Every streamer dreams of being an official Twitch Partner, but how do you become one? Anele Andeshmand, the head of Partnerships (or as he calls himself, the Papa Bear of Partnerships) sat down to talk about what it's like to be a gatekeeper at the number one streaming platform in the world. Anele dropped some serious insider knowledge about the Partner Program at Twitch, what it really takes to become a Partner, and what makes a good streamer. He also shared his backstory (I know you're wondering how he got such a big role at such a young age) and how important community is on Twitch. Whether or not you're interested in a career streaming video games, this episode is fascinating - don't miss it.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. For me, that was everything
I told myself, I'm like one or another. I'm gonna
find a way to get a job here. You know,
we're we're thinking about the future and we're not leaving
in Tempson. We're here. Stay. If I'm a traveling toon event,
I want to be able to see my fellow streamers,
(00:21):
my colleagues, my friends, funny stories with my mom, and
I give me an option. They're like, Okay, we can
either build your brand of computer or we'll get you
a car. But I was like, no funk that. I
want a computer. I want it right now. Well, guys,
today's a happy day and Neil Angishman is in the house.
How'd I do with your last name? We practiced a
few times, pretty much killed it every time, murdered it.
(00:41):
You're superstar. How are you doing today? Doing great? Thanks
for stopping by. A Neil is the head of strategic
partnerships at Twitch, a small, tidy, little company you may
have heard of. You've been there, what five years, going
on my sixth right now. Yeah. We were just talking
actually before we started recording, about how people who work
at Twitch just are celebrities in their own right. It's
(01:03):
a small culture, you know, like it's grown a lot
quite over the last three years. And uh yeah, there's
like a prestige with like working with Twitch, right, and
I think even attached to that. A lot of employees
at work at Twitch in some capacity were made into
like a meme, a Twitch emote you have not for
the right reasons, but you know, I'm I'm there as well.
And so for people who don't know what an emote is,
(01:25):
break it down. Imagine a emoji that you can put
into any chat room within Twitch. All it requires is
just a simple text code. So for you, taught, if
we wanted to have you as an emote, and maybe
it's a picture of you smiling, or you've thrown the
peace sign, whatever, maybe we can put in a code
and we can put that code to be t T
Carrier whatever. Maybe. And if you're the type it either
(01:47):
with all capitals or all lowercase boom, your face would
show up. And that shows up in every single chat
room and people make memes out of it, just like
anything else in Internet. People just me So you're kind
of a celebrity in the streaming world. I mean your
faces for sure. When I first got high, They're like, yeah,
you know, as an employee benefit, you can upload your
own emoticon or your own emoji, your own emo to
the like the back end, and you can make it
(02:08):
into like an actual email that can be used throughout
the website. I'm like, fuck, yeah, dope. They're like, okay,
but we need a picture of you looking straight at
the camera. And I'm one of those guys that like
never takes like a proper photo. I'm always like goofing
off and everything. So I had one picture I'm wearing
a white beanie and I put that up and ironically enough,
because the picture was scaled down so tiny within chat,
it kind of looks like I'm wearing a turban. So
(02:30):
people haven't been able to like miss miscontact that for
for other things, and I won't go into people really
use your amount. It gets highly used. I remember the
first time I saw it in a chat, I was like,
what is that? Is that a Neal? And Colin was like, yes,
that's a Neil. Yeah. My little cousins when they found
out that I was working at Twitter, like, you're the
(02:50):
fucking anil, My cousin and Neil is the Anneal and
my guess yes, I'm so start treating me like it exactly.
So you're your role at Twitch is actually very very important.
One of the reasons that Twitch is a household name
is because of the streamers that we watch so avidly
on the platform. These streamers are going hours and hours
(03:12):
a day. For the majority of the partners, it's their
full time job, and you are the person. You're basically
the thread between them and the platform. So you are
the middleman. You're the one dealing with both Twitch and
the ninjas of the world. How does one get this role?
I mean it kind of seems like the dream job.
(03:33):
It is a dream job, and to be perfectly honest
with you, like I'm I'm humbled to be in that
every day doing what I'm doing. I love people, and
I think the number one thing that I would look
at when I'm looking at hiring for this role, even
for myself, has always been attitude. I think that you
have to have a highfinity and high drive to want
to help people out because this is a very selfless role.
(03:53):
There's a lot of times where you're advocating for things
that might go against the grain, both politically within the
company or even extra only to the community, and you
always have to kind of have a very headstrong mentality
with understanding that what you're doing is for the betterment
of the community, for the betterment of the platform, and
having that holistic view is probably like the most integral
part of like succeeding within partnerships for me personally. In
(04:16):
terms of like hiring, I look at attitude number one.
Number two, I would look at people who have a
background and like being able to develop other people, whether
it be within a management role, whether it be within
working within content and working within communities, volunteering, because I
feel like a lot of those traits translate well over
to whatever you want to do within partnerships as well.
We've gotten to the point where we're not wearing multiple
(04:38):
hats anymore like we used to be back in a day,
so the roles are very concentrating, really well defined. So
maybe someone who's really good at charity can stay within
the domain of charity, whereas someone who's got a high
affinity of like wanting to help people out, maybe a
little bit shy and want to work more on the
back end. They have opportunities to do that was like
a program manager. So there's a little bit of something
for everybody. And again, I think the core root of
it is like as long as you got the right
(04:59):
attitude and you have that drive for it, I would
say like that's like the baseline for being a candidate
for partnerships because I mean, you guys have to have
so many people applying for roles at Twitch every single day.
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
(05:22):
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 were 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, actually competed in gaming. When I was
(05:45):
like fifteen sixteen, I played a game called Counterstrike. Never
heard of him. It's a just kidding. Colin plays at
all the time. Oh my god, it almost caused multiple divorces.
But 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'd give me an option. They're like, Okay,
(06:05):
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
(06:27):
an idiot, but looking back, 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. 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 finking for about a year. It really sucked.
That wasn't good. Why why did you get into programing,
(06:49):
because back then I don't even think it was it was.
It was like a cool thing. It was like an
underground community, you know, like there's websites. I got fragged
they can go into that, like shared wars 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 like Sweden, and you would hear
about like the World Cyber Games, and that was like
(07:09):
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 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
(07:30):
I did that for like three years, and my mom
and dad had to sit down with me with my
brothers and we were like, what do 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
(07:51):
space that your parents probably were not familiar with and
did not understand. They did it and they totally had
to read on me, like they knew me inside and out.
So I think it was just 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
dial back, and coincidentally, at the same time, StarCraft two,
which the franchise was like everything to me, was getting announced,
(08:14):
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 fucking viewer, Like I was on that ship
all day. I was up until like five six am
watching like the Korean like Star Half League, which was
(08:37):
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 awake. But I did that
and I loved it. I fucking loved every bit of it. Now,
what was it? What was it about that? 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
(08:57):
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 I should 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,
(09:17):
so it'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 everything I told myself I'm
like one or or another, I'm gonna find a way
to get a job here. And that was this is
pre twitch Twitch. I didn't know how I was going
to do that, but there was a bunch of like
small little community events are happening throughout the Bay Area,
and the Bay Area is not a very big hut
(09:38):
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
(10:00):
made a lot of friends, and I used actually my
salary at Zinga to bootstrap my own StarCraft team. So
that was like how I actually really really got into
like e sports and everything, and I learned a lot
about getting sponsors and paying out teams and travel and
hurting sheep because these guys were like, you know, their children,
they're they're making a couple hundred bucks, a couple of
thousand bucks, competing in in a in a small time
(10:22):
game that hasn't really blown up yet, and you you
just learned along the way and it was great. I
loved every minute of it. And anyways, over time, about
a year of doing that while working at Singa, the
right opportunity locked to 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
(10:44):
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 for me,
I say, Twitch had a really cool like gothic, like nerdy,
like steampunk. Looked at it back then, and then like
(11:06):
six months in or I think it was about a
year after, they like reframed it into the whole Purple Company,
which I absolutely loved because purposes the pem color. You know,
it's purple hoodie. You just know it's iconic. It was
all Donald or not downhill, but it's all history from there.
