Twitch Mashup: featuring Pokimane, Kevin Lin and Anele.

I mean, I could go on if you have not had a chance to listen to every single episode, which I don't know what your excuses, but I thought it'd be a fun time in the middle of the season to kind of do a recap in the form of a mash up. What I'm thinking is, and if we don't like this, we don't ever have to do this again. But I was thinking, we go within each industry and we kind of highlight to you guys, the listeners, the big takeaways, the things that I thought were interesting within

each episode. In the event that, again you didn't have the time to listen to the entire thing, We're going to start off with a topic in a world that is very near and dear to my heart, live streaming and also twitch and it's kind of the same world twitches near and dear in my heart because my husband was a CSO of the company for a very long time, and live streaming is something that I've been doing for a very long time, and I really love that whole world. I love how ron real it is, and I love

the connectivity with people who are listening or watching. Those were actually some of the very first interviews I even started off with. I thought it'd be a cool way to kick off this little mash up series. And if you guys don't like it, I'm listening to your feedback. We don't have to do it ever again. I just thought it'd be a cool way for you guys to hear from different aspects within each world within one episode. For this first episode, we're going to cover the world

of Twitch. Kevin Lynn is a co founder of Twitch, and so that's how really the idea started to come to be. And then we launched the brand in June two thousand eleven and Poke Maine is the number one most followed female streamer on Twitch. So I think the first step is just trying it out. Is something that's enjoyable, interacting with people, showcasing a gameplay. That's really how I did it. And then there's a Neil who is the

director of partnerships at Twitch. It is a dream job and to be perfectly awesome at you like I'm I'm humbled to be in the every day doing what I'm doing. I hope you guys enjoy this mash up. Let us know what you think without further ado the world of Twitch. Baby, if you haven't caught on by now, we're talking to Kevin Lynn. You guys may know him as one of the founders a small streaming company called Twitch. Without you,

there'd be no doctor disrespect, there'd be no Ninja. I mean they're there'd be, but what would they be doing playing video games by themselves? Exactly? She has three point four million followers on Twitch. She has over eight one million views on Twitch. You have is this accurate? Almost twenty streamed on Twitch? I have no idea. Okay, I

don't know. It's actually a stat I always wish I knew a Neil is the head of strategic Partnerships at Twitch, a small, tiny, little company you may have heard of. You've seen Twitch evolved over the last five six years, Like God knows what's going to happen in the next five to six after this. Then on June eleven, June eleven, we launched Twitch TV. It was this old like heavy metal space theme logo with a little TV with a ghost in it that Jacob design Twitch a variety of stories,

that's how we got there. But we were combing the Internet for pronounceable, single syllable domain names that were available for sale. So Bill who built chat and among many other things that at the company, Bill Morier, so he built this like domain crawler where he crawled all available domains that were like theoretically single syllable so roughly a vowel in the middle that seemed pronounceable, that were available

for sale. And one of the first that popped on the list for all of us was art and it was available. We looked up on Urban Dictionary. It means like the supreme state of being awesome or something like that. So that seems okay right Then one day m it's like, all right, guys, if no one comes up with anything better, we're going to use Zarth. And that's when we're like, okay, scramble.

So we're like figuring out all these other brands, and then the word Twitch comes up for like to me, when it popped into my head when we were talking about like, what do things gamers need to be good? And so it's like fast twitch muscles blah blah blah, but really that we're just kind of stuck in all of ourselves. Perfect. It was perfect. It was an empty vessel you could tell. You know, there's a story there about games, but it's just a word we liked. We

bought Twitch dot tv. That's how it came to be. That's how it started, and we designed and Jacob designed the logo, and then one year later two launched the new logo that you see today. That that that that that more retro homage logo. It looks like Amazon has purchased game streaming company Twitch dot tv for close to one billion dollars. You have a lot of fans, you have all these people watching you. You are doing this five days a week as your career. How does one

get here? Well, interestingly enough, when I first started, I never ever thought it would be this, And I feel like everyone says that, and I kind of think that that's a key aspect to becoming a good streamer is when you start, it's genuinely just something that you enjoy, that you would be happy to do as a hobby. I think I sometimes see people get into it and they're like, I want to make money, I want to

hit these mothstones, I want to hit these goals. And if you're doing it with that in mind, as opposed to this is an activity that I like. For example, you're probably not going to find like an Olympian runner that just hates running out right right. So I think the first step is just trying it out as something that's enjoyable, in tracting with people showcasing your gameplay. That's really how I did it. Twitch is hands down one

of the most successful companies out there. When you think back to how you landed the role, what were the steps that you took in your own Because you got the job when you were fairly young, So did you have a background in streaming or were you just a gamer who found out about this platform because you were using it and you're like, I'm going to apply for a job there. How did you land there? And I

don't even know where to begin. I'll give you the condensed versional, at least what I would as seem to be the most condensed version. When I was younger, I actually competed in gaming when I was like fifteen sixteen, I played a game called Counterstrike. Never heard of him. It's a just kidding. Colin plays it all the time. Oh my god. It almost caused multiple divorces. But let's this isn't about me. We could talk about that off the record. But I played a ship ton of counter

Strike when I was in high school. Actually funny story. So my mom and I give me an option. They're like, Okay, we could either build your brand new computer, or we'll get you a car. And if I got a car, I can go get a job and go make some money and then buy a computer. But I was like, no, funk that I want a computer. I want it right now. So I got a computer. Ended up dropping like three racks in two thousand and five, which was like a ship ton of money for computer. Also, let's just a

lot of teenagers would have chosen a car. Yeah I'm an idiot, but looking but it worked out. It did. It was the best decision I made. But your parents were probably like thinking they scored because they're like, we don't have to get this kid a car, right, Yeah, let's go get a three thousand dollar computer. That's fine, He's not going out anymore. So I got into programing, and I was doing for about a year. It really sucked.

