Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American

internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some CEOs ...

and

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital most of the time the investor purchases some species of property. Type ...

. He is the co-founder of live video platforms

Justin.tv Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged to ...

and

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle co ...

. He is the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especiall ...

of Twitch and is also a part-time partner at venture capital firm

Y Combinator Y Combinator (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator launched in March 2005. It has been used to launch more than 3,000 companies, including Airbnb, Coinbase, Cruise, DoorDash, Dropbox, Instacart, Quora, PagerDuty, Reddit, St ...

Early life and education

Emmett Shear earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science from

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...

in 2005.

Career

Justin.tv

In 2006, Shear, along with partners

Justin Kan Justin Kan (born July 16, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He is also the cofounder and former ...

Michael Seibel Michael Seibel (born October 7, 1982) is a managing director at Y Combinator and co-founder of two startups – Justin.tv/Twitch and Socialcam. He first joined Y Combinator in 2013, advising hundreds of startups, and has been active in promoting ...

and

Kyle Vogt Kyle Vogt is an American engineer, entrepreneur, technology executive and robotics pioneer. In 2013, Vogt founded Cruise Automation, where he currently serves as the company's President, Chief Executive Officer and Chief Technology Officer. Cruise ...

, started

, a 24/7 live video feed of Kan's life, broadcast via a webcam attached to his head. Kan's "lifecasting" lasted about eight months but the four partners decided to transition to providing a live video platform so anyone could publish a live video stream. Launched in 2007, Justin.tv was one of the largest live video platforms in the world with more than 30 million unique users every month until it was shut down on August 5, 2014. On August 29, 2011, Shear became CEO.

Twitch

After Justin.tv launched in 2007, the site quickly began building subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, Gaming, and others. Gaming configuration, in particular, grew very fast and became the most popular content on the site. In June 2011, the company decided to spin off the gaming content under a separate brand and site. They named it TwitchTV, inspired by the term

twitch gameplay Twitch gameplay is a type of video gameplay scenario that tests a player's response time. Action games such as shooters, sports, multiplayer online battle arena, and fighting games often contain elements of twitch gameplay. For example, firs ...

. It launched officially in public beta on June 6, 2011. On August 25, 2014, Amazon officially acquired Twitch for a reported $970,000,000. In March 2020, during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identi ...

, via Twitch, Shear announced that he is donating US$1 million to the women and minority-owned Three Babes Bakeshop in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood. The money will be used to form a nonprofit organization to keep small businesses working as people are supposed to stay home during the outbreak.

Y Combinator

Shear became a part-time partner at

in June 2011, where he offers advice to the new startups in each batch. He was a member of the first batch of YC-funded startups in 2005 for Kiko Calendar, and was funded by YC again for Justin.tv.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shear, Emmett 1983 births Businesspeople in information technology Living people Y Combinator people Twitch (service) people Amazon (company) people 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American businesspeople 21st-century American Jews