Key Moments
Emmett Shear at Startup School SV 2014
Y CombinatorKey Moments
Starting a successful startup like Twitch requires more than just a good idea; it demands resilience through repeated failures, learning crucial skills like user communication, and a deep passion that sustains founders through an inevitable eight-year journey.
Key Insights
Emmett Shear's first startup, Kiko calendar, involved building a Google Calendar clone with nine other companies and launching six product ideas in 18 months before selling it on eBay for $4 million due to Google Calendar's launch.
Justin.tv initially aimed to be a 24/7 reality TV show, which garnered national attention and 150,000 unique visitors in its first month, but pivoted to a user-generated content platform when the reality TV concept faltered.
The growth of Justin.tv plateaued in 2008 because the team didn't understand what was driving their growth, leading them to focus on monetization and cost-cutting during a market collapse.
The pivot to Twitch (initially codenamed Zarth) was driven by focusing on the gaming community, an area where the founders personally engaged and saw advertising potential, unlike expensive sports content.
Shear realized the critical missing skill for success was understanding how to truly talk to users, stating that 80% of startups make the mistake of thinking they understand users when they don't.
Building a successful startup typically takes around eight years, with Twitch taking about eight and a half years from its inception, underscoring the need for long-term commitment and passion.
Early failures and the power of not giving up
Emmett Shear began his entrepreneurial journey straight out of college in 2005, lacking many fundamental startup skills. His first venture, Kiko calendar, was an attempt to create a Gmail-like calendar with many other companies simultaneously. This, combined with a founder's 'add,' led to rapid iteration through multiple product ideas, including a social network and a search engine for Myspace. In just a year and a half, they built and launched no less than six different startup ideas. Kiko itself was eventually sold on eBay for approximately $4 million when Google Calendar launched, forcing the team to acknowledge they didn't know how to compete. Despite these repeated mistakes and failures, the defining characteristic of their early endeavors was a persistent determination not to give up. This resilience, coupled with a supportive network, was the primary asset they possessed when they knew almost nothing about programming, product decisions, fundraising, or management.
Justin.tv's pivot from reality TV to user-generated content
Following the Kiko sale, Shear and his co-founders, Justin Kan and others, secured funding from Y Combinator with a radically different concept: a reality television show centered around Justin's life, to be called Justin.tv. Recognizing a need for stronger leadership and focus, they brought on Michael Seibel as CEO and Kyle Vogt to handle crucial hardware development for the 24/7 live broadcast. The initial launch of the reality show gained significant national attention, seeing a spike of 150,000 unique visitors in the first month. However, the team quickly realized they were ill-equipped to produce compelling reality television. Instead of abandoning the project, they ingeniously repurposed the underlying technology and platform they had built over the preceding year and a half. They opened Justin.tv to everyone, transforming it into a platform for any user to broadcast live video. This transition was critical; it was a strategic pivot born from a failed concept into a burgeoning user-generated content model.
The struggle for product-market fit and scaling challenges
The shift to a user-generated content model on Justin.tv led to a period of rapid growth, though Shear admits they didn't truly have product-market fit initially but had stumbled into something people wanted. This phase highlighted a significant lack of scaling expertise within the team. Shear confessed that he had 'no idea how to run a web service that got more than like three users at a time.' As traffic grew, they experienced considerable downtime, but the growth continued regardless, forcing them to learn how to scale a web service effectively. By 2008, the platform's growth plateaued, a mystery to the team because they couldn't articulate what was driving their earlier success. Faced with a collapsed market in 2008 and no prospect of further fundraising, the focus shifted to monetization and cost reduction to staunch financial losses, moving from an unprofitable state towards breaking even.
