Twitch CEO Resigns After 16 Years | 9 Things I Learned From Him (#432)

Shaan Puri

What's up y'all sean here I wanna do a special episode because the ceo of twitch resigned today and this is a guy I got to know well because twitch acquired my last startup and I worked with emmett for a while he's been there for 16 years he was the founder the creator of twitch which is basically a you know one of the biggest platforms in the world one of the biggest one of the biggest social networks in the world millions and millions and millions of users I think they have 8,000,000 streamers let alone viewers that they that they talk about and it's a multi $1,000,000,000 company so probably somewhere between $5,010,000,000,000 in terms of what he's built and I got to sit in the room with this guy you know every week for a few hours at least interacting with him and over time you observe what is it about these people I've always wondered like what would it be like to work with mark zuckerberg what are they actually like how do they actually work are they any different do they just get lucky are they still am I looking at a lottery ticket winner or is there something different about this individual that led them to do this and you know no surprise I think there are some differences some amazing things so I wanted to share with you some stories because at twitch's office there was 9 floors and so at the 9th floor the top floor there's this boardroom it's got like 20 chairs and emmett would just sit at the head of the boardroom at the table like you know some emperor or something like that and he would a team after team would come in and they would present whatever's going on in that division of the company ads or marketing or whatever it may be and what he would do is he would sit there he would talk to that team for 45 minutes or 1 hour and then boom onto the next and so this guy operated at a extremely high pace and I wanna share with you 8 or 9 things that I think were different or special or at least the stories I remember for having worked with this guy so the first story I'm gonna call the birds fly story okay so I remember sitting in a meeting with emmett and this team walked in and it was the I think the partnerships team our marketing team or whatever and they were super excited because they had just you know they were like hey we had this great meeting with this company they said they wanted a pre installed twitch on all these phones and you know this is gonna get twitch you know a big head start in this market and it's gonna be great we're gonna we're projecting this much growth this much revenue blah blah blah and they were you know they were so excited they thought they were bringing in you know this trophy and and they were gonna just hold it up and get applause from everybody and and and hey it was it was a good deal but emmett sat quietly for a bit he asked questions and then he he kinda reminded them something he said you know I learned this phrase from paul graham at y combinator birds fly fish swim and deals fall through like that's what they do deals fall through that's just a thing that happens and sure enough over the course of that year I saw so many teams come in and present deals that were on the table verbally agreed being discussed maybe even signed and then this is exactly even to say this line and more often than that person was willing to admit the deals fell through and so this is something I took with me which is never to get too high or too low when it comes to deals m and a partnerships anything like that just remember this is what deals do they fall through birds fly fish swim deals fall through alright let me give you a second story after we got acquired my first day I go up to his office and I'm I'm gonna have my first one on one with him and I don't really know what to do I've never been an employee really like this in my life so I don't really know I've only been the guy on the other side of the table so I go in and I start to tell him you know about what I'm working on and he just kinda like stops me he's like hey what's what what's your question and I'm like what do you mean what's I haven't got today yet I'm giving you the context he goes he goes he goes I think this will help in our 1 on ones there's probably he gave me almost like an instruction manual of here's how you work with me which is really here's how you work with any leader any ceo there's 4 ways you could frame anything you're gonna tell me number 1 is hey I'm doing this fyi just I'm doing this I just want you to be in the loop number 2 is I'm doing this but I want your approval or I need your approval so I plan to do this do you approve number 3 is I'm trying to decide between a and b or a b and c can you help me think that through and then the last one number 4 the last way we interface with him is to say remember that thing we agreed on here's what happened it's the status update of the closing the loop on what we had talked about and basically anytime I interact with him that was the the sort of like the the base frame that I needed to have which was I'm doing this f y I I'm doing this do you approve can you help me think through which way to go I'm not sure which way what which one I wanna do or lastly here's what happened here here's the learning that we had from it that just simplified so much and it made our communication so much tighter in a very short amount of time we could immediately sync up we could get through that and then we would spend the rest of the time just sharing interesting things or talking about what's going on in our lives because we weren't wandering around and he's sitting there waiting to find out like what does this guy want from me and I'm sitting there trying to tell him a full story before I finally get to my.