That wasn't good. Why did you get into programing because back then I don't even think it was It was like it was like a cool thing. It was like an underground community, you know, like there's websites. I got fragged. You can go into that like shared scores and tournaments from like all around the world. And back then it was like a little underground society, like you only heard about these tournaments happening in like Sweden, and you would hear about like the World Cyber Games, and that was

like the pinnacle of like events. You know. Nowadays we got a ton of events going on on like on a monthly basis. Back then you only had one or two worldwide. I did it for about a year and I realized, look, my grades are failing. I'm not doing well. I need to grow up. I need to like focus on what teenagers care about, which is like going to school and getting a job and meeting a girl and

all this other teenage ship. I end up going into school for premed I did that for like three years, and my mom and dad had to sit down with me with my brothers, and we're like, would you really want to do? And I'm like, I want to go become a doctor. And they're like, no, you don't. We know you don't want to be a doctor, we know you hate it. What do you really want to do? And that was like my breakthrough moment of like being

very honest with myself. What good parents? I feel like the majority would be doing the polar opposite, especially in a space that your parents probably were not familiar with and did not understand. They didn't and they totally had to read on me, like they knew me inside and out. So I think it was like their own intuition. They knew that I wasn't happy doing what I was doing or trying to pursue what I what I thought I wanted to do. Anyways, that caused me to like Dill back.

And coincidentally, at the same time, StarCraft two, which the franchise was like everything to me, was getting announced, and so I was like, you know what, I'm gonna get back into playing some video games when we play StarCraft two, and I really wanted to get good at the game. So I went on YouTube and I started watching like sutorials, and I found Justin TV, which was like the sister company of Twitch back in the day, and t like when I tell you, like I was an avid viewer,

Like I was on that ship all day. Really, I was up until like five six am watching like the Career in like Stark Half League, which was like going on from like one am all way to like five am every fucking night. And then I would roll into class like half a week. But I did that, and I loved it. You were a part of Social Cam and Justin TV and all the stuff for years. Two thousand and six, I just moved to San Francisco Justin and Emmett after graduation. They graduate two thousand and five.

They had built a calendar company. They sold it on eBay. They saw their company on eBay, packed up their stuff, drove across the country with Michael. Michael was working for Quasium Fume raising money for a Senate campaign in Baltimore. They kept in touch, they got together, drove, drove across the country, and I was house sitting from my old boss, So invite him over for a barbecue, hanging out in the hot tub, and and Justin's like, we got this idea for a business. I was like, okay, what we're

gonna stream my life? Seven? And could you imagine one of your friends being like, I have this genius idea. You guys are gonna stream my life? Yeah? Yeah no, And it's just like you know, you look, I'm just like sitting there like, you know, I really like you guys, And it's awesome, really happier moving to San Franci les Go. And I really don't want to discourage you or offer anything that might prevent you from starting your dream, but that idea is really kind of the worst, and like

why would you do this to yourself? And they explained it, and I was like, okay, cool. Well, you know like they had they raised they were raising money from angels and a lot. They already had this idea in motion. They were already starting to talk to people about it, and and I was like, okay, cool, Like let me know if I can help you know, like I I is this a hot tub conversation? Was one of the hot tub and barbecue conversation. Okay, so let's just let's

pretend everyone's in the hot tub. So it's justin Cohn, emateur Michael Cibo and Kevin Lynn and they were like, I think a couple of other people, but I was so zoned in on this conversation, just thinking through, like what in blaze, what could this act? So Justin's pitching you in the hot tub? Yeah, totally, this is this is the pitching this genius idea. He's already spoken to angel investors, so it's not like he's like brewing the

idea and running and already tested it. He tested testing it with many people and people are like, yeah, sure, give you money for that. And you gotta remember, like in in like the early two thousand's, there was all kinds of weird experimental stuff that was happening in live video. I actually had like just a laptop and really bad internet, and I had to beg my parents to upgrade the

internet so it was like streamable Internet. And I saved up a bunch of money to buy a secondhand, custom built PC off of Kijigi, which is like Canadian craigslist. So yeah, I bought this PC. This was my senior year of high school, so about six years ago. Now. Really didn't like Envision much for it. I just thought it was really fun to have people like come into my channel and I talked to them and they respond

and create this connection. I kept streaming. Two years into it, well, I ended up going to university because in my mind it was always like very ingrained in me from my parents, like you go to school, you get your degree, maybe you do post grad or you become a doctor. I don't know very much one of those households. So I went to study chemical engineering at McMaster University and two years into that, one month I made like a substantial

amount of money. And when I say substantial, I mean like when you're a college kid and you're like at least twenty thousand dollars in debt and you make like five to ten k in a month off of like sponsorships or subscriptions or donations, you're like, holy do I store on this? Holy shit? And so they're like, go be an engineer, but don't do it. We did. Don't teach after go get a job, Go get a real job, but learn engineering is really important, and ideally go be

