The Story Of Live Video Streaming Startup Twitch

The advent of esports, online gaming and the plethora of games available to choose from spawned multiple ecosystems and industries.  Computer gaming, especially, gave rise to million dollar industries in the form of merchandising, esport championships and live streaming.  Players are now able to broadcast their gameplay and monetize their live stream while doing it and this is where Twitch enters. Twitch is a platform where users can showcase themselves on a live stream and earn money in the process.

Beginnings

Twitch was founded by Justin Kan and Emmett Shears, two childhood friends.  Before Twitch began, Kan and Shears worked on a web calendar app called Kiko, but the app did not really find the traction for which they were hoping.  The founders decided to sell the app on eBay and it sold for a surprising $ 258,000. Using that for an investment, they decided to start a live streaming startup called Justin.tv, which streamed the life of Justin 24×7.  The idea attracted more users to their site, who eventually complained the site could offer alternate streams as well. That is when the founders pivoted on to the idea of letting users broadcast games. As the streams in the gaming section attracted more users than all of the different streams combined, the founders decided to start TwitchTV, which streamed gaming content exclusively in 2011.

Growth & acquisition

As more and more streamers started getting on the platform, by 2013, there were over 43 million viewers on the site every month.  Owing to the large traffic, streams began to experience lag and low frame rates, leading TwitchTV to increase their servers and come up with a solution to streamline the content.  It became clear to the owners that TwitchTV was becoming a major source of revenue, prompting them to take note of its importance by renaming parent company Justin.tv to Twitch Interactive.

As the number of users began growing, Google took note of the startup and hoped to acquire TwitchTV for a billion dollars through YouTube, its subsidiary.  However, the deal did not fall through due to antitrust concerns, which meant Google could court trouble if it monopolized video streaming. Once Google backed out, Amazon acquired Twitch for $ 970 million.

After the acquisition, Twitch started offering Twitch Prime, which was a part of Amazon Prime and offered ad free streaming and discounted games.  However, this was discontinued, with users now having to opt for a separate subscription named Twitch Turbo to get the perks which were earlier availed under Twitch Prime.

Twitch is now a leading live streaming platform, with games like Overwatch, Counter Strike: Global Offensive, Fortnite, League of Legends, DOTA2, Hearthstone and Player Unknown Battlegrounds (PUBG) attracting the most users and viewers.  The platform now has 15 million unique daily visitors.

With the internet industry seeing a shift towards more content oriented needs, this startup made sure it is on the top of its game by putting its community first and tailoring experiences which revolve around its stakeholders.