Shaan Puri

Or my question so that was one great framework he sent me the second one was I wrote an update once it was. Number 3 I wrote an update and he just took a pen and he just drew circles and rearranged things and he basically said here's how I want you to write this what why so what so that's a format of communication you tell me what happened why it happened and so what are we gonna do about it or if we're planning something what are we gonna do why are we gonna do it and so what do you need from me in order to make that happen and that what why so what framework again tightened up my communication it took away so much wasted energy of trying to sit down with a blank piece of paper and figure out how I'm gonna communicate something now I sit down with a paper and I try what why so what and then I fill in the details underneath so that was a great little communication framework that that I got from him okay number 4 he is a fierce nerd so this is a phrase that I took from paul graham paul graham wrote this essay talking about fierce nerds which is basically his observation of the best y c founders so the most successful yc founders he he felt he felt fall into this bucket and he talks about fierce nerds as people who are competitive in fact they're often more competitive than non nerds right like typically if you think competitive you think of a jock in this case he's saying almost a fierce nerd is almost more competitive because they are all in on this they don't have a bunch of other you know social things to fall back on they don't have the emotional maturity to separate themselves from the competition it is deeply personal to them and they are fully obsessed he he talks about how they tend to be overconfident sometimes especially when they're young because they feel like they can get to the right answer the fastest and he talks about how being a fierce nerd is so advantageous in the world of business today and you know so so emmett falls in this category when I asked him what he does on on friday nights or for the weekend you know it was like I'm gonna play settlers of catan with the pack you know with the collison brothers from stripe and the founders of reddit this is what they would do they would get together drink beer play catan I play a competitive board game or during our first m and a conversation I asked the corp dev guy after we got out of the meeting I said how'd you think that went I thought it was pretty good what'd you think you know is he always like that he goes no he goes half of these meetings he's just playing hearthstone on his phone and he's talking but he's playing hearthstone he goes he put down his phone he wasn't playing hearthstone so that was a good sign for you guys and this guy competes like a beast in fact I one time asked him I said can you send me something from the archives can you send me an old fossil so basically when you started twitch did you ever make any plans or or pitch decks or anything like that I'd love to see it because I I'm just like a I'm a nerd about that sort of thing I I like seeing what people were thinking at the start because we all know what it looks like today but what were you thinking at the start and he sent me a pit a deck that he had made an investor update that he had made right when they pivoted to twitch and there was this it was a white it was no design it was white slides black text times d roman and he just he was saying here's what we're doing you know here's why we're doing it here's here's what's coming next and then on one slide he he filled up the entire slide to almost to make a.

Shaan Puri

With every product they had shipped and improved that month, it was just full; there was no white space on that slide. Then, on the next slide, he wrote, "We are a steamroller plowing through a field of flowers." I thought it was awesome because today, he's older, he's wiser, he's more mature. He wouldn't talk like that; he's not like pounding his chest or whatever. But at the time, you could tell that was that young bravado energy of feeling the momentum of, "Hey, look, nobody on earth at that time knew really what Twitch was. It wasn't a big deal, but he knew. He knew they were onto something. He knew that they were making tons of progress." I always remember that phrase, "We were a steamroller plowing through a field of flowers." What a picture! I love that. Since then, I write that in my startups. I'm like, "This month, I'm going to be a steamroller plowing through a field of flowers." What would that mean? What would I need to get done in order for that to be true? I just work backwards from that. I'll give you maybe, I think this is number five, maybe the most remarkable thing of the whole story. I talked about the early pivot. What people don't know is that Twitch, before it was Twitch, Emmett, Justin Kan, and Michael Siebel, they were working on something called Justin.tv. A lot of people know this story. It was like Justin Kan was wearing a webcam on his head and he was walking around; it was like a reality show of his life. Then it became, "Anyone can broadcast anything," which was mostly people broadcasting illegal sporting events and stuff like that—like bootleg streaming. So the site was kind of popular, but it really wasn't going to be successful because most of their best content was illegal. They had a decision to pivot. At the time, Instagram had come out; Instagram was hot, but Instagram only did photos. The majority of the company, including Justin, Michael, and Kyle, they all wanted to do Instagram for video, and they called it Social Cam. They pivoted to that, and they wanted to do that. All the top talent in the company wanted to go do that, and Emmett had a different idea.