a doctor. That was was pre med track, had it all figured out. Yeah, that was that was the plan. And then I took this a class called EB one oh one, which was the Diversity of Life with his teacher named Leo Busts, who was this like awesome ecologist guy and loved it, and I was like, I'm going to switch to ecology and evolutionary apology as my major. There was like the first rift I had with my parents were like, no paying for school, you are going

to study engineering. Meanwhile, we're playing a bunch of video games in the office. A street Fighter was like kind of one of those always on games like this just droning Street Fighter background music that was always on in the office. Then one day StarCraft to Beta comes out. This was in May, intent somehow we got access to

it and we were already thinking about games. But then this game comes out, we get it and we were playing it NonStop and we're watching We realized that we're going home and watching videos on YouTube trying to get better learning, and we're like, huh, this should be live, Like why would this not be live? And sure enough we had a We had a small community of gamers back in the day. This was like Kaiba four player podcast.

You stream had a bunch of Lord Cat and so on, and so there was there was a small community of game streamers on a variety of platforms, and so we started reaching out what can we build for you? And a lot of people that we reached out to in the beginning that we eventually like eventually worked with us or became a partner were like, you guys are terrible,

we hate you. Don't TV brand sucks, like go away, and like no, no, please, like let us ask you some questions and we promise we'll go away, but we might build some stuff for you. We'll let you know that. Just continue to to sort of positively spiral more conversations, more feature development. We branched out the subdomain called JTV gaming and that became like the home. That was one of the big pieces of feedback we got. Was the first one being we got to figure out how to

make money. Then there all these technical features like transcoding, high quality, blah blah blah, all these important things that we had to build very quickly. But the big thing was they were like, we want a home. We want a place where we can go and hang out with other gamers, not all this other weird stuff, not all this noise. We want a home for gamers. And so that's how really the idea started to come to be. We were toying with it as justin t JTV Gaming.

We didn't launch as that. We just did it. We built, just built up brand, but we didn't really make noise about it. Then on June eleven, June eleven, we launched Twitch tv. And so to me on the periphery, I just saw Justin popping up on like Today's show on the front page of the s F Chronicle, like doing all this stuff, kind of doing it, like becoming this

internet celebrity by streaming himself to me for something. And it's just like that's so wild because I tune in and I'm like, this is the most boring shit ever, And you're just sitting there just like looking at this laptop, like why do people watch this? But it was for these moments, all of a sudden something would happen and

that was enough. Like one day they bumped into Dave Chappelle and that was a big deal, right, So it was cool to start see to start to see like, Okay, I see that people will tune in to wait for these things. But guess what they weren't just doing that. They were talking with each other. They're talking to Justin, Justin's responding to them and chat So it's actually not as boring as as if you diggle just one tiny

little bit layer deeper. People were just hanging out and that was that was what I finally realized, was like this, this power of this platform that they were building was it's a way for people just to hang out with other people when they're alone or with other people, but mostly for when you're alone. You know, you when you're

walking around somewhere, you're doing your errands or whatever. Wouldn't it be nice if you could just chat with somebody, you know, if you don't have somebody to be there with you. So that that's that's when we started to resonate. But that was you know, it really was like it

was just crazy to see. Yeah. So Kevin Lynn, who was one of the founders actually is one of my good friends, and we interviewed him for this show, and he was saying, when they initially launched Justin TV, which was prior to Twitch, people were just in there because they were lonely and they just wanted interaction with other people and being and they were just watching Justin do day to day things. But ironically they were alone, but they weren't alone because they call it your community right

on Twitch, it's a community. What would you say your community is made up of? So for me, interestingly enough, I think it's highly dependent on the game that I play, and I can tell by the way that my chat changes, Like if I play something like Fortnite or Minecraft, I know the audience use younger. I know if I play like League or do Ira all content like in person or walk around or travel, then it's really just about anybody.

League is definitely like young adults. So, like you can tell by the way your chat behaves, the kind of stuff that people are saying, typically what the demo is like. I like to think that I think I have more female viewers than most people. I think that's very normal though, because you know, when you watch content, it's a lot easier to relate to someone who's of the same gender as you. I think it's pretty wide because I can kind of tap into different demos by playing different games,

which is really cool. I loved every bit of it. And what was it? What was it about that that hooked you? Was it you were trying to learn? Was it a learning experience? Was it you were just the voyeuristic element of it, which I think a lot of

people are drawn to that. Imagine picking up a new hobby that doesn't really have much of a culture, much of a community around it, and you find one little outlet, one little outlet, and there's like one place where we kind of feel like a sense of belonging and something that you can actually take away on a day to day something you can learn from. And for me that was justin TV and watching like these Korean leagues at

the time. Plus you're interacting with other people in chat, so there's like this other like kind of shared experience that you kind of experienced with other people along the way. And for me, that was every thing I told myself, I'm like, one way or another, I'm gonna find a

way to get a job here anyway. So a lot of people were experimenting with like you know now, with the with the with the promise of the internet, like the ability to just do whatever you want and demonstrate that to whoever feels like watching you was tested a lot before that, but the technology wasn't there, the infrastructure

wasn't there. So the timing window around when they decided to start streaming and walking around San Francisco's two thousand and seven, it was still e v D. Oh you know, if you're lucky bits per second, So it's still choppy video, low quality. Um. But really they actually did this show for a while. Justin streamed himself sleeping to waking up and getting ready, going to the bathroom, sitting and working,

walking around San Francis. Are you involved at this point or I'm like on the periphery, I'm still I had just you know, I moved in two thousand six in San Francisco, so I didn't want to. You know, they didn't ask me too, because I was frankly would have been completely useless to them, questionable if I was ever actually full to them. Um. But anyway, I was delivering beverages and I was like, oh, I want to help these guys, and so I go to there like that.

