Emmett Shear, the CEO of Twitch, has declared his resignation with immediate effect in a blog post published on Thursday.
Shear has been associated with Twitch since its earlier days, having co-founded Justin.tv – a platform on which Justin Kan used to live stream his daily life around the clock. In 2011, Justin.tv transitioned to Twitch with a greater emphasis on live streaming popular gaming content. Within three years of this transition, Amazon purchased Twitch for almost a billion dollars.
“With my first child just born, I’ve been reflecting on my future with Twitch,” Shear wrote. “Twitch often feels to me like a child I’ve been raising as well. And while I will always want to be there if Twitch needs me, at 16 years old it feels to me Twitch is ready to move out of the house and venture alone.”
In October 2006 we started working on live video for the internet. That became Twitch. More than 16 years later, I'm now a father and ready to move to my next phase of life. I wrote a blog post, but the short version is: thank you so much to everyone who built this with me.
— Emmett Shear (@eshear) March 16, 2023
“Dan Clancy, our current President, has been a close partner to me these past few years. He will step fully into the role of CEO, effective immediately. He cares deeply about the Twitch community, its streamers, and our staff and understands what makes Twitch, Twitch.”
In his farewell blog post, the outgoing CEO concluded: “I have a deep sense of gratitude as well for all the streamers who trusted us early with their content and their communities, and all the streamers who have continued to do so to this day.
“I know some of you may find it hard to believe, but supporting as many of you as well as possible is the number one goal for everyone at Twitch and always has been. I also want to thank Amazon for being the best acquirer I could have hoped for. Amazon truly supported us and really allowed a product as different as Twitch the room to grow and to be itself.
Despite all that, Shear is confident in the platform’s future. “I’ve never had more confidence in Twitch’s leadership, in all our people, and in our product, than I do today,” he wrote. “For many years I truly felt Twitch might die without my guidance and input, but I no longer feel that is true.”
