The launch of Twitch TV was a culmination of six years of experience and learning from previous failures in startups.

Before Twitch became a billion-dollar empire, it started as Justin.tv, a 24/7 live stream of one person's life without any script or plan, created by founders who were just trying to survive after selling a calendar app on eBay.

Twitch started as Justin.tv, an online reality TV show, showing that initial concepts can evolve significantly over time.

Twitch faced significant traffic spikes, sometimes 20 times higher than normal, which required them to implement hacks like turning dynamic pages into static ones to handle the load during popular streams.

Twitch began as Justin TV, where my co-founder Justin streamed 24/7 with just one camera. The initial version had no video games and was very basic, but it was a starting point for the platform.

When I was at Twitch, we often copied features from competitors, but sometimes we realized that those features had no real value, highlighting the pitfalls of blindly following competitors. The company only started working when Emmett and Kevin began talking to users to understand their needs, rather than just copying competitors' features.

I remember one of Justin's worst moments happened during a pivotal dinner at the Ritz, where we were pivoting from Justin.tv to what became Twitch.

The challenges feature was a total failure; we built everything before testing anything.

Twitch started as Justin.tv, where Justin Khan broadcasted his life 24/7, eventually pivoting to focus solely on live streaming, which became popular due to its exclusivity.