You know. Michael was originally the producer. His title was a producer just In with CEO and Michael would cook for everybody every day, cooking all these delicious meals. He loves cooking. But he what he was doing was really gathering people around what they were up to, and so friends from dropbox, Airbnb like at the time, all would just come hang out over dinners the Bay Area is not a very big hut for gaming like l A is. But the Bay wasn't any opportunity that there was an

event like I volunteered. I spent some time throwing my own money into it, and then I got a job at Zinga, and that was like my big break because I was like my first step into the gaming industry. And that is not necessarily the Pinnacle, like they're not like a true like hardcore game company, but it was in the gaming industry and I met a lot of talented people there, made made a lot of friends, and I used actually my salary at Zinga to bootstrap my

own StarCraft team and it was great. I loved every minute of it. And anyways, over time, about a year of doing that while working at single uh, the right opportunity locked on my door Twitch and that interview process took like three months. It was at this point was it already Twitch? It was already Twitch. It was about a year into it, which was already kind of like a formed company. When you heard about Twitch for the

first time, what were your initial thoughts. I was like, holy shit, I thought I can break in as a streamer. It's actually stream for like two years. I wasn't good at it. It really wasn't, but you know, I love I love every bit of it. Uh And for me, I would say Twitch had a really cool, like gothic,

like nerdy like steampunk. Looked at it back then, and then like six months in or I think it was about a year after, they like reframed it into this whole purple company, which I absolutely loved because purposes the

Pemp color. You know, it's dope, Like you were saying, back then, there weren't household names like Ninja making millions of dollars where your parents not even close, where your parents could point to a case study and say, Okay, you know, it's not completely out of the question that Pokey could make a live or your name was not poke at that time, that that Iman could make that much money and survive and make this a way of life basically, so there was no case point proving that

this was an actual reality. You were just kind of trying to convince some based off of nothing exactly, especially because I mean, at least there's YouTube, and most people know about YouTube, but live streaming even nowadays is still relatively new and three or four years ago even more so, like they didn't even really understand what it was, like, is it a video? Is it not? Who are these people texting you? You know? So I'm very very grateful

that they trusted me enough to take that chance. So yeah, okay, so talk me through that first year. You have a one year timeline. The pressure is on. Right at this point, you open a Twitch account. I'm assuming this is was it on Twitch you're streaming or somewhere else. Yeah. Yeah, I've always streamed on Twitch the last six years. So basically I started senior year of high school and then two years into that, so for years ago I decided to go full time got it. Yeah, and that was

two years into my university degree. So at that point I was like, okay, I need to really give this a full shot. And I come from Canada, that's where I grew up, and I basically decided to momentarily move to Los Angeles because that's basically where the sports hub is, That's where all the sports players are, that's where a lot of live streamers are, that's really where any event in relation to gaming or e sports is typically held.

So I was like, I need to be here or at least try it out and see how I feel about it. It was a shifting culture. I think gaming has always had the stigma from I guess pop culture where it's like, you know, you're some kid that lives in the basement eating hot pockets, so the whole South Park reference, you know, the wild reference for your sit at home living in a basement eting hot pockets, ship

like that. So for me, one of the things that I've been very passionate was like moving away from that stigma and really kind of unveiling the mask behind the community and showing like, yo, these are just people like everybody else. These are sucking, awesome people, are talented people, they're cool people, and they're just like you and I. They're not any different. And it's weird to say that.

Like gamers have always has this label of like, oh, you're a gamer, so thus you're this type of person. It's like, no, I'm not. Anyone's a gamer. What I loved about is that a lot of people who in the past would be quite about being a gamer, closet gamers, if you may start to come out and realize like, hey, it's actually cool for me to share this information with you. It's like, I love fucking video games. As a matter

of fact, check out my entire collection. Weren't really a parent or really present in social media before, and now they are, and it's starting to become a more of a widespread thing amongst culture. The families that you've built will open any door that you want, So you do have this influence. And if you want to do a makeup line, one day, you're gonna do a makeup line and it's going to do really well. And if you

want to sing, it's It's not just streaming. I mean, think of YouTubers and think of the Internet in general. It allows you to just reach such an insane amount of people and it really helps you recognize that however unique or particular you may feel, there were people that will love that about you, and people that will want to be part of your community. You just you know, have to reach wider and water. What were you at that point thinking about just people's use of the internet.

