Emmett Shear

Emmett Shear
Shear in 2018
Born1983 (age 40–41)
Alma materYale University (BS)
Known for

Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American Internet entrepreneur and investor.[1][a] He is the co-founder of live video platform Justin.tv. He was the chief executive officer of Twitch when it was spun off from Justin.tv until March 2023. In 2011, Shear was appointed as a part-time partner at venture capital firm Y Combinator.[2] In November 2023, he briefly was interim CEO of OpenAI.[3][4]

Early life and education

Emmett Shear grew up in Seattle, Washington,[5] where he attended the Evergreen School for Gifted Children. There, he met his eventual co-founder Justin Kan at age eight,[6] and the two were bonded by their accelerated math classes and playing Magic: The Gathering.[7]

Shear studied computer science as an undergraduate student at Yale University, and graduated in 2005.[8][9] He attended with his eventual Twitch co-founders Justin Kan and Michael Seibel.[5]

Career

Y Combinator

Shear and Justin Kan have been part of Y Combinator's first class in 2005.[2] As part of Y Combinator, the two built a calendar application called Kiko, which they eventually sold on eBay for around $250,000 after Google Calendar was introduced.[7][10]

Justin.tv

In March 2007, Shear and Justin Kan, along with Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt, launched Justin.tv, a 24/7 live video feed of Kan's life, broadcast via a webcam attached to his head.[11] It quickly obtained some media coverage. In October 2007, the site added the possibility for other users to host their own broadcast. Three years later, the platform had secured $7.2 million in venture capital funding and reported a monthly user base of approximately 31 million unique visitors.[10] Its gaming-oriented spin-off Twitch eventually became more popular,[10] and Justin.tv was closed on August 5, 2014.[12]

Twitch

After Justin.tv launched in 2007, the site quickly began building subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, and Gaming. Gaming, in particular, grew very fast and became the most popular content on the site.[13]

In June 2011,[14][15] 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. On August 29, 2011, Shear became CEO of Justin.tv, and remained in that role as the company rebranded around Twitch in 2014, which had quickly become its core product.[16][17]

On August 25, 2014, Amazon officially acquired Twitch for a reported $970,000,000.[18]

Emmett Shear speaking at Manifest 2023
Emmett Shear speaking at Manifest 2023

In March 2023, Shear announced that he was resigning as CEO, and that Daniel J. Clancy would take over.[19]

Investor Activities

Shear became a part-time partner at Y Combinator in June 2011, where he offered advice to the new startups in each batch.[20][2]

OpenAI

On November 19, 2023, Shear was named as the interim CEO of OpenAI,[21] following the removal of Sam Altman by the board two days earlier. On November 21, an agreement was reached to reinstate Altman as CEO.[4] It was previously reported that Shear had threatened to resign as CEO if the board could not provide evidence to support Altman's removal.[4]

Shear has publicly stated that he is concerned about the impact AI can have on civilization, estimating his "P(Doom)" (subjective probability of an existential catastrophe from AI such as human extinction) as between 5 and 50 percent.[22][23][24]

Philanthropy

In March 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, via Twitch, Shear donated the initial US$1 million to start a SF New Deal, a non-profit organization which ordered meals from San Francisco eateries and delivered them to people in need. The organization was started by his Yale college classmate Leonore Estrada, who owned the Three Babes Bakeshop in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood.[25][26][8]

Notes

  1. ^ Name appeared as "Emmett Sheer" in "The ESPN of Videogames", Forbes (paper), ppg. 36,40, 2 Nov 2013.

