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

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 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.

I learned how to effectively talk to users, which is a crucial skill for startup founders, and realized that I hadn't truly understood this before launching Twitch.

Within two months of launching Twitch, we realized we had product-market fit, experiencing growth rates of 30-40% per month, which was a clear indicator of our success.

I invested in Justin.tv, which aimed to livestream everything, and while it struggled initially, it eventually pivoted to Twitch, focusing on video game streaming, which became a huge success.

The moment challenges died versus the moment Twitch was born had years of incompetence in between.

The founders of Justin.tv went on to create successful companies, with Emmett Shear becoming the CEO of Twitch, which is now estimated to be worth around twenty billion dollars.

After launching Justin.tv, we quickly realized that while we gained initial excitement and media coverage, we struggled with viewer retention and decided to pivot to a tech company that opened the platform for everyone instead of trying to create entertainment ourselves.