It was that was that opening your mind up to other possibilities and inspiring other things that you thought this could be much bigger than any of us could imagine. Yeah, for sure, I mean we were you know, we started thinking about different ways to use the platform. YouTube was skyrocketing then and then eventually got acquired UM and became this like level of aspiration for us right Instagram, same timing UM. And around two eight that's YouTube was doing

partner programs. So were you guys seeing the partner programs that YouTube and thinking maybe we should be doing a partner program Yes, for sure. We didn't really do partnerships actually in the very beginning, we just we were it was moving too fast and we were too small of a team. But we in so two thousand and eight

the recession hits. I think that was one of those you know, it was hard, but was one of the most important things we that that could happen to the company, which was realized we had to figure out how to monetize because our costs were starting to get out of control because the traffic was going so quickly and it's global traffic and certain countries are just way more expensive

to deliver continent too. But we're starting to spend you know, in theory we could get very quickly to millions of dollars of costs per month and we hadn't raised that much money. And meanwhile, our competitor, you stream, where Colin was at Yes, I was going to say to you, what what point does you stream enter the picture, because you guys were first. Yeah, the timing was pretty close.

We so we raised some money in two thousand and eight, in two thousand and nine and two trenches, but we had only raised I think it was about twelve million total. Then you stream goes out and raises sixty million dollars and moves actually their office to a vantage point of ours, like a really nice new building that literally looked onto our shitty barn door, and we're like, okay, like what

are we gonna do? So we started just reaching out, going going to events, networking in the ad world, and we figured out between thou nine how to make money and we've actually became profitable. So with the streamers, because you work with them so closely, I do want to talk about without getting into specifics, because so many people who don't understand the world world of streaming do not understand how these people make a living. So, you know,

like my parents, for example, don't understand Twitch. Don't understand how kids can spend all day long gaming and live these great lives and make six seven figures. When did this become a reality, because I know when you first started in the in the streaming world, you were saying, like making five thousand dollars. When did it start to become very very real when it comes to making a

legit amount of money. I think as the new vectors for monetizing started to become more apparent is when it starts to become more of a reality and to kind of like dive into that. You know, there's first party victors like running advertisements in the stream, selling subscriptions, which is affective, like people pledging to you on a monthly basis, and exchange for stuff like custom e moticons, a cool badge. And beyond that, we we we have plenty of other vectors.

We've we've launched a digital good called bits that you can earn both by purchasing and also by watching advertisements. You know, there's merchandise or sponsorships. I could go on and on in terms of the first party, but what has really become a big phenomenon is the sense of acknowledgement. And you look at people who subscribe to channels. We've actually built in first party tooling for people to be

recognized for that for the support. So if you were to subscribe to my channel, you're paying me five bucks to to to to to support me. That gets recognized not only in my channel, but if I have overlaid on my stream, I can kind of customize that experience based on how I want. I can make it a big, you know, big party. I can make it something really well, or I can have it just be something that possible to stream, and I can technology recognize you and thank

you for that personally. And for a lot of people, that's free fulfilling and that's something that they kind of get addicted to in terms of behavior. And you think about that experience and you think about stuff like tipping

tipping his third party. People do that through vectors like PayPal, and through that they can also added messages and usually some people will do stuff like Texas speech, so they'll put a message, it will read it out loud back to the streamer as they're streaming, and they can respond back to it live on stream. Or maybe sometimes people will be really shitty and troll and see something inappropriate, but it's still read out loud, and people do it

for the ships and giggles. Going back to earlier days and even today, do you feel like in a sense that sometimes you're almost like a casting director, you know, early on I felt like that. I think the scene has evolved quite a lot in the last year, UM for the better, because before they're applying and they're like telling you why they should be a partner? Is it like now, how do people now apply to be a partner?

So the vector now is we have an internal system that's kind of automated half of the trouble of like applying. So what you gotta do now is actually qualify for the metrics through what we have in our dashboards like Twitch achievements. So you have to attain seventy years for about two to three weeks, so that you're maintaining consistency, and has to be raw numbers, so like you can't have that from people hosting you, from people are reading.

It has to be numbers that you have been able to attain and retain on your own over over the two weeks two to three week period. So for those people, once they've done that and once they've met a few other criteria, they actually get a little button that allows UM to apply the wants. They apply the same exact flow as how it is from the past, which it's

like they have to tell us about themselves. But now we've been able to reduce the vall with people who are getting zero viewers, are just applying for the sake of applying, and we're able to get in people who are actually qualified. And it's a guided experience, so people that aren't qualified, they'll understand why they're not qualified. They'll be let's see what metrics you really need to attain to get to that point back, and they didn't have that.

Sometimes it would take us weeks on end to get back to you because of the volume of applications being so high. But now we've been able to cut that back and being able to keep it focus on quality over quantity. We have had celebrities reschedule interviews on this show because they're burnt out, they just went back to back on tour, or you know, they've been shooting for thirty days straight with no break. I imagine that the world of streaming is very similar, if not more intense,

because you have all this pressure to put in. Like you said, consistency is really key. How much is too much? And is streaming burnout real? And do you step in and intervene as somebody who works on the partners side, for sure, I definitely acknowledge it as a real thing. And I think burnout comes in different shapes and forms. That could be traveling too much for for for different obligations. It could be streaming too many hours. It could be

getting to hyper focus on one particular game. I mean, burnard comes in different shapes and forms of different variations overall, I think to to to answer your question, yeah, we do intervene to what level I can go into specifics, but you know, we we don't want our streamers, we don't want our partners, our friends being affected by by burnout, and when they are, when they are affected by it, we try to intervene and try to help them out.