It was all downhill from their interview overhop. You know
what I mean. No, I know exactly what you meant.
(11:26):
So you got a job at Twitch where you initially were.
Was there a partner's program in place when you first started?
There was a partnership program. To get a partnership with
Twitch back then, you required I think anywhere from five viewers.
Basically it was really hard. Yeah, you have to be
like a big shot. I got hired to come in
and review the applications for these people applying for partnership,
(11:48):
which was like, by far, like the dopest rule ever did.
I felt like I was Santa Claus because I'm looking
at thousands of applications on a weekly basis, and I
felt like the dean of admissions out of college. And
you're looking at people like showing out their entire life story,
talking about why they deserve to be a partner, talking
about how they came to Twitch, and like their story.
Then you had other people that are like I just
bought a capture card. I'm gonna be fucking awesome partner. Me,
(12:10):
so you hear like you hear both spectrums or you
hear the whole full spectrum of like white people deserve that.
Why do you think they deserve to be a partner?
And for me that was like one of the best
experiences because I learned about a lot about content and
I learned all about our community and who these people
are and what's like the pulsing community. What is a
hot game? What games are they're playing? So I did that.
I did that rule for about a year. I will
look at who are people that are qualified to become
(12:31):
a partner. Over time I start to realize, Okay, these
guys aren't hitt five viewers are hit three, hitting four,
but they're really fucking good at what they do. They're
really really good, They're really really talented. I made a
few exceptions here and there, even though I wasn't supposed to,
but made a few exceptions, and that actually ended up
being like the best thing ever because we learned that
it's not just all about viewership, it's about engagement too.
(12:52):
Um And at the time, the reason why we looked
at it from such a from a high viewership was
because a tech costs and operating costs. But you know,
of course, over time, like you're able to kind of
society that so we're able to look at truly content
and look at what is meaningful content, what is engaging content,
and what is what we define now is like those
shared real time experiences for me like Twitch. You know,
(13:15):
you see these different people from different walks of life
all around the world, and they they run their channel
different ways. You know, there's no template, there's no cookie
cutter format. So over time we were able to lower
the viewership requirements so that more and more people can
come into the funnel and get that opportunity to become
a partner. So you you referred to yourself earlier when
you said, you know, I wanted to start streaming and
I wasn't good at it, and then there are these
(13:36):
people that don't have many views, but they're really good
at it. What constitutes a good streamer consistency Number one.
You've got to be consistent. I wasn't consistent, and that
really is a magical sauce. If you come in on
a on a weekly basis or on a daily basis,
and you're coming at seven pm every day, you're communicating
and guarantee you can rely on you to be live
at that time, they'll come back during that period. It
(13:57):
also opens up opportunity for people that otherwise may not
be tuning into streams but maybe happened to be that
evening to come and find you. But consistency is like
the biggest key second part, which is arguable depending on
who you're talking to, but having fun. If you're not
having fun, like people don't want to watch you. They
look if it looks like you're having a miserable time,
like why would anyone want to tune into that? And
(14:18):
for me, it got to a point where like I
was streaming just a stream for for that period and
I wasn't having fun because I sucked at the game.
I sucked that StarCraft. So I started to pivot to
other stuff that I actually did enjoy. And when I
did that, I actually saw the change in my beership
where people want to tune in more. People wanted to
be around me because I was having a good time
and I was cheery and I was upbeat. Engagement's also
(14:40):
very big, and I think those are kind of correlated
with one another, Right, having fun and being engaged in
to community. If you're not talking to your community. More
likely people are watching you because you have a high
skill caliber, So maybe you might be really good at
a game, or maybe you're doing something that might be
funny or it might be a little cringe e, So
people want to tune in because of that. But the
magical sauce really is consistency and engagement, having the upea attitude,
(15:02):
having fun with with your content. When it comes to
when it comes to folks like Tyler Ninja, I'm really
proud of how far along he's come along, especially because
he's one of the guys that have been streaming since
just in TV days, so he's been at it for
like eight years now. This guy has been committed, and
you know, he hasn't always had this big break. So
for people like him, I think, you know, it's really
the right opportunity. And I think games like Fortnite, H
(15:25):
one Z one, pub g all have like eight to
those opportunities because the battle are All format is exciting
in itself in terms of content. But I think when
you look at a game like Fortnite, where it's encompassing
different types of cultures with the different dances and the
and the skins and y'all fits and everything. Like you
you kind of opened up a new world of opportunity
with culture and for for Ninja, it also opened up
(15:45):
an opportunity for like sick plays. You know, he was
doing some really dope shit building. His building skills were
like off the chart, and I think he was able
to kind of show off his skill set and his
engagement and the level that people weren't able to really
see in the past, and that got the attention with
the main stream media, and so artists like Drake start
to see then caught attention and follow him on Instagram
(16:05):
because he was posting his clips on there, and I
think all that type of stuff aided in his discovery,
which ultimately led to where he's at now. That was
gonna be my other questions. So I don't think it
just ends at Twitch. So people are not only are
they streaming on Twitch, they're clipping their videos, they're putting
it on YouTube, they're putting them on Instagram, they're putting
them on Twitter. It's a full time job. So do
(16:29):
you think had Ninja not been utilizing other social media
platforms that he would be where he is today, Because
maybe Drake wouldn't just be on Twitch randomly, but he
saw a clip on Instagram or somebody tagged him because
they know that Drake's a huge Fortnite fan, and somebody's like, oh,
this is a sick play let me tag Drake. Now,
all of a sudden, Drake knows about Ninja. Do you
(16:50):
when you are talking to and helping shape partners or
giving them advice, are you advising them to use these
other platforms as well? For sure? I think syndicase of
your content, especially after your streams are over, are super
important because it gives you the opportunity to be discovered
in other places. And I think ultimately you want to
build up your brand. When you look at my team
(17:10):
and look at what they're focusing on, they're focused on
building up creators from the ground up, not only on
the Twitch level, but holistically so well. We can't double
into every side of their business. We do try to
encourage them to to to to be effective and be
smart about how they're syndicating their content and do it
mindfully right. Don't just put it in every single platform
for the sake of putting it on there. Do it
because you know you're gonna gage to the right audience.
(17:31):
And I think for for people like Ninja, you know,
gaming has really tried to take a presence in social
media and Twitter and in Instagram over only the last
few years. Really, I think it was really just the
perfect storm for him Fortnite coming in Fortnite, being a
game that is widely admired endored by all ages and
all cultures. I think it was a right opportunity. It
(17:52):
was a perfect storm for from to come in and
be able to capitalize on that. And I think I
think it definitely did help out and his discovery with Drake.
Whether there he would have whether Drake would have found
him if he didn't do that, I don't know. You know,
I think it's up in a year, it's arguable, but
I would definitely say it did help out a ton.
