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Emmett Shear

06/16/25

@ a16z speedrun

At Twitch, we made a clear decision to prioritize the needs of streamers over viewers, focusing on streamers because they were the key to our platform's success, especially in the early days when there were only about 200 gaming streamers who mattered.

Video

The $1B Pivot That Saved Twitch…

@ a16z speedrun

The $1B Pivot That Saved Twitch…

06/16/25

Related Takeaways

Emmett Shear

06/16/25

@ a16z speedrun

The biggest decision we made at Twitch was to be generous with revenue share, which was painful for us but crucial for attracting and retaining streamers.

Y Combinator Cast

04/29/23

@ Y Combinator

The core learning from Twitch was that if they could help streamers make money, those streamers would create content that millions wanted to watch.

Emmett Shear

06/16/25

@ a16z speedrun

As Twitch scaled, we focused 70-80% of our engineering efforts on improving our video system because if the video didn't work, it didn't matter how good the rest of our product was.

Emmett Shear

06/16/25

@ a16z speedrun

When we pivoted from Justin.tv to Twitch, we had about 400,000 monthly active users, which was only 2% of Justin.tv's total user base, but it was the only content I was genuinely interested in running.

Y Combinator Cast

04/29/23

@ Y Combinator

At Justin.tv, the relationship with users improved significantly when the founders started talking directly to streamers, asking them what they needed instead of relying on surveys or reports.

Paul Buchheit

03/07/18

@ Y Combinator

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.

Y Combinator Cast

02/17/22

@ Y Combinator

At Twitch, we learned that the video system doesn't know how many viewers are waiting before a stream starts, but the website does. By communicating this information, we could pre-populate the stream to the necessary video servers before going live.

Michael Seibel

03/16/23

@ Y Combinator

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.

Nikhil Kamath Cast

04/20/23

@ Nikhil Kamath

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.