I'mnderstanding where they're coming from, and try to ultimately understand what we can do proactively in the future rather than being reactive. And I think that's the biggest issue is like right now we're all learning together. You know, still a brand new industry in terms of how people are monetizing content, in terms of the community growing, and so

there's a lot of work to be done. I We'll say, for from my personal standpoint, like this entire like, my entire commitment this year has been focusing on how do we minimize that burnout because it just becomeing more apparent in situations like the Drake and Ninja event. Really has evolved Twitch and it's kind of grown into like this mainstream levels becoming a household name, which I'm really proud about.

But as a result, people are kind of experiencing it's like supernova explosion and growth as well, and so they're building up this anxiety of like, if I don't stream for X amount of hours or X amount of days, someone else is gonna take over. I'm gonna lose subscriptions. I'm gonna lose momentum. How true is that, though? I mean,

is it? There are so many streamers on Twitch. If you decide to take a week off, does that dramatically change your viewership or your subscriptions in terms of the run numbers if you're looking at from a rosstandpoint, like inevitably, yes,

it will. I think the issue is we need to do a better job on our end in terms of how we're presenting those numbers to you so you can better understand what are those changes, because naturally people do lose subscriptions on the day to day, even if they are streaming, people do churn just because their subscriptions expire.

Some people said to not renew. They confuse that with the days that they take off from streaming, as people are unsubscribing to them or they're losing subscribers inevitably, Like anytime we take off, yes, you're losing traffic your channel, but we are trying to get creative with how we resurface content in your channel and also how we alive at that anxiety because ultimately that's my biggest pain point right now is like I hate seeing people. I feel like they have to be on behind a stream at

all times. They have to produce content because if they don't, they lose momentum. It's a really shitty feeling because it really start saying your fear with their personal life, and how do you get out. You cannot get off the hamster wheel. There's just it's it's there's too much at stake. But I really think it's just about planning your time ahead of time so that you can say I'm blocking

off these hours to stream. I can schedule this dinner and at this time if I want to do a breakfast, I'll just push my stream back and making sure that you're at least putting in the effort to fit those things in. Otherwise, if you just continue with your schedule and never plan for anything else, or really avoid being flexible in any way, you'll miss out on a lot of like really good opportunities to build relationship ups or

put effort into your friendships. And that's really important. There was actually a clip recently of a live streamer talking about this, and he said something along the lines of I grinded for many, many years. I'm really glad that I kind of made it to the top of streaming, but I've had to make a lot of sacrifices. I basically don't have any friends or relationships or anything that sort.

It was a very very slip. Yeah, it's always something that I wanted to kind of preach to all streamers because it's very very easy to get lost in the numbers and get stuck on like when is the optimal time to stream. I have to be consistent, I have

to do this, I have to do that. But at the end of the day, you have one life, and friendships and relationships are such an essential part of that your career can't be everything, especially on Twitch, because it's very volatile and sometimes for reasons outside of your control, so you have to make sure your happiness is tied to other things. I really hope for him and for any other people that are maybe very were consensive, they learned how to fit in friendships and relationships and manage

their time. The shitty thing about the Internet really is that you can you can hide behind the screen and be whoever the fun you want to be. You could be a dick, you could be an asshole, it could be a racist, and a lot of people think they can get away with it. And it's shitty because a lot of people do it for the simple fact of just like getting a reaction out of other people. They don't really have a purpose, they don't really have an intent.

That's unfortunate. I hope culturally, with the entire Internet, that's something that we start to pivot away from and change. It's a pipe dream, but I really, I really think that that's something that needs to happen as a whole. It's not just within Twitch, it's not just within YouTube, Twitter or any of the other like microcossing communities like

it's the entire Internet. And I think when you look at Twitch and what we're doing, we have a we have both product features that help prevent and protect streamers from malicious behavior happening and also behaviors and even activity. Again, I can't go into all the specifics in terms of what, but we do have product features that allow for you to moderate your channel automatical list. Maybe you don't have

moderais your channel. We have an automoti feature, so and you can dial that from like a one to four and adjust it to based on how how you want your chat to be controlled, how you want to conduct your community. And we also do a lot of education

when you become a partner. A lot of what our team focuses on is empowering these streamers on how to be more vigilant not only with the content that they're putting on stream, but with their community, with their moderators, and how they're thinking about their content on a day to day basis. Because every time you're playing a new game, you're welcoming a new opportunity for people to come in and say something toxic, say something rude about you, and

it is a trained behavior. Training your community is a very difficult thing to do, and so from a general perspective, there's definitely a ton of education, there's product features, but um when it comes to working with partner streamers, there's a lot more involvement. There's a lot more proactive empowerment. We do a lot of coaching and education around it. It's a cat and mouse game, toxic people are always looking for new vectors to be able to kind of

attack your stream and funk with you. And I think it's it's going to continue to be an evolving, iterating game where we have to improve upon and and basically do more to to tech, not only our streamers, about our entire community. I think that with any kind of change, people are always gonna be resistant to it, and people act on different ways. It kind of goes back to what I'm saying earlier. When you're on the Internet, people

people act however they feel like acting. They might want to be a ship head one day, they might be cool about another day. But would change, especially in anything on the Internet, like people always react negatively to it, even if it is for the betterment of of everybody. We're not trying to change the platform. What we're looking at is adjacent content, right, it's a very gamer. You like food, you're a gamer, you like music, and so these are the things that we look at that are,