I mean, he definitely had a huge following, a very
specific following, but I think he kind of moved into
(18:15):
mainstream because of that. Obviously, there are tons of really
great streamers on Twitch, so we won't focus on Ninja,
but I think Ninja is a really great talking point
for Twitch because not only did he capitalize on a
celebrity movement, did you sense that Twitch was benefiting from
all of a sudden on a whatever. It was a
week night at two am, the world is watching Twitch
(18:39):
because Drake, Travis Scott, who else was in that? Yeah,
so all these people are playing Ninja Ninja. You can
tell is almost beside himself as he's doing it. And
I'm sure as a person who's involved in the partnership program,
you probably had an influx of celebrities saying maybe we
should jump on this totally. For me, it was it
(19:01):
was a wonderful moment. It was a wonderful evening, and
I was so happy that all that was happening at once.
It was overwhelming of course too, But I think the
thing that really made me happy about that entire experience,
from the actual stream happening to even after the fact
and getting hit up by different people was it was
a shifting culture. I think gaming has always had this
stigma from I guess pop culture where it's like, you know,
(19:23):
you're some kid that lives in the basement eating hot pockets.
So the whole South Park reference, you know, the wild
reference where you're sitting at home, living in a basement
eating hot pockets, ship like that. So for me, one
of the things that I've been very passionate. I was
like moving away from that stigma and really kind of
unveiling the mask behind the community and showing like, yo,
(19:43):
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. Colin was a gamer for that matter,
you know, like everybody is a gamer in one way
or another, and it's a matter about like what you enjoy.
(20:05):
And I think with with the whole Drake and Ninja situation,
what I loved about is that a lot of people
who in the past would be quite about being a
game or 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 apparent or really present in
(20:26):
social media before, and now they are and it starting
to become a more of a widespread thing amongst culture.
How would you define the Twitch community who? That's a
really good question. It's a melting pot, So it's a
big melting pot of of everybody I look at I
look at the Twitch community as one giant ecosystem, and
(20:46):
there are people that have different interests, whether it be
I r L content, cooking, music, specific game game communities,
Like you may be into first person shooters, you might
be into Battle Royale, you might be into strate teagic games.
Everyone's got that thing that that they're really interested in.
And I think when you look at the Twitch ecosystem
as a whole, the entire community, like they have these
(21:07):
like subcommunities within them, and that's where like each streamer
kind of has like a domain. So you look at
people like Lyric for example, and I love Lyric. Lyric
is what I would define as like a device streamer.
He has a community that follows him wherever the funk
he goes, whatever game he's playing. There are certain games
that he might have much more vieweris in and other
games where he may not. But at the end of
(21:29):
the day, his domain is variety gaming. So that's where
a lot of streamers want to get to where they
want to be focusing on playing whatever game they want
because it gives them the liberty to play games and
have fun with it, whereas other other streamers much more
enjoy playing a particular game focusing on one genre as
opposed to multiple genres. Everyone's got their specialty. I think
(21:49):
everyone's also got different aspirations. Some people want to break
out from one particular game into variety, and some people
who are variety really want to have one game that
they focused on that's like their bread and butter. But
when I look at the Twitch community, I don't really
have a single definition for it because there's multiple definitions
depending on what what community you're looking at. You know,
you can look at from a charity perspective. You can
look at it from speed running, you can look at
(22:10):
it from competitive I can go on and on about it.
As somebody who works with the company, What are you
doing to protect the streamers in a sense from trolls
or people who are just coming on And a lot
of these people have nothing really to do with Twitch,
they're just you know, it's a free platform. Anyone can watch,
anyone can chat. What are the measures that you guys
(22:31):
are taking to protect the streamers and the content creators
on the platform. So I can't go into like all
the crazy specifics, but just to kind of give you
some context, we do have a safety ops team. These
guys worked in day out to protect the community as
a whole. Doing anything on the Internet scary. And I
think when you think about trolls and you think about
toxic people, the shit you think about the Internet really
(22:52):
is that you can you can hide behind a 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 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.
(23:14):
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 these other like microcusing 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,
(23:38):
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 automatically. Maybe you don't have moderates
your channel. We have an automoti feature so and you
can dial that from like a one to four. You
can 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
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
it is a trained behavior. Training your community is a
very difficult thing to do. 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
(24:41):
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 protect not only our streamers but our
entire community. For sure, trolls are everywhere. They're on Twitter,
they're on YouTube, they're everywhere. If you're putting your stuff
out there, you are susceptible it's going to happen. But
(25:04):
with the Twitch community, I know when I first started streaming,
I was personally like, Okay, I'm not doing gaming content
per se. So do you think it's because there are
people that have been there since day one who don't
really want to see the platform evolve into Because you
guys are evolving into different platforms. I mean you're talking
(25:25):
about cooking, you're talking about singing, You've twitched things now.
I mean, there's so many different lanes that you guys
are moving into as you should. You're the number one
streaming platform in the world and you've got fifteen million
daily users, so why wouldn't you. But do you think
that there's the community you have to be careful with
them because they are so specific or is that just
(25:49):
an assumption that I'm having. I think that with any
kind of change, people are always to be resistant to it,
and people act on different ways. It kind of goes
back to what else 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,
(26:10):
even if it is for the betterment of everybody. We're
not trying to change the platform. What we're looking at
is adjacent content, right, So if you're a 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 going to continue to be a gaming platform.
(26:30):
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's also
available for you to do, but our core focus is gaming.
There are going to people who are going to 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, the
most welcoming platform, and people feel like it's a safe
(26:51):
place for them to be themselves. So with the streamers,
because you work with them so closely, I do want
to talk about without 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
(27:14):
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
(27:35):
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
vectors like running advertisements and the stream selling subscriptions, which
is effective 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
(27:59):
of other victors. 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 toolings for
(28:21):
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 overlays on my stream, I can kind of
uncustomized 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
(28:43):
just be something that possible 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
(29:04):
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. Is
that to the discretion of the streamer. It's discussion stream
so that do you guys have certain guidelines like you're
(29:25):
not allowed to do this for any amount of money,
So there are. We want streamers. We want to make
sure that they're upholding themselves to a safe standard. We
don't want them hurting themselves along the way. We don't
want you taking shots for subs because people are giving
you money to to do so, like you're going to
get yourself hurt and we don't want that happening. And
and to that point, we have had celebrities reschedule interviews
(29:48):
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 dreaming 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
(30:09):
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 Burnard 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.
(30:33):
I mean, Bernard comes in different shapes and forms in
different variations overall, I think 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.
(30:55):
I understanding where they're coming from and try to ultimately
understand what we 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,
(31:17):
for from my personal standpoint, like this entire, like my
entire commitment this year has been focusing on how do
we minimize that bur now because it is becoming more
apparent in situations like the Draking 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
(31:38):
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 descriptions.
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 subscribe options in terms of
(32:01):
the run numbers if you're looking from a raw standpoint,
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
(32:23):
confuse that with the dates that they take off from streaming,
as people are unsubscribing to them or they're losing subscribers,
And inevitably, like anytime we take off, yes, you're losing
traffic here channel, but we are trying to get creative
with how we resurface content in your channel and also
how do we alleviate that anxiety because ultimately that's my
(32:43):
biggest pain point right now, was like I hate seeing
people 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 starts, say, interfear 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 is
too much at stake. I think a lot of it
is feeling irrelevant if you step away, is that the
(33:07):
audience is fickle? What what do you think it? I
think there's multiple um, there's multiple multiple sizes. There's multiple
things that kind of come into play here. One of
them is definitely momentum, especially like if a new game
comes out Fortnite. When it first came out, you know,
early on it was a beta game and they experimented
as a battle rail and it didn't really start to
(33:28):
pick up momentum until you know, season one, passive, season
two and starts to create new content around it, and
at that time it starts to really build up momentum.
