Twitch CEO Emmett Shear is resigning from the company, he announced today with a post to Twitter and a blog post that recounted his 16 years with the platform that he helped found.
In the letter, Shear shared that the platform’s current president Dan Clancy will take over his CEO duties effective immediately. Shear will continue to work at Twitch in an “advisory role.” He did not indicate what kind of compensation that might entail. In 2014, Amazon acquired Twitch for nearly $1 billion.
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
Along with detailing the history of Twitch and how it came about, Shear mentioned that his reason for leaving the platform primarily included the birth of his first child.
“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,” he said. “So it is with great poignancy that I share my decision to resign from Twitch as CEO. I want to be fully there for my son as he enters this world and I feel ready for this change to tackle new challenges.”
Along with his position at Twitch, Shear has been a part-time partner with the venture capital firm Y Combinator after the firm helped to fund two of his projects, one of which became Twitch.
Shear is the final founding member of the platform to leave the company, and he is largely known for the relaxed vibes he brings to his yearly keynote speeches during TwitchCon.
His replacement, Dan Clancy, has been with Twitch since 2019. Prior to his work with the platform, Clancy spent nine years working for Google from 2005 to 2014. He then spent a few years as a VP of product and engineering for Nextdoor from 2014 to 2018.