Shaan Puri

Of view he's like you know on justin tv I really like watching these video game streams it only made up 2% at the time of of all the content or all the watch time that was happening on the network but he's like I like that content the best it's not illegal to do so it's the only good content that's not illegal I kinda wonder what would happen if we just went all in and made a video game streaming platform and he was kind of alone in that so emmett went that way justin and the others went the other way and maybe the rejects sort of you know got got put on emmett's team to do that now social cam went way up and then way down it had this crazy spike in virality then it crashed and ended up selling for like $60,000,000,000 but twitch was a slow burn just brick by brick by brick all the way into a multibillion dollar company and to so the reason I bring this up is because to this day justin kon is often referenced as the cofounder of twitch or the founder of twitch and I don't from what I understand I might be wrong from what I understand that wasn't actually true he started justtv which and then he went to social cam but like emmett and his crew built twitch up from there I don't think justin really they were in the same office but I I don't think he was working on twitch actively at the time I don't think he ever was an employee of twitch I think he was helpful and emmett and justin are best friends growing up and you never hear emmett try to take credit away from justin or more towards himself I've never once heard him do that which is kind of incredible and so I give a lot of props to that because a lesser man aka me would have been trying to set the record straight and and say you know no actually it was more me than it was this other guy who's more popular than me but emmett couldn't care less that's his best friend and I think that says a lot about somebody so okay that's that's 5 let me go do a couple more so okay if you go into a meeting with emmett you're gonna notice 2 things the first is that this guy's really really really smart he's smarter than you and I always wondered this because I think people like to think that it's actually hard work that separates people or it's luck or it's one of these other factors but it's it not all not everybody is equally intelligent his oven burns hotter like twitch uses the amazon method of 6 minute sorry 6 page memos before meetings so basically you write a memo about what's going on you write a you basically write down everything you come into the meeting you hand out the printed out copy of that to everybody at the table everybody silently reads for 15 20 minutes and then everybody has all the same information and now they discuss I cut it's an amazing way to to build a a a very good culture in your company of writing thinking and talking so it's a great way to run meetings but the first thing you notice is that 7 minutes in emmett's pen's down he's on heart stone because he's read the whole thing faster than everybody else and of course when the discussion starts he lets other people talk but then when he finally raises his hand and says you know here was my question it would always be the most on.

Shaan Puri

Thing that would cut to the heart of the matter. It's like, "Oh, why have we been wasting our time talking about these other things?" He's right, you know. He simplified the 6-page memo into a really simple question and conversation. His oven just burns hotter; he gets to the right answer faster than most people. He retains more information than most people and is able to connect dots. He is more widely read. I remember sitting in a meeting where we were discussing some policy. You know, how do we handle this situation? Streamers are doing this; should we enforce it? Should we not enforce it? Should we change the policy? How should we decide? How do we take into account what the community wants? He would say, "Well, you know, we could do it like the feudal system in Northern Ireland back in the 1400s." And you'd be like, "Emmett, none of us know what you're talking about. Nobody knows how the feudal system ran." "Well, can you explain?" And then he would explain how their court system worked. Then he'd be like, "Why don't we do that?" He connects these dots, and all I could think about was, "I can't believe this guy even reads about that. I can't believe he knows about that." He is just sort of insatiably curious, very widely read, and his brain has this ability to connect data points in a way that I haven't really seen since then. His oven burns hotter. I think the people that run these platforms are smarter and hardworking, and blah blah blah, right? They're the Olympic athletes of business, and I think he's no different. Having said that, he's got flaws. So, my next...

