Lessons from Emmet Shear

Emmet Shear, the co-founder of Twitch and a prominent figure in the tech industry, has shared a wealth of knowledge over the years on startups, product development, and leadership.

On Startups and Entrepreneurship

On the nature of startups: "Most startups are not just built for the person who is using them. When you do that, every now and then you get really lucky and… are representative of some huge class of people who all want the same thing you do… but very often that just turns into a side project that doesn't go anywhere." [1][2]
On the importance of vision: "The main thing you're building at first is not the thing. The main thing you're building is a vision that you're trying to manifest." [3]
On finding a startup idea: "Three ways to have a startup idea: something you want, something you've directly experienced others needing, something you've invented through analytic thought. They are listed in order of increasing risk." [4]
On the difficulty of entrepreneurship: "Don't start a company. You aren't cut out for it. And if I can persuade you not to start a company by saying it in this tweet, definitely don't start a company. You're buying the economy-sized amount of effort and pain." [4]
On the rewards of entrepreneurship: "Today is the best time ever to start a company. You might fail, you might succeed, it's a crazy ride either way, and you'll learn and grow more than at any job." [4]
On persistence: "If you consistently give up two years too early, you will never succeed." [5] In startups, under-persisting is a bigger problem than over-persisting. [6]
On knowing when to pivot: The decision to pivot from Justin.tv to Twitch was not heavily data-driven but was based on a passion for video game content and a belief in the market's potential. [7]
On co-founder relationships: "Choose co-founders you'd want to be 'trapped on a boat with for years.'" [5] Everyone on the founding team must prioritize the company's success over their individual success. [8]
On growth: "For internet companies, growth is more important than profit. It's very rare for a company to achieve massive scale of use, and then die because they can't figure out the economics. The reverse is common." [4]
On competition: "Ignore your competitors, but don't ignore their customers." [4]

On User Interviews and Product Development

On the purpose of user interviews: "You don't talk to users to validate your product ideas, you talk to your users to have your product ideas." [9]
On who to talk to: "Who you talk to is just as important as what questions you ask and what you pull away from it." [2][10]
On identifying your target user: "I wish I could tell you the recipe for figuring out who the target user is for your product and who your users should be, but…there isn't a recipe. It comes down to think really hard and use your judgement to figure out who you're really building this for." [2]
On listening to users: "The instant they say something you don't expect or already know, you should drop into detective mode." [2][10]
On the "faster horse" problem: "Users think they know what they want, but you get the horseless carriage effect where you're getting asked for a faster horse." [2][10]
On validating interest: "Sales is this cure all for this problem. Get people to give you their credit card and I guarantee you they're actually interested." [2]
On early adopters: "The crucial people to get your product started for the first 6 months are not who will be using it 3 years later." [2][10]
On the power of silence: "People don't like silence, so they'll keep talking to fill the void." [2][10]
On avoiding bias: "The most common mistakes are showing people your product- don't show them your product, it's sort of like telling them bout a feature. You want to learn about what's already in their heads. You want to avoid putting things there." [2][10]
On the framework for Twitch features: Streamers wanted "fame, love and money." If a feature didn't contribute to one of these, it wasn't prioritized. [11]
On the Ira Glass gap: Shear often references Ira Glass's quote about the gap between your taste and your work, emphasizing that it takes years for your creations to match your ambitions. [11]
On building for a niche: People warned him that gaming was just a niche when he pivoted to Twitch, but he understood the community instinctively. [12] Focusing on a niche made Twitch unstoppable. [8]

On Management and Company Culture

On being a first-time manager: "If you're a first time manager, you suck. That's ok, everyone sucks. Apologize to your employees, get a coach or join a support group, read books, and generally treat management like a new important skill you can master." [4]
On hiring: "You know when you need to hire: when you just can't keep up with all the work, and desperately need someone else to take over some part of the job." [4]
On firing: "Letting an underperforming employee go is difficult and painful... As a result you will almost always fire too late." [4]
On company culture: "Your culture is determined by what people perceive to be the behaviors you reward and punish. Note: Not what you actually reward and punish, and also not what you say you reward and punish." [4]
Culture reflects the founders: "To change your company's culture, seek to change how you behave. To change your company's values, seek to change what you value." [4]
On remote work: Shear believes remote work is generally bad for most tech startups, arguing that the culture of Silicon Valley is difficult to replicate in a remote environment. [11]
On building trust as a CEO: It's crucial to build trust with your team. [13]
On the evolution of a CEO's job: "Every time you add a layer of hierarchy underneath you, your job as a leader changes again and gets harder. You have to keep learning and growing." [4]
On planning: "Plans are useless, but planning is essential." [4]
The solution to most problems: "You think you have a morale problem; a management problem; a recruiting problem; you don't. You have a growth problem. Nothing succeeds like success." [4]

On Twitch and Streaming

On the vision for Twitch: "A goal of Twitch is to be wherever gamers are, whether its on laptops and handheld devices or integrated into gaming consoles and software." [10]
On the Twitch community: "The Twitch community loves watching video games, chatting, and broadcasting. The average viewer watches over an hour and a half of video each day." [10]
On interactive entertainment: "I am excited for a world where our entertainment could connect us instead of isolating us -- a world where we can bond with each other over our shared interests and create real, strong communities." [14][15]
On the "campfire" analogy: Shear describes Twitch not as millions of livestreams, but as "millions of campfires," some large and some small, where people gather. [15]
On why people watch gaming: "If there's an activity that you really enjoy, you're probably gonna like watching other people do it with skill and panache." [15]
On selling to Amazon: Shear has spoken positively about the acquisition, noting that Amazon allows CEOs to continue running their companies. [11]

On AI and the Future

On AI risk: Shear has expressed significant concern about the existential risks of advanced AI, suggesting the probability of it killing all of humanity is non-trivial. [16]
On slowing down AI development: He has advocated for slowing down the pace of AI capability building to ensure safety. [16]
A stark comparison on AI risk: "The Nazis were very evil, but I'd rather the actual literal Nazis take over the world forever than flip a coin on the end of all value." [16]
On the need for AI alignment: His new venture, Stem AI, aims to create AI systems that "understand, cooperate with, and align with human behavior, preferences, biology, morality, and ethics." [17]
Critique of current AI models: Shear has described some current AI chatbots as "highly dissociative agreeable neurotics" that manipulate users. [17]
On international cooperation for AI safety: He has advocated for international treaties to manage AI development, similar to nuclear test bans. [17]
On techno-optimism: Despite his concerns, he identifies as a techno-optimist. [11]
On the path to AGI: Shear believes the current trajectory of transformer-based models is a plausible pathway toward artificial general intelligence. [18]

General Learnings and Philosophy

On the importance of data: "The hard part isn't having fun looking through data for patterns – it's figuring out how to find data that can actually drive decisions." [7]
On learning: Shear emphasizes the importance of continuous learning, whether it's mastering management as a new skill or teaching himself about AI. [4][8]
On knowing yourself: The decision not to pursue enterprise software, despite its potential, was an example of knowing what he and his team were genuinely interested in building. [11]
On having an opinion: "If you haven't talked to users and you haven't looked at data, you don't get to have an opinion about the product. The person who has actually done the work gets to have the opinion." [9]

Learn more:

Lessons from Emmet Shear

On Startups and Entrepreneurship

On User Interviews and Product Development

On Management and Company Culture

On Twitch and Streaming

On AI and the Future

General Learnings and Philosophy

Written by Antoine Buteau

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