It soon as a game, and so people start to
kind of hop on start playing Fortnite as a whole.
And I think with streamers in general, Yeah, it's kind
of like the slow, more feeling of like if I'm
not live, I'm missing out, I'm missing out on capturing
(33:49):
an audience. There's a lot that goes into it, really.
Uh yeah, I mean, it's it's it's such a complex.
We could probably talk about that for two hours. I
guess the main question is as somebody who is dealing
with these people on a day to day, it's almost
like these are your children in a sense. I mean
a lot of them, Like like you mentioned, you Ninja
was around during justin tv ds, So a lot of
(34:10):
these people you have seen grow from you know, zero
followers to millions of followers. So there's a sense of
responsibility to keep them on track and you want them
to continue to grow. But then there's this paternal feeling
you probably have to protect them as well. Going back
(34:32):
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, What
is it like now? How do people now apply to
(34:53):
be a partner. So the vector now is we have
an internal system that's kind of automated half of the
the trouble of like applying. So what you gotta do
now is actually qualify for the metrics through what we
have in our desperads, like twitch achievements. So if you
have to attain seventy five years for about two to
three weeks so that you're maintaining consistency, and it has
(35:13):
to be raw numbers, so like you can't have that
from people hosteeing you, from people 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 and once they apply, the same exact flow as
(35:34):
how it is from the past, which it's like they
get to tell us about themselves but now we've been
able to reduce the valling 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 able to
see what metrics you really need to attain to get
to that point back, and they didn't have that. Sometimes
(35:55):
it would take us weeks on end to get back
to you because of theVolume of applications being so high.
But now we've been able to cut that back and
being able to keep it focused on quality over quantity.
And it's okay if you want to answer this. But
I'm sure a lot of celebrities, because they hear about Twitch,
are like, oh, I don't really know what twitches, but
I'm gonna start streaming. Let me just make a call
and become a partner. Is it like that for them
(36:18):
or do they have to go through the process just
like everybody else. They have to go through the process
like everybody else, Because um, I'll be honest with early on,
that was something that we out of excitement, We're like, yeah, okay,
let's get this guy on board. Let's get this gall
on board. But what ended up happening is they get
really excited, they do it for about a week and
there are other work kind of comes into play and
takes up their time, which is perfectly fine. But we
(36:39):
ultimately we welcome everybody and we we want everyone to
be on Twitch. But if we want people to commit,
we want to be able to see that commitment from
them too. So I usually asked them, like, look happy
that you're excited about it, like you see a stream
for two to three weeks, just to make sure that,
like you know, you're going to actually be sticking on board.
And at that point, if you are meeting the criteria,
then we can we can talk about partnership. How many
(37:01):
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
(37:25):
spending less time communicating on a macro level nowadays and
focus much more on a micro level, So talking to
individual partners, I'm out here in l A right now
meeting 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
(37:46):
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 comedian 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
(38:09):
broken downto each of those regions and for us, we
we serve them 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
(38:29):
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,
(38:51):
but also just like a from an interaction standpoint, and
there's a lot that we do. We have usually parties
of these events that gives us a big opperatunit to
like communicate and reach out to partners. So we've wise
not being able to talk to you in the past
and really build up like a personal relationship and really
forged that bond between the partnerships team and the individual
careers because ultimately, the way I look at things, the
partnership seems like Tron and the partners are really the users.
(39:14):
We're fighting for them. Yeah, and and with thirty thousand
partners and even dividing it up by games and style
of gaming, whatever it is, how are you dividing your
time like you're in l A. I'm sure there are
thousands of, if not tens of thousands of streamers that
are partners in l A. How do you decide who
(39:34):
you're going to meet with and have get face time with?
Because I'm sure everybody would love FaceTime with you? Is
it just the top streamers they get the FaceTime like
any other industry. So from my particular role right now,
because I am focused on strategic partnerships, I focus on
a lot of the particular relationships that we have some people,
A lot of it maybe top streamers, but it also
(39:55):
might be large entities as well, So studios particular like
networks and groups, organizations e. Sports organizations that work really
closely with a lot of just like up and coming
talent that are coming from off platform that have strategic
value some of its top partners. Some of it isn't,
but it kind of varies. But my goal is like
if I find out that there are partners in a
(40:16):
particular region or a particular area and I'm gonna be
out there, I usually do my dual diligence to like
reach out to those individuals and let them know, Hey,
I am in the area, because you'd be surprised there's
a ton of partners here in l A. Yes, but
if you're to look at Omaha, Omaha, Braska, there's not
that many people out there. And I'll usually try to
reach out to those individuals and say, hey, I'm gonna
be in town, it'd like to meet for coffee, for lunch, whatever,
(40:38):
maybe just like I can get to know you better
and better stand you and what we could be doing
better for you. Because everyone's got a different need, everyone's
got a different background in terms of how they came
into twitch and what we can do to improve their
life is an iterating process. So do you find yourself
advising a lot of the time and brainstorming with them
what what they could do. It's a lot of listening,
(41:00):
a lot of conversating, a lot of conversing. Should say
it's not a word of conversating a lot of conversing,
but I would say it's a two way conversation most
of the time. Is there a question that you you
keep hearing over and over that that is happening so
often that you're like, wait, this is something that we
should probably address as a whole. Is there something that
you're noticing streamers are concerned about or wondering like, how
(41:24):
do I improve this or how do I Is there
a common question, yes, but it's usually based on trend
depending on what's going on in the communie at the time.
It could be regarding a particular topic, it could be
related to stuff that's happened in the past, whether it's
trending right now on twitch? What is what is something
that you're seeing a lot of the streamers and partners do.
I think burnout is probably like the hot topic right now.
(41:46):
Um I would say burnout and also work life balance.
I start to see that become much more apparent more
now than ever. And what's really cool and what's really
encouraging to me is I'm seeing a lot of streamers
actually get together that live in the same region, same area,
actually go out and planet trip or planet outing. It's
do stuff personally and not have to worry about are
they producing content around it, are they streaming the content
(42:08):
or anything like that. They're just focus on having fun
and being themselves. Because that balance is super crucial crucial
to you as well. So how do you because it
doesn't seem like a nine to five job at all,
and these people are not streaming nine to five. So
how do you set boundaries for yourself and and have
a healthy work life balance. Because I'm sure you're in
(42:30):
l A. You're going to be out all night tonight
meeting with every single person that is in l A
and wants to meet with you for every single coffee
and every single drink. For sure, it's kind of two things. One,
you have to have the affinity to like want to
talk to people. If you don't, this job is definitely
not for you. For me, I'm naturally extroverted, so being
able to interact and go out and do things is
very natural and very easy for me. I don't necessarily
(42:51):
burn out from it, and I think that aids meing
being able to be successful and what I'm doing, and
also kind of not have to worry too much about
the boundary but to when it comes, it's actually defining boundary.
I usually get myself a cut off time, So if
I'm feeling tired, if I'm feeling like I'm low in energy,
if I'm feeling like I'm not able to be as
up beat as I need to be, as you give
myself a cut off time. So whether they be midnight,
one am or whatever. That's usually like my boundary that
(43:14):
I set for myself. You should tell people like, hey,
to this point, like I need to go back and recharge.