like wonderree, adjacent to what is gaming content. So we're not deep anyway from what we are. We are a gaming platform. We're gonna continue to be a gaming platform. That is our community, that is our bread and butter. But we are welcoming to everybody that is has an interesting gaming content. We do have adjacent content that sels available for you to do, but our core focus is gaming. There are gonna be people who are gonna be resistant to that. That's perfectly fine. I think you're going to

find that everywhere. For us, it's really just about making sure that we have the most welcoming community, most welcoming platform. People feel like it's a safe place for them to be themselves. How do you work work life balance? Because I look at your community of people, everyone's asking for a meeting with you. Everyone wants to see you. You're in l A now. I keep looking at the clock because I have anxiety, and I'm like, he's in l A for two days. I bet you he has five

people to meet with. It's not easy I mean, I I think I I text a lot. Textas like a good good way to keep in touch, asked quick questions and so on, particularly for like startups that need help, like those text me stof just text me that. But I don't know, I do feel bad. I feel bad

a lot. Like there's a lot of people I lost touch with, you know, in the last eleven years, like just being so focused on the on work as a mean personally, yeah, imbalance in life, Like I lost touch with a lot of really great friends from high school and college, and some of those are irreparable unfortunately. So I think these days I try to be a bit more conscious of it, try to check in to do events.

Events is a great way to get a bunch of people together the same time get to know each other too, and and and and and so on. But I don't have a core group of friends I'll hang out with, you know, just whenever you feel like relaxing, doing nothing,

playing video games. Maybe you know you're really good at relaxing though, Like I noticed when you when you decide that, like we are at a wedding and we're going to just have fun, You're awesome at just removing work conversation, which some people are like every conversation is like a work conversation. You're really I think you're really good at separating the two. That's the hard part of being in San Francisco these days, and it's kind of always been

that way since I moved there thirteen years ago. Everyone just talks about their projects and yeah, like guys, just go chill. I don't know. For me, I don't sleep a lot, so I'm trying to. I'm trying to get seven hours. I think it's very important to roughly sleep the human average, But I don't see a lot sigend up like you know, staying up late, texting, I bond with, connect with friends over video games. I'll you know, um, go go to events and stuff like that. Instead of

being bothered by things in the community. I do my best to kind of change the standard and educate people, because that's the main you know, like that's where ignorance comes from, just not understanding or lack of education. So what I'll do is I'll say, okay, well, maybe like I look this way because I'm sick or it's not really something that's nice to call out. And the more that you can kind of fix those types of behaviors,

but in a kind, loving, educational manner. The less likely those things are to happen within your community, and then the less people see that stuff, the less they want

to make similar comments elsewhere. So I also try to set the standard, not only in a nice way, but sometimes in a funny way, like if I see a really really just dumb, rude comment, I will also make a joke out of it, And I think that in that same way, it kind of teaches a lot of other people a lesson on why they shouldn't make comments

like that. It's so funny you say that because our last generation of the show, it was a radio show, so it was live and then we're also streaming it on Twitch and it was like our first taste of chat. And let me tell you, I would I don't know how every every time the show wrapped, I would like cry to Allison, like they're so mean. And it was one mean comment, but it got under my skin, you know, because I'm a sensitive bird, and you know, like that's

how humans are. It's like it's like people don't realize there's an actual human on the other receiving end of this, Like yes, we're entertaining you, and yes you're watching. But the other thing that I found that was really interesting was the troll If you called them out on the live stream, all of a sudden, they're nice. Like they would be like, you're a fucking idiot, and I'd be like, you know what, Dominic two two seven to seven eight seven basement, I am an idiot, how's your day going?

And then he'd be like, oh my god, I love your show, and I'd be like, wait, so all you're wanted was a shout out, no, yeah, attention. They just want attention, And at the end of the day, you know, it's kind of cute. It's like a little kid at ing out and being crazy, but at the end of the day, like they just want your attention. They just want to play with you or talk or interact. So

that's so we started responding exactly. So we started responding to the trolls, and they'd be like our best friends, you know, we're sending them holiday cards now it's and then other trolls. So then other trolls would come in, and the troll that bullied me last week was like, Yo, you better fucking get out of this chat. I'd be like, and they're offering to be my mod. It's like, dude, last week you were calling me a fucking idiot, but

we cool now that's fine. So the other thing I want to touch on is how do you kind of like block out because obviously you're a very confident woman. You're inspiring others to be confident and just be themselves, but you are human, So how do you kind of block out the noise when you do see haters or trolls or how do you even continue to stream? Because I'm sensitive. I don't know. I definitely couldn't be a streamer,

but how do you cope? I am so glad that for me it was like one step at a time in the sense that I started off I was really small, got to twenty viewers, a hundred was really exciting, triple digits, and like, my growth has been like slow and steady more or less. And because of that, I've kind of learned to deal with them one step at a time when you like, because you deal with that type of attention very differently when you have a smaller community than

once you become like a larger name per se. I think I kind of just limit exposure to that sort of stuff because I recognize that it is so far out of my control the kind of stuff that people will comment or think of me or say about me.

