Twitch’s CEO is stepping down to spend time with his IRL family
Emmett Shear, the CEO of Twitch, announced he is stepping down from his role as the head of the streaming platform via Twitter on Thursday. Shear has been with the Amazon-owned livestreaming platform since its inception and has been the only CEO the company has ever had for over 16 years. He is succeeded by Twitch’s president, Dan Clancy who took over as CEO immediately after he announced his resignation.
In a blog post shared on Twitter, Shear cited wanting to be able to spend more time with his young son, and give him more time and effort. Moving forward, Shear will continue to be involved with the company in an advisory role.
“It’s hard to put into words how much Twitch has been for me. Twitch has been a place of community for streamers and viewers, but also for me. Twitch has been like my family, the place I’ve spent more of my waking hours than anywhere else. With the arrival of my son, the time has come for me to focus my energies on building that tiny little startup family, and I’m ready to dedicate my energies there,” Shear said in a tweet thread containing images with text.
In his resignation blog post, Shear talked about the platform's history, his personal connection, likening the startup to a “family.” You can read the full thread below.
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.
The Twitch we know today was founded under the name Justin.tv by Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, Kyle Vogt, and Justin Kan in 2007. The concept started with a content stunt: Kan livestreamed his entire
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