But from my end set of the boundaries is not
so difficult as it is for streamers. And the reason
why I say that is I'm working with one on
one individual people and they understand the need for being
able to like take a step back and recharge with yourself.
I think creators streamers in general based a much more
(43:37):
widespread issue that I would like to help them out with,
which is they're looking at it from macro level. They
have hundreds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people
that they have to I hate to use this word,
but like a piece, you know. And it's really about
setting the right boundaries for yourself for those creators, right,
teaching them to say, look, you don't you're not gonna
be able to make every single person happy, and if
(43:58):
you are, you're going to bring yourself out of the
expa to that. So you need to be able to
be okay with putting your foot down in training your
community to say, hey, this is when I need my
me time, this is when I have my family time
and that stat I'll come back tomorrow. You'll continue to
have me at that point, but like I need to
be able to have my my boundary. So going back
to to answer your question again, Like, I think it's
(44:19):
fairly easy for me, just because the people that I
work with are very understanding that and very respectable. Whereas
with the people that I work with creators, for them,
it's much more difficult because they were dealing with people
on the internet who are not exactly the most reasonable. Yeah,
and I think you lightly touched on this, and this
may be an uncomfortable question to answer, but why do
you think you're so good at what you do? I
(44:40):
I mean, you mentioned you you fucking love it. You're
an extrovert. But there's there's something more because like I mentioned,
and I wasn't totally serious, but it does feel like
a casting director a bit, because you're you're spotting these
stars and you've seen a lot of people come up
from nothing to being seven figure streamers. Yeah, why is
(45:01):
this what you're gonna, I believe, continue to do and
why are you so good at it? I appreciate that,
um uh, it's something I strive to be better at
every day. I think for me, this is the fact that,
like I have an opportunity to do something I absolutely love.
I love video games, I love people, I love helping
people out. I'm able to combine those three things into
(45:22):
something really meaningful for me on a day to day
and I don't want to lose that, Like it's such
a special thing to me. It's like this is constantly evolving,
it's constantly growing, and you've seen Twitch evolve over the
last five six years, Like God knows what's going to
happen in the next five to six after this. I
definitely think that there's life beyond streaming, and we want
(45:42):
to help people think about that, but we also want
to be able to build upon their business within Twitch
as well. UM my goal is to keep people stuck
on Twitch twenty four hours a day streaming. I want
them to be able to have the life that they
always want to have, but I also want them to
be able to do that in a way that is
enjoyable for them and for a lot of people. I
do see people who experienced stream or burnout, but also
see that they love streaming, like this is something that
(46:04):
they genuinely enjoy doing. It's just about teaching them and
empowering them to set the right boundaries. And that's something
that everybody has to kind of figure out in their
different type of footing, because everyone's got a differentackgroun, everyone's
got a different type of lifestyle. So I see Twitch
becoming a household name, see it becoming more mainstream than
it has become. I see it becoming something that is
a staple to to not only individuals, but even brands
(46:26):
and organizations as a whole um, something that they embody
and really really really embrace and represent on a day
to day just like they do with other other content mediums.
But beyond that, you know, we're we're thinking about the
future and we're not. We're we're not leaving anytime since
we're here to stay. What do you think that's Twitch
apart from every other platform the heart and soul. You
(46:49):
will not you will not find another company that hires
people that day and day out like their dedication. What
they do, what keeps them going is to like make
the lives of not only the community but the streamers better.
Like everybody that works at Twitch gives a funk about streamers.
Everybody gives a funk about the community. Everyone gets a
funk about making this the best place possible. That was
(47:10):
true for me when it was employees. It's true for
me now over a thousand employees. And I guarantee when
it's ten thou whatever that number may be in the future,
like it'll continue to be that. And usually when I'm
interviewing people, I just nod because I have to just
agree with what they're saying. I can firsthand tell you
that that is true because I was there when Twitch
first started and when big things happened, and everyone everyone
(47:34):
who works at Twitch, and I think this is the
community who's also streaming and watching it. There's this unique
passion that is so genuine that you can't fake that.
And I think that's why Twitch is only going to
continue to get bigger, and the streamers are going to
continue to get bigger, and the opportunities are as well.
(47:54):
What do you think is a common misconception about streamers.
I think people think that they make a ton of
money off of playing hours of video game video games
and and and that's it, and they go on and
live a spalling life where they make it rain on themselves.
It's a lot of work, it's a huge commitment. I
think a lot of people forget that being a creator
(48:14):
in general, streamer for that matter, you're not just a creator.
You you play multiple roles and some that are assumed
and some that are not assumed based on how your
community is, and a lot of people will turn into
these communities to these individual streamers for multiple things. Sometimes
they're having a bad day, they need a place to
be able to just reset and and and and have
a good laugh, or someone that they want to watch
(48:35):
play high caliber gameplay because they really they really want
to get better and there's an opportunity for them to
be educated by that person. Everyone's got different reasons, and
I think ultimately for streamers, they're really the ones that
are wearing multiple hats. They're ultimately like their own little startup,
and they don't really get the credit that they deserve.
They really don't very well put. And there's a few
(48:56):
just rapid fire questions that why kind of dug around
for what people were interested to hear from you, And
again you don't have to answer, but it would be
cool if you did. Who's your favorite streamer? You know,
this is like asking to pick a favorite child, but
You've got to have a favorite streamer that you just
either it's because you love the story or you actually
(49:16):
just love watching this person. Yeah, I man, there's so
many different stories. Like favorite, like big Dude right now
stilly killing it. I would say Shroud. The reason why
I say Shroud is when I first got hired a Twitch,
Shroud was streaming Counterstrike um, and back then Counterstrike wasn't
really that big of a game in the directory, and
(49:38):
Shroud would legit like write me every two weeks telling
me like why he deserves to be a partner and
how he's like changing content on his channel to able
to make him more engaging, to make it more fun um,
and he would check in with me and it was
like the cutest ever and I fucking love every bit
of it. He he obviously he got partnership and he's
killing it, but like look at him now, you know
he's really made something for himself. And I love people
that have like not only that to nasty, but that
(49:59):
commitment to be better, to improve upon themselves. I love
people like Tim and Tatman. Tim's also someone else that
I partnered a while back, and Tim worked as a
social worker before working or before streaming on Twitch, and
I remember, I think it was like in February, February
January he called me and I was like driving home
from work and he was like, dude, I think I'm
(50:21):
gonna do it. I'm like, do what. He's like, I
think I'm gonna go full time. I think I'm gonna
quit my job. And here's a day in March that
I'm planning on doing it. I'm kind of scared, but
I think I'm just gonna go for it. Man, and
he he hasn't looked back since, and he's been able
to make something for himself too. In terms of current
favorite streamer, I hate to do a shameless plug for him,
but a buddy of mine from high school. His name
(50:42):
is Joey Joey Cow. I think his channel name is
Joey Chaotic. Shout out to Joey Chaotic. So Joey Joey
is an amazing person. He's got a world of energy.
He prior to streaming on Twitch, was working at Tiffin
Coo making a ton of money just selling rings and
jewelry to people, and he just wasn't getting the fi
filment that he needed and he came over my house
(51:03):
one night and we're just talking about streaming, and I
was like, dude, like, you're a b boy. He breakdances,
he travels around the world competing, like he's done law content.
I'm like, why don't you just go out there and
just do something on twitch for the funk of it?
And within sixty days of him streaming for fun, he
quit his job and like he's been able to make
the full time living. Now he's living in Taiwan doing content.