The birth of Twitch: focusing on gaming and user connection
Stuck in a stagnant phase with Justin.tv, the team explored two principal directions for a new initiative: mobile video and gaming. Shear, being a gamer himself and personally consuming only gaming content on Justin.tv, gravitated towards the gaming idea. This project was codenamed 'Zarth.' They conducted market research which indicated that gaming content was feasible to acquire, not prohibitively expensive like sports, and acceptable to advertisers. This was the defining moment for Shear, marking a six-year accumulation of entrepreneurial experience and the final acquisition of essential skills. He crucially realized the importance of truly talking to users, a skill he felt he had previously lacked. This epiphany allowed them to build products with genuine user needs in mind, turning a phase of fumbling in the dark into a clear path forward. This user-centric approach, combined with prior engineering and management skills, led to the launch of Twitch.tv in 2011.
Mastering user communication: the overlooked essential skill
Shear emphasizes that a profound and often misunderstood skill for startup founders is the ability to genuinely talk to users. He claims that 80% of aspiring entrepreneurs make the same mistake he did: they believe they are engaging with users adequately after a few conversations, but this is incorrect. This skill is difficult to master and requires dedicated training; Y Combinator, for instance, trains product managers on it. Shear likens the pre-Twitch building process to stumbling around in the dark, bumping into obstacles like Legos and chairs, only occasionally making progress. The epiphany of how to talk to users, however, was like turning on a light switch, revealing the path forward and enabling efficient progress towards the goal. This ability to deeply understand user needs, aspirations, and daily lives, particularly identifying broadcasters as the most crucial user segment, allowed Twitch to build a platform that served both broadcasters and gamers effectively.
The long game: resilience, passion, and the eight-year marathon
The success of Twitch wasn't an overnight phenomenon but the culmination of a long, arduous journey. Shear notes that from Kiko in 2005 to the Amazon acquisition of Twitch, the process took about eight and a half years. He stresses that this timeline is normal and that it's essential not to give up, even if ideas need to pivot or evolve drastically. He advises that generic startup advice often fails because each company's path is unique. Resilience and passion are paramount; without genuinely loving the process, founders cannot endure the inevitable 'long period of pain.' Shear also highlights the importance of self-care – maintaining mental and physical health throughout the marathon. The Amazon deal for Twitch happened unexpectedly, and he suggests an exit could easily have taken nine or ten years. For Shear, the journey doesn't end with an exit; he expresses a deep-seated enjoyment for entrepreneurship itself, a passion that fuels his desire to continue building indefinitely.
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Emmett Shear's first startup was Kiko Calendar, a product intended to be a competitor to Google Calendar. Despite initial efforts, it faced challenges due to a crowded market and founder ADD, eventually being sold on eBay after Google Calendar's launch.
Topics
Mentioned in this video
A competitor calendar product launched by Google, which significantly impacted Kiko Calendar.
An email service that inspired the idea for Kiko Calendar due to its innovative features at the time.
A car used by the founders to travel to Boston.
An experimental startup idea for a sound sharing platform, similar to SoundCloud, built by the team.
Co-COO of Twitch, partnered with Emmett Shear on the gaming initiative.
Co-founder and CEO of Justin.tv, brought in to provide focus and leadership.
Co-founder of Kiko Calendar and Justin.tv, his life was the basis for an early Justin.tv concept.
Co-founder of Justin.tv and later Twitch, brought in for his hardware expertise.
Speaker at Startup School SV 2014, discussing his startup journey from Kiko Calendar to Twitch.
A video sharing platform that was a spin-off project from Justin.tv, led by Michael Seibel.
A startup accelerator that provided funding for the Justin.tv concept.
The live-streaming platform that evolved into Twitch, initially conceived as a reality show around Justin Kan's life.
The first startup founded by Emmett Shear and Justin Kan, a calendar application that faced numerous challenges and ultimately failed.
The platform where Kiko Calendar was sold after Google Calendar's launch.
The company that acquired Twitch, with the deal coming unexpectedly.
The live-streaming platform focused on video games, born from the evolution of Justin.tv after a realization about user needs.
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