References

  1. ^ "Forty Under 40: Emmett Shear, Twitch". March 9, 2017. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c "Y Combinator's latest partners are also alums". VentureBeat. June 13, 2011.
  3. ^ Hagey, Berber Jin, Deepa Seetharaman, Tom Dotan and Keach. "Sam Altman Not Returning as CEO of OpenAI; Emmett Shear to Be Interim CEO". WSJ. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  4. ^ a b c Heath, Alex (November 22, 2023). "Breaking: Sam Altman to return as CEO of OpenAI". The Verge.
  5. ^ a b Goldman, Justin (April 14, 2022). "How Emmett Shear Turned Video Game Fandom into a Billion-Dollar Business". Hemispheres. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  6. ^ "Emmett Shear". Interesting Engineering. Retrieved June 30, 2024.
  7. ^ a b Lynley, Matthew (August 8, 2014). "How A Site That Streams People Playing Video Games Became A Billion Dollar Business". BuzzFeed News. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  8. ^ a b Needleman, Sarah E. "New OpenAI CEO Emmett Shear Lands at Center of High-Stakes AI Boom". WSJ. Retrieved November 21, 2023.
  9. ^ "14 Successful Entrepreneurs Who Went to Yale". VentureFizz. March 19, 2019. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
  10. ^ a b c Johnson, Eric (July 5, 2014). "How Twitch's Founders Turned an Aimless Reality Show Into a Video Juggernaut". Vox. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
  11. ^ "IT'S JUSTIN, LIVE! ALL DAY, ALL NIGHT! / S.F. startup puts camera on founder's head for real-time feed, and a star is born". San Francisco Chronicle. March 30, 2007. Archived from the original on December 18, 2008. Retrieved November 3, 2011.
  12. ^ Kumparak, Greg (August 5, 2014). "Justin.tv Shuts Down To Let The Company Focus On Twitch". TechCrunch. Retrieved June 29, 2024.
  13. ^ "Live-streaming site Justin.tv buffing up for e-sports channels". VentureBeat. March 10, 2011. Archived from the original on August 9, 2017. Retrieved August 31, 2017.
  14. ^ Ewalt, David M. (December 2, 2013). "The ESPN of Videogames". Forbes. p. 40. Archived from the original on August 3, 2017. Retrieved August 27, 2017.
  15. ^ Alex Wilhelm (June 6, 2011). "TwitchTV: Justin.tv's killer new esports project". The Next Web. Archived from the original on June 14, 2018. Retrieved June 18, 2018.
  16. ^ "After A Hot Start, Justin.tv Spins Off Socialcam, Its 'Instagram for Video'". TechCrunch. AOL. August 29, 2011. Archived from the original on December 17, 2017. Retrieved June 25, 2017.
  17. ^ Lawler, Ryan (September 19, 2012). "With More Than 20M Gamers Tuning In, Twitch Raises $15M From Bessemer Venture Partners". TechCrunch. Retrieved November 22, 2023.
  18. ^ "Here's Why Amazon Just Paid Nearly $1 Billion For A Site Where You Watch People Play Video Games". Business Insider. August 25, 2014. Archived from the original on May 7, 2018. Retrieved May 7, 2018.
  19. ^ "16 Years of Twitch". Archived from the original on March 17, 2023. Retrieved March 17, 2023.
  20. ^ "Welcome Sam, Garry, Emmett, and Justin". Y Combinator. June 13, 2011. Retrieved June 30, 2024.
  21. ^ Efrati, Amir (November 20, 2023). "Emmett Shear Becomes Interim OpenAI CEO as Altman Talks Break Down". The Information. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  22. ^ "Tweet by @rowancheung of excerpt of podcast interview with Emmett Shear". X (formerly Twitter). Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  23. ^ Verma, Pranshu; Tiku, Nitasha; Vynck, Gerrit De (November 20, 2023). "OpenAI stands by its ouster of Sam Altman. Emmett Shear named interim CEO". Washington Post. ISSN 0190-8286. Archived from the original on November 20, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  24. ^ Twitch Started as a Reality TV Show, archived from the original on November 20, 2023, retrieved November 20, 2023
  25. ^ Duffett, Becky (March 27, 2020). "A Tech Angel Just Gave an SF Pie Baker a Million Dollars". Eater SF. Archived from the original on April 22, 2023. Retrieved November 20, 2023.
  26. ^ Katie Canales. "Twitch CEO Emmett Shear just gave $1 million to a San Francisco baker to launch a nonprofit that will help small businesses amid a citywide shutdown to contain the coronavirus". Business Insider. Archived from the original on March 30, 2020. Retrieved March 31, 2020.