I think he's actually like back in the States right
(51:24):
now this moment. But I would say my favorite guy
currently at the moment would be my boy Joey. I
love that. What is the one thing about streaming that
you don't like that you wish you could just wave
a magic wand and change? Um. I hate the perception,
or despise the perception that if you're not a partner,
(51:44):
you're not a good streamer. I really want to get
rid of that. Do you think that because it's so
hard to become a partner now? I do think that
it discourages people to even stream in the first place.
And do is that I would argue that the barrier
to its partnership is actually much slower than what it
used to be. I think it's more about the perception
of Once you hit partner status, people assume that people
(52:06):
are just gonna make your rein on you and that
you're gonna make a fun ton of money and your set,
and people look at partnership as a status and as
an aspirational latter. I think attaining partnership is definitely a
point that people should hit, and it should be something
that they aspire to do. But there's much more in
the progression beyond just hitting partnership, And I think a
lot of people are missing us true being a partner
(52:27):
as being a good streamer, and that's not true. You
could have thirty five viewers, you can still be incredibly talented.
You may not be qualified to be a partner at
that moment, but you're still someone who is incredibly talented.
You are a good streamer. And for people who aren't familiar,
the biggest perk of being a partner is just very
simply put, the opportunity to make money. Right, Yeah, now,
there is there is monetization opportunities prior to partnership, Like
(52:50):
we have an affiliate status, which is pretty easy attained
as well. You only need three viewers, so that that
allows you to do a lot of the similar features
as you can with a partner, just having a partnership,
having a partnership with which has a higher level of
support not only from Twitch as a company as a whole,
but also with the opportunities that come with it. But again,
I don't want people misconstruing that as I'm a good streamer.
I'm not a good streamer. Another perfect segue to round
(53:12):
out this beautiful interview. What advice would you give someone,
because Twitch can be a very intimidating place, what advice
would you give someone who wants to dabble in streaming
but they are scared shitless? What piece of advice do
you give them to get them to do their very
first stream. I would pick a piece of content or
(53:35):
a game that they know for sure they'll enjoy, Have
a friend or two watch, tune into a stream, and
just have fun with it. Don't worry about what happens
after the fact. If you're really worried about people saying me,
ship to you like, have a friend moderate for you,
in fact, maybe even high chat initially, just just so
you're not really thinking about it. But get yourself in
the most comfortable state as you can pick out a
(53:56):
favorite game that you like to play, maybe have a
friend play with you. Don't worry about all the wells,
the bells and whistles of like having a cool set
up in your camera set up and overlays and all ship.
Just just do it. You wouldn't have fun. Do it,
didn't have fun, and then one day you'll just be
making millions just like that, Just like that. Well, thank
(54:17):
you so much for stopping by. I feel like I
could talk to you for another Like every topic we
touched on, I feel like has lots of players, so
we had to kind of keep it high level, 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.
(54:37):
I'm happy to have it. Yeah, it sounds for having
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 here forever. I know. I want
a job there too. Now hiring we are, Well, let's
talk off air, all right, well, thank you guys for listening.
(54:57):
Hope you guys have learned a thing or two I
su did. Yeah, we're going to talk to other people
from Twitch as well, which I'm really excited about because
the world of Twitch is just there's just a lot
going on and it's really cool and you guys are
disruptors in the best way possible and I think it's
very very cool what you guys are doing. So yeah,
we'll howk on. Thank you, Thanks guys, thanks for listening.
(55:19):
Tootles Behind Influences a production of I Heart Radio and
t DC Media
Welcome to Behind the Influence, a production of I Heart
Radio and t DC Media. For me, that was everything
I told myself, I'm like one or another. I'm gonna
find a way to get a job here. You know,
we're we're thinking about the future and we're not leaving
in Tempson. We're here. Stay. If I'm a traveling toon event,
I want to be able to see my fellow streamers,
(00:21):
my colleagues, my friends, funny stories with my mom, and
I give me an option. They're like, Okay, we can
either build your brand of computer or we'll get you
a car. But I was like, no funk that. I
want a computer. I want it right now. Well, guys,
today's a happy day and Neil Angishman is in the house.
How'd I do with your last name? We practiced a
few times, pretty much killed it every time, murdered it.
(00:41):
You're superstar. How are you doing today? Doing great? Thanks
for stopping by. A Neil is the head of strategic
partnerships at Twitch, a small, tidy, little company you may
have heard of. You've been there, what five years, going
on my sixth right now. Yeah. We were just talking
actually before we started recording, about how people who work
at Twitch just are celebrities in their own right. It's
(01:03):
a small culture, you know, like it's grown a lot
quite over the last three years. And uh yeah, there's
like a prestige with like working with Twitch, right, and
I think even attached to that. A lot of employees
at work at Twitch in some capacity were made into
like a meme, a Twitch emote you have not for
the right reasons, but you know, I'm I'm there as well.
And so for people who don't know what an emote is,
(01:25):
break it down. Imagine a emoji that you can put
into any chat room within Twitch. All it requires is
just a simple text code. So for you, taught, if
we wanted to have you as an emote, and maybe
it's a picture of you smiling, or you've thrown the
peace sign, whatever, maybe we can put in a code
and we can put that code to be t T
Carrier whatever. Maybe. And if you're the type it either
(01:47):
with all capitals or all lowercase boom, your face would
show up. And that shows up in every single chat
room and people make memes out of it, just like
anything else in Internet. People just me So you're kind
of a celebrity in the streaming world. I mean your
faces for sure. When I first got high, They're like, yeah,
you know, as an employee benefit, you can upload your
own emoticon or your own emoji, your own emo to
the like the back end, and you can make it
(02:08):
into like an actual email that can be used throughout
the website. I'm like, fuck, yeah, dope. They're like, okay,
but we need a picture of you looking straight at
the camera. And I'm one of those guys that like
never takes like a proper photo. I'm always like goofing
off and everything. So I had one picture I'm wearing
a white beanie and I put that up and ironically enough,
because the picture was scaled down so tiny within chat,
it kind of looks like I'm wearing a turban. So
(02:30):
people haven't been able to like miss miscontact that for
for other things, and I won't go into people really
use your amount. It gets highly used. I remember the
first time I saw it in a chat, I was like,
what is that? Is that a Neal? And Colin was like, yes,
that's a Neil. Yeah. My little cousins when they found
out that I was working at Twitter, like, you're the
(02:50):
fucking anil, My cousin and Neil is the Anneal and
my guess yes, I'm so start treating me like it exactly.
So you're your role at Twitch is actually very very important.
One of the reasons that Twitch is a household name
is because of the streamers that we watch so avidly
on the platform. These streamers are going hours and hours
(03:12):
a day. For the majority of the partners, it's their
full time job, and you are the person. You're basically
the thread between them and the platform. So you are
the middleman. You're the one dealing with both Twitch and
the ninjas of the world. How does one get this role?
I mean it kind of seems like the dream job.
(03:33):
It is a dream job, and to be perfectly honest
with you, like I'm I'm humbled to be in that
every day doing what I'm doing. I love people, and
I think the number one thing that I would look
at when I'm looking at hiring for this role, even
for myself, has always been attitude. I think that you
have to have a highfinity and high drive to want
to help people out because this is a very selfless role.