Shaan Puri

Let's call it. 7 he's flawed and he knows it so when I got there a lot of people would joke almost behind his back like well you know emmett's all iq he's no eq for me it was honestly further you know it could be further from the truth but I also met him I don't know 14 years into running this company I bet if I met him at year 3 or 4 he probably didn't have the same managerial skills or social skills or eq skills that he has today but he knows what's flawed and he works on it so his favorite book I think was nonviolent communication because that had helped him so much of how can he communicate with people in a way that doesn't put them on the defensive but still gets you know gets things done he only cared about getting things right not being right so he would use what I call this the socratic method of of leadership where when you would come in you would say something then he would start to ask you questions then he would break up your whole argument piece by piece assumption by assumption why is this true how do we know that if that's true then what does that imply next and he would just go 1 by 1 until we would get to the right answer for most people it was exhausting and they took it as almost a personal attack like he's questioning everything I say he doesn't just take it at face value but it the reality was I thought it was a tremendous like approach to getting to the truth and the truth is all he cared about he didn't care if he came up with it or you came up with it he just wanted it to be closer to the truth to the actual answer he also hired this coach this executive coach a woman named flo who's amazing I think she's like 80 years old so she's like you know doesn't know the first thing about gaming or streaming or twitch or any of that stuff but she knew about people and I remember sitting in a neck in one of the exec off sites and emmett has this nervous tick which is that when he's really thinking about something he would grab his neck like where his neck beard was and he would start to like twist it and it was like to anybody who's talking to him it's like so obvious you could see this and it's not like a normal manner as some people do but that was his twit that was his tic he would do that anytime he was thinking hard he wasn't sure about something or he was trying to figure out how to say something to you he would do that and I loved that and I'd I'd worked there for maybe 9 months at this.

Shaan Puri

He did it all the time you know I'm never gonna. That out what am I gonna say like you know it's just something he did and everybody just sat there quietly all of his leaders all of his peers sat there quietly letting that happen and flo walked in and she was like emmy what do you do with your neck put your hand down sit up straight say that like a leader and she just told it to him like it is it was amazing she's amazing but also his reaction had 0% defensiveness he was like oh yeah thanks like thank you that's a gift thank you for reminding me about that yeah I'm I'm working on that and I thought that that was you know a good sign as to how do you how do you get better right this guy was there for 16 years how do you get better every year well you're surrounded by people that are kind of afraid to tell you the truth because you're their boss and you're the ceo and you're the smartest guy in the room so I think he did a good job of identifying his weaknesses and hiring people that would literally tell him the truth so those are some of the things that I picked up from emmett you know emmett you had a great run I hope you you don't listen to the pod but I hope you listen to this one because yeah working with you was a lot of fun you know I really found it fun because it pushed me to be better I could not walk into a meeting or do my job and be able to get away with it just on talent or charisma or some hand wavy bullshit that you can say in a meeting that if it wasn't for him pretty much anyone else at the company if I went to the to the meeting I could kinda just say whatever and I could talk my way out of any situation or into any situation or whatever I wanted to do but with emmett you know I I kinda felt like a higher bar was there where I really needed to have the right answer I needed to have the truth because he would not his standard was there and so yeah he made me better I appreciate that and it was a it was kind of cool to be able to be in the room with somebody who is you know one of these these rare individuals who has built one of these mega mega companies and I don't know what he's gonna do next I think he's just had a kid so you know maybe he's gonna go full dad mode I'm not sure what he's gonna do but I will I will watch eagerly to see because I know it's not gonna be it's not gonna be average whatever it is there's there's nothing nothing just mediocre or average coming from this guy so anyways hope you enjoyed that those are some of the lessons I learned working with emmett for twitch and alright that's it that's the pod