Twitch Co-Founder and current CEO Emmett Shear announced Thursday that he would be stepping down from the role after more than 16 years at the Amazon-owned, gaming-focused live streaming platform. Twitch’s current President Dan Clancy will step into the CEO role, effective immediately, while Shear will continue to serve in an advisory role.
In a social media post, Shear shared his feelings on working at the company over the last 16 years, but summarized his exit as such:
“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.”
Shear, Michael Seibel, and Justin Kan originally started Twitch as a reality TV experiment called Justin.TV in late-2006 to early-2007. Eventually other categories were added including a gaming category that would evolve into what is now Twitch. In August of 2014 Amazon acquired Twitch for roughly $970M USD.