(03:53):
There's a lot of times where you're advocating for things
that might go against the grain, both politically within the
company or even extra only to the community, and you
always have to kind of have a very headstrong mentality
with understanding that what you're doing is for the betterment
of the community, for the betterment of the platform, and
having that holistic view is probably like the most integral
part of like succeeding within partnerships for me personally. In
(04:16):
terms of like hiring, I look at attitude number one.
Number two, I would look at people who have a
background and like being able to develop other people, whether
it be within a management role, whether it be within
working within content and working within communities, volunteering, because I
feel like a lot of those traits translate well over
to whatever you want to do within partnerships as well.
We've gotten to the point where we're not wearing multiple
(04:38):
hats anymore like we used to be back in a day,
so the roles are very concentrating, really well defined. So
maybe someone who's really good at charity can stay within
the domain of charity, whereas someone who's got a high
affinity of like wanting to help people out, maybe a
little bit shy and want to work more on the
back end. They have opportunities to do that was like
a program manager. So there's a little bit of something
for everybody. And again, I think the core root of
it is like as long as you got the right
(04:59):
attitude and you have that drive for it, I would
say like that's like the baseline for being a candidate
for partnerships because I mean, you guys have to have
so many people applying for roles at Twitch every single day.
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
(05:22):
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 were 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, actually competed in gaming. When I was
(05:45):
like fifteen sixteen, I played a game called Counterstrike. Never
heard of him. It's a just kidding. Colin plays at
all the time. Oh my god, it almost caused multiple divorces.
But 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'd give me an option. They're like, Okay,
(06:05):
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
(06:27):
an idiot, but looking back, 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. 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 finking for about a year. It really sucked.
That wasn't good. Why why did you get into programing,
(06:49):
because back then I don't even think it was it was.
It was like a cool thing. It was like an
underground community, you know, like there's websites. I got fragged
they can go into that, like shared wars 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 like Sweden, and you would hear
about like the World Cyber Games, and that was like
(07:09):
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 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
(07:30):
I did that for like three years, and my mom
and dad had to sit down with me with my
brothers and we were like, what do 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
(07:51):
space that your parents probably were not familiar with and
did not understand. They did it and they totally had
to read on me, like they knew me inside and out.
So I think it was just 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
dial back, and coincidentally, at the same time, StarCraft two,
which the franchise was like everything to me, was getting announced,
(08:14):
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 fucking viewer, Like I was on that ship
all day. I was up until like five six am
watching like the Korean like Star Half League, which was
(08:37):
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 awake. But I did that
and I loved it. I fucking loved every bit of it. Now,
what was it? What was it about that? 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
(08:57):
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 I should 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,
(09:17):
so it'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 everything I told myself I'm
like one or or another, I'm gonna find a way
to get a job here. And that was this is
pre twitch Twitch. I didn't know how I was going
to do that, but there was a bunch of like
small little community events are happening throughout the Bay Area,
and the Bay Area is not a very big hut
(09:38):
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
(10:00):
made a lot of friends, and I used actually my
salary at Zinga to bootstrap my own StarCraft team. So
that was like how I actually really really got into
like e sports and everything, and I learned a lot
about getting sponsors and paying out teams and travel and
hurting sheep because these guys were like, you know, their children,
they're they're making a couple hundred bucks, a couple of
thousand bucks, competing in in a in a small time
(10:22):
game that hasn't really blown up yet, and you you
just learned along the way and it was great. I
loved every minute of it. And anyways, over time, about
a year of doing that while working at Singa, the
right opportunity locked to 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
(10:44):
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 for me,
I say, Twitch had a really cool like gothic, like nerdy,
like steampunk. Looked at it back then, and then like
(11:06):
six months in or I think it was about a
year after, they like reframed it into the whole Purple Company,
which I absolutely loved because purposes the pem color. You know,
it's purple hoodie. You just know it's iconic. It was
all Donald or not downhill, but it's all history from there.
It was all downhill from their interview overhop. You know
what I mean. No, I know exactly what you meant.
(11:26):
So you got a job at Twitch where you initially were.
Was there a partner's program in place when you first started?
There was a partnership program. To get a partnership with
Twitch back then, you required I think anywhere from five viewers.
Basically it was really hard. Yeah, you have to be
like a big shot. I got hired to come in
and review the applications for these people applying for partnership,
(11:48):
which was like, by far, like the dopest rule ever did.
I felt like I was Santa Claus because I'm looking
at thousands of applications on a weekly basis, and I
felt like the dean of admissions out of college. And
you're looking at people like showing out their entire life story,
talking about why they deserve to be a partner, talking
about how they came to Twitch, and like their story.
Then you had other people that are like I just
bought a capture card. I'm gonna be fucking awesome partner. Me,
(12:10):
so you hear like you hear both spectrums or you
hear the whole full spectrum of like white people deserve that.
Why do you think they deserve to be a partner?
And for me that was like one of the best
experiences because I learned about a lot about content and
I learned all about our community and who these people
are and what's like the pulsing community. What is a
hot game? What games are they're playing? So I did that.
I did that rule for about a year. I will
look at who are people that are qualified to become
(12:31):
a partner. Over time I start to realize, Okay, these
guys aren't hitt five viewers are hit three, hitting four,
but they're really fucking good at what they do. They're
really really good, They're really really talented. I made a
few exceptions here and there, even though I wasn't supposed to,
but made a few exceptions, and that actually ended up
being like the best thing ever because we learned that
it's not just all about viewership, it's about engagement too.
(12:52):
Um And at the time, the reason why we looked
at it from such a from a high viewership was
because a tech costs and operating costs. But you know,
of course, over time, like you're able to kind of
society that so we're able to look at truly content
and look at what is meaningful content, what is engaging content,
and what is what we define now is like those
shared real time experiences for me like Twitch. You know,
(13:15):
you see these different people from different walks of life
all around the world, and they they run their channel
different ways. You know, there's no template, there's no cookie
cutter format. So over time we were able to lower
the viewership requirements so that more and more people can
come into the funnel and get that opportunity to become
a partner. So you you referred to yourself earlier when
you said, you know, I wanted to start streaming and
I wasn't good at it, and then there are these
(13:36):
people that don't have many views, but they're really good
at it. What constitutes a good streamer consistency Number one.
You've got to be consistent. I wasn't consistent, and that
really is a magical sauce. If you come in on
a on a weekly basis or on a daily basis,
and you're coming at seven pm every day, you're communicating
and guarantee you can rely on you to be live
at that time, they'll come back during that period. It
(13:57):
also opens up opportunity for people that otherwise may not
be tuning into streams but maybe happened to be that
evening to come and find you. But consistency is like
the biggest key second part, which is arguable depending on
who you're talking to, but having fun. If you're not
having fun, like people don't want to watch you. They
look if it looks like you're having a miserable time,
like why would anyone want to tune into that? And
(14:18):
for me, it got to a point where like I
was streaming just a stream for for that period and
I wasn't having fun because I sucked at the game.
I sucked that StarCraft. So I started to pivot to
other stuff that I actually did enjoy. And when I
did that, I actually saw the change in my beership
where people want to tune in more. People wanted to
be around me because I was having a good time
and I was cheery and I was upbeat. Engagement's also
(14:40):
very big, and I think those are kind of correlated
with one another, Right, having fun and being engaged in
to community. If you're not talking to your community. More
likely people are watching you because you have a high
skill caliber, So maybe you might be really good at
a game, or maybe you're doing something that might be
funny or it might be a little cringe e, So
people want to tune in because of that. But the
magical sauce really is consistency and engagement, having the upea attitude,
(15:02):
having fun with with your content. When it comes to
when it comes to folks like Tyler Ninja, I'm really
proud of how far along he's come along, especially because
he's one of the guys that have been streaming since
just in TV days, so he's been at it for
like eight years now. This guy has been committed, and
you know, he hasn't always had this big break. So
for people like him, I think, you know, it's really
the right opportunity. And I think games like Fortnite, H
(15:25):
one Z one, pub g all have like eight to
those opportunities because the battle are All format is exciting
in itself in terms of content. But I think when
you look at a game like Fortnite, where it's encompassing
different types of cultures with the different dances and the
and the skins and y'all fits and everything. Like you
you kind of opened up a new world of opportunity
with culture and for for Ninja, it also opened up
(15:45):
an opportunity for like sick plays. You know, he was
doing some really dope shit building. His building skills were
like off the chart, and I think he was able
to kind of show off his skill set and his
engagement and the level that people weren't able to really
see in the past, and that got the attention with
the main stream media, and so artists like Drake start
to see then caught attention and follow him on Instagram
(16:05):
because he was posting his clips on there, and I
think all that type of stuff aided in his discovery,
which ultimately led to where he's at now. That was
gonna be my other questions. So I don't think it
just ends at Twitch. So people are not only are
they streaming on Twitch, they're clipping their videos, they're putting
it on YouTube, they're putting them on Instagram, they're putting
them on Twitter. It's a full time job. So do
(16:29):
you think had Ninja not been utilizing other social media
platforms that he would be where he is today, Because
maybe Drake wouldn't just be on Twitch randomly, but he
saw a clip on Instagram or somebody tagged him because
they know that Drake's a huge Fortnite fan, and somebody's like, oh,
this is a sick play let me tag Drake. Now,
all of a sudden, Drake knows about Ninja. Do you
(16:50):
when you are talking to and helping shape partners or
giving them advice, are you advising them to use these
other platforms as well? For sure? I think syndicase of
your content, especially after your streams are over, are super
important because it gives you the opportunity to be discovered
in other places. And I think ultimately you want to
build up your brand. When you look at my team
(17:10):
and look at what they're focusing on, they're focused on
building up creators from the ground up, not only on
the Twitch level, but holistically so well. We can't double
into every side of their business. We do try to
encourage them to to to to be effective and be
smart about how they're syndicating their content and do it
mindfully right. Don't just put it in every single platform
for the sake of putting it on there. Do it
because you know you're gonna gage to the right audience.
(17:31):
And I think for for people like Ninja, you know,
gaming has really tried to take a presence in social
media and Twitter and in Instagram over only the last
few years. Really, I think it was really just the
perfect storm for him Fortnite coming in Fortnite, being a
game that is widely admired endored by all ages and
all cultures. I think it was a right opportunity. It
(17:52):
was a perfect storm for from to come in and
be able to capitalize on that. And I think I
think it definitely did help out and his discovery with Drake.
Whether there he would have whether Drake would have found
him if he didn't do that, I don't know. You know,
I think it's up in a year, it's arguable, but
I would definitely say it did help out a ton.
I mean, he definitely had a huge following, a very
specific following, but I think he kind of moved into
(18:15):
mainstream because of that. Obviously, there are tons of really
great streamers on Twitch, so we won't focus on Ninja,
but I think Ninja is a really great talking point
for Twitch because not only did he capitalize on a
celebrity movement, did you sense that Twitch was benefiting from
all of a sudden on a whatever. It was a
week night at two am, the world is watching Twitch
(18:39):
because Drake, Travis Scott, who else was in that? Yeah,
so all these people are playing Ninja Ninja. You can
tell is almost beside himself as he's doing it. And
I'm sure as a person who's involved in the partnership program,
you probably had an influx of celebrities saying maybe we
should jump on this totally. For me, it was it
(19:01):
was a wonderful moment. It was a wonderful evening, and
I was so happy that all that was happening at once.
It was overwhelming of course too, But I think the
thing that really made me happy about that entire experience,
from the actual stream happening to even after the fact
and getting hit up by different people was it was
a shifting culture. I think gaming has always had this
stigma from I guess pop culture where it's like, you know,
(19:23):
you're some kid that lives in the basement eating hot pockets.
So the whole South Park reference, you know, the wild
reference where you're sitting at home, living in a basement
eating hot pockets, ship like that. So for me, one
of the things that I've been very passionate. I was
like moving away from that stigma and really kind of
unveiling the mask behind the community and showing like, yo,
(19:43):
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. Colin was a gamer for that matter,
you know, like everybody is a gamer in one way
or another, and it's a matter about like what you enjoy.
(20:05):
And I think with with the whole Drake and Ninja situation,
what I loved about is that a lot of people
who in the past would be quite about being a
game or 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 apparent or really present in
(20:26):
social media before, and now they are and it starting
to become a more of a widespread thing amongst culture.
How would you define the Twitch community who? That's a
really good question. It's a melting pot, So it's a
big melting pot of of everybody I look at I
look at the Twitch community as one giant ecosystem, and
(20:46):
there are people that have different interests, whether it be
I r L content, cooking, music, specific game game communities,
Like you may be into first person shooters, you might
be into Battle Royale, you might be into strate teagic games.
Everyone's got that thing that that they're really interested in.
And I think when you look at the Twitch ecosystem
as a whole, the entire community, like they have these
(21:07):
like subcommunities within them, and that's where like each streamer
kind of has like a domain. So you look at
people like Lyric for example, and I love Lyric. Lyric
is what I would define as like a device streamer.
He has a community that follows him wherever the funk
he goes, whatever game he's playing. There are certain games
that he might have much more vieweris in and other
games where he may not. But at the end of
(21:29):
the day, his domain is variety gaming. So that's where
a lot of streamers want to get to where they
want to be focusing on playing whatever game they want
because it gives them the liberty to play games and
have fun with it, whereas other other streamers much more
enjoy playing a particular game focusing on one genre as
opposed to multiple genres. Everyone's got their specialty. I think
(21:49):
everyone's also got different aspirations. Some people want to break
out from one particular game into variety, and some people
who are variety really want to have one game that
they focused on that's like their bread and butter. But
when I look at the Twitch community, I don't really
have a single definition for it because there's multiple definitions
depending on what what community you're looking at. You know,
you can look at from a charity perspective. You can
look at it from speed running, you can look at
(22:10):
it from competitive I can go on and on about it.
As somebody who works with the company, What are you
doing to protect the streamers in a sense from trolls
or people who are just coming on And a lot
of these people have nothing really to do with Twitch,
they're just you know, it's a free platform. Anyone can watch,
anyone can chat. What are the measures that you guys
(22:31):
are taking to protect the streamers and the content creators
on the platform. So I can't go into like all
the crazy specifics, but just to kind of give you
some context, we do have a safety ops team. These
guys worked in day out to protect the community as
a whole. Doing anything on the Internet scary. And I
think when you think about trolls and you think about
toxic people, the shit you think about the Internet really
(22:52):
is that you can you can hide behind a 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 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.
(23:14):
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 these other like microcusing 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,
(23:38):
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 automatically. Maybe you don't have moderates
your channel. We have an automoti feature so and you
can dial that from like a one to four. You
can 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
(23:59):
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
(24:20):
it is a trained behavior. Training your community is a
very difficult thing to do. 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
(24:41):
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 protect not only our streamers but our
entire community. For sure, trolls are everywhere. They're on Twitter,
they're on YouTube, they're everywhere. If you're putting your stuff
out there, you are susceptible it