So I think I kind of just if I know that there's a certain area where a lot of people will just be saying a lot of rude things about me that and mind you, I think I'm specifically talking about comments that aren't criticism, just like there's a common term that's just like twitch thoughts or calling someone ugly, or commenting on things you don't like about them, you know, things that are related to like my looks that's not something that's ever going to change, or if you hate

the way I sound, I can't change my vocal chords, right, So things that literally are out of my control, it only hurts me to continuously read that stuff. Whereas you know, if there's feedback like oh I didn't really like this thing that she said or this thing that she did, even if the feedback is kind of set in a rude way, at least I know that's something that I can think about reflect on. Was I happy with the

way that I expressed myself in these situations? So those are negative comments like I'm more than happy to take and look at the ones that I can garner no value from reading, I just won't read them. Um, And it's not easy. It's definitely not easy, but you kind of try to learn to get out of those habits control yourself. Takes a lot of will power. But yeah, definitely limiting exposure to comments that are just bad and

in chat moderators incredible well. Twitch chat moderation is like a key parts streaming, like if you have to have it. I did not know this in the beginning, so we had a lot of ship going on in our chat. I was like, oh my gosh, this is scary, Like, somebody get these people out of here. So yeah, that's I'm like having I'm having PTSD. No, it's fine, I'm you're crying. I gotta say. I've also kind of grown up on the internet, so I think I was a

bit more ready for these kind of situations. Have you seen all the jokes about like the way kids are on like Xbox Live lobbies, right, Like when you grow up gaming online interacting with strangers, you know, sometimes like it just goes down. People are yelling at each other, insulting each other for no reason. So I had my fair share that. Oh I me and my brother would

banter a lot when we were younger. So you're ready for it a little bit, right, But no one's ever ready for the kind of stuff that you get when you're like a public figure on the internet. How many partners does Twitch have on the platform today? I think today rough count is about So there's thirty thousand people

that are your children. How do you personally keep track of all of them and make sure that obviously you have a team, it's not just you, but what is a day to day like for you and your interactions with the partners? In terms of interaction I'm spending I'm spending less time communicating on a macro level nowadays and focused much more on a micro level, so talking to

individual partners. I'm out here in l A right now, wet with a few partners today and tomorrow from my team, and the entire partnership's department is kind of broken down too, different facets. So we have people that focus on individual communities like I mentioned earlier, people who focus on first person shooters, people who focus on fighting and communities like street fighter, and other people who focus on stuff like charity, and then beyond that, we also look at people who

are broken up by regions. So we have a Twitch comedy in Europe, we have one in Latin America and Asia, so we have different representatives and these different regions and also have their own strengths. And for us, really that plus partners that we have is kind of broken down into each of those regions, and for us, we we serve some in different ways, you know, and Asia there's a lot of growing communities. So it's really about building up a presence not only for Twitch, but for the

individual creators. Whereas in Europe and North America they're much more prevalent, they're much more present in terms of the industry, and so it's more about how do we grow them beyond mainstream, how do we get them connected with sponsors

and advertisers that are non endemic to the brand. Every day is different, Every day is different, and the way that I'm working with the community isn't directly portrayed out to the public on a day to day, but more so in terms of events like E three, like packs being at those events. There's a lot of things that my team does not only from like a product standpoint, but also just like a from an interaction standpoint, and there's a lot that we do. We have usually parties

at these events. That gives us a big operatorny to like communicate and reach out to partners so we've otherwise not been able to talk to in the past and really build up like a personal relationship and really forged that bond between the partnership team and the individual crewers because ultimately, the way I look at things, the partnership seems like Tron and the partners are really the users were fighting for them. What was the moment that you realized you had real influence? Oh, I went to a

League of Legends finals kind of tournament. That was like the first time that I was really like overwhelmed by the amount of fans, Like there were people taking photos of the fact that it was like me and then like a bunch of fans and it became like a fire hazard level. And I think I was really touched

by that because I woul't lie. The League of Legends community excuse a bit more toxic than most other gaming communities, and sometimes that's like mostly what you hear, just like the toxicity and the rude comments and you're like, oh, like I mustn't be like that loved or enjoyed, but like showing up to an event and having like an insane amount of people like around me or want to take photo of say hi. I guess that's when I realized, like, wow, we did a thing when when I like me, they

really like me. But hopefully everyone who listened got to understand the world of Twitch a little bit more, and also the partnership program and streaming and you've got a lot on your plate. I'm happy to have it. Yeah, it sounds for having me. It sounds like a really fun job. It is. It's a dream come true. And again like I'm humbled every day to be doing what I'm doing. So you're not leaving Twitch anytime soon, like ever? I know I want a job there too, now hiring

are Well, let's talk off air. Thanks for stopping by. I am so excited for everyone to hear this interview. And I'm sure you'll be back because something tells me you have your your hands and a couple of pots that I'm gonna want to learn about. I don't know, I'm just guessing. Alright, guys, Well, I hope you enjoyed the last ever podcast because I'm becoming a streamer out. It was a nice having yet, but yeah, we will let you go. Thank you for coming. We loved having you.

This was so much fun. We hope you know. I'm like, thank you again, bye again, see you later again. Bye. All right, folks, that's all she wrote. I hope you guys enjoyed hearing from Kevin Lynn, co founder of Twitch, Pokemon number one most followed female streamer, and of course A Neil, the director of Partnerships at Twitch. I hope you guys are having a lovely Wednesday. I am looking forward to hearing feedback from you guys, and I will listen. If you never want to hear this again, no problem.

In the meantime to Loup Behind the Influences, a production of I Heart Radio and t DC Media