Twitch

Reviewed acquired Updated Mar 13, 2026

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Location San Francisco, CA
Founded 2007
Latest Stage Acquired
Total Raised $35M+ (venture rounds pre-acquisition)
Website https://www.twitch.tv
Acquired By Amazon
Sector
live-streaming gaming video consumer-internet

Investors

Ron Conway seed (2007)
Mike Maples Jr. seed (2007)
Ethan Kurzweil ~2012 (2012)
Joshua Kushner Early stage (2013)
Tim Draper ~2008 (2008)
David Cowan Early (2012)
Paul Buchheit ~2011 (2011)
Floodgate seed (2007)
SV Angel Seed (2011)
Thrive Capital Early stage (2013)
Chemistry ~2012 (2012)
draper-associates ~2008 (2008)
Bessemer Venture Partners Early (2012)
Standard Capital ~2011 (2011)

Founders

Justin Kan Co-Founder
Emmett Shear Co-Founder & CEO
Michael Seibel Co-Founder & CEO (Justin.tv)
Kyle Vogt Co-Founder

About

Twitch originated as Justin.tv, a live video streaming platform founded in 2007 by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt 12. The company launched in March 2007 as a single-channel “lifecasting” experiment — a 24/7 live broadcast of co-founder Justin Kan’s daily life via a webcam attached to his head 23. After Kan stopped broadcasting, Justin.tv relaunched as a network of thousands of user-created channels 1.

Justin.tv was part of the Summer 2007 batch at Y Combinator 4. The platform unexpectedly gained significant traction in video game streaming. As Emmett Shear recalled: “People hooked up their Xboxes and started broadcasting. We had never even thought of that” 5.

In June 2011, the team spun off Justin.tv’s gaming section into a separate site called Twitch.tv, with Emmett Shear as CEO 12. The original Justin.tv service was shut down in August 2014 so the company could focus entirely on Twitch 1.

Amazon acquired Twitch on August 25, 2014, for approximately $970 million in cash 67. Google had attempted to acquire Twitch for $1 billion earlier that year, but Twitch’s leadership opted for Amazon 1. Twitch’s COO Kevin Lin stated that “Amazon matched Twitch’s company values really well” 8. Twitch continues to operate as a subsidiary of Amazon 1.

Mike Maples Jr. (Floodgate) invested in Justin.tv before it graduated from Y Combinator 9. Ron Conway is listed as an early investor in the company 10.

Funding History

Round Date Amount Lead Investor Notable Co-Investors
Seed (Y Combinator) May 2007 Undisclosed Y Combinator Mike Maples Jr. (Floodgate) 49
Seed Oct 2007 $8M Alsop Louie Partners Felicis Ventures 411
Series A 2012 $15M Bessemer Venture Partners — 1213
Series B 2013 $20M Thrive Capital Draper Associates, Take-Two Interactive 114
Acquisition Aug 2014 $970M Amazon — 67

What Investors Say

Mike Maples Jr. (Floodgate) backed Justin.tv in its earliest days, investing before the company graduated from Y Combinator and raised its first institutional round 9. Maples has cited Justin.tv/Twitch as an example of how the best investments often come from non-consensus thinking — backing a company when others saw it as just a “weird webcam experiment” 15.

Bessemer Venture Partners invested $13 million in Twitch at a $53 million pre-money valuation, attracted to Emmett Shear’s visionary leadership, the rapidly expanding esports market, strategic partnerships with gaming publishers like Tencent and EA, and Twitch’s early-mover advantage in live-streaming for gaming 813.

Y Combinator’s Paul Graham had initially emailed computer science departments around the country looking for applicants, and Kan and Shear applied. “Y Combinator was funding their first batch of startups and they weren’t entirely sold on Kan and Shear’s concept,” but the founders eventually convinced them the idea was worth pursuing 5.

What Founders Say

Emmett Shear on the founding vision: “We initially started out trying to make a reality television show of my friend Justin’s life” 5. On discovering the gaming opportunity: “I started Twitch because I was passionate about video game content, and I thought there would be a big market for it” 5.

On the Amazon acquisition, Shear wrote to users: “We chose Amazon because they believe in our community, they share our values and long-term vision, and they want to help us get there faster” 5.

Justin Kan, reflecting on the pivot and the company’s journey from lifecasting to gaming platform, has emphasized the importance of following user behavior rather than sticking to the original plan 3.

Sources

  1. “Twitch (service),” Wikipedia, accessed March 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitch_(service) ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. “Justin.tv,” Wikipedia, accessed March 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Justin.tv↩↩↩

  3. “Founder Story: Justin Kan of Twitch,” Frederick.ai, accessed March 2026. https://www.frederick.ai/blog/justin-kan-twitch↩↩

  4. “Justin.tv - 2026 Funding Rounds & List of Investors,” Tracxn, accessed March 2026. https://tracxn.com/d/companies/justintv/__m9rVfV9icACxzbV8zDo9-CvpRJiUmT_4niMP69b40gQ/funding-and-investors↩↩↩

  5. “Emmett Shear on pivoting from JustinTV and 20+ million MAUs to build Twitch,” Startup Archive, accessed March 2026. https://www.startuparchive.org/p/emmett-shear-on-pivoting-from-justintv-and-20-million-maus-to-build-twitch↩↩↩↩↩

  6. “Amazon to buy game streaming service Twitch for $970 million,” CNBC, August 2014, accessed March 2026. https://www.cnbc.com/2014/08/25/amazon-to-buy-game-streaming-service-twitch-for-970-million.html↩↩

  7. “Amazon.com to Acquire Twitch,” Amazon Press Center, August 2014, accessed March 2026. https://press.aboutamazon.com/2014/8/amazon-com-to-acquire-twitch↩↩

  8. “Inside the Deal: Twitch’s First VC Investors,” getPIN.xyz, accessed March 2026. https://www.getpin.xyz/post/inside-the-deal-twitchs-first-vc-investors↩↩

  9. “Mike Maples, Jr,” Floodgate website, accessed March 2026. https://www.floodgate.com/team/mike-maples-jr↩↩↩

  10. “Ron Conway,” Wikipedia, accessed March 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Conway↩

  11. “Justin.TV - Crunchbase Company Profile & Funding,” Crunchbase, accessed March 2026. https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/justintv/funding_rounds/funding_rounds_list↩

  12. “Twitch (previously Justin.tv) raises $15M from Bessemer Venture Partners,” Y Combinator blog, accessed March 2026. https://www.ycombinator.com/blog/twitch-previously-justintv-raises-15m-from-be/↩

  13. “Twitch Investment Memo,” Bessemer Venture Partners, accessed March 2026. https://www.bvp.com/memos/twitch↩↩

  14. “Viral video startup Justin.tv raising $20M round of funding,” VentureBeat, July 2013, accessed March 2026. https://venturebeat.com/2013/07/02/viral-video-startup-justin-tv-raising-20m-round-of-funding↩

  15. “Mike Maples on why non-consensus investing is required,” Venture Unlocked, accessed March 2026. https://ventureunlocked.substack.com/p/finding-greatness-in-non-consensus↩