Oh, you like watching the NFL? |
| 0:34.0 | You like watching football? |
| 0:35.0 | Oh, interesting. |
| 0:36.0 | Well, it turns out people who like video games do the same thing. |
| 0:39.0 | But the best news, fundamentally, is I don't need them to understand it |
| 0:43.0 | because I got it and the people watching got it, the people streaming got it, |
| 0:47.0 | for the people who loved it, it was self-evident. |
| 0:51.0 | The instant they saw it, like they were like, oh, this is, yes, this is what I want. |
| 0:55.0 | This is what I've been waiting for. |
| 1:03.0 | Welcome to How I Built This, a show about innovators, entrepreneurs, |
| 1:07.0 | idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. |
| 1:14.0 | I'm Guy Raaz, and on the show today, |
| 1:16.0 | how Emmett Sheer turned a 24-7 livestream of his best friend into a billion-dollar gaming platform, |
| 1:24.0 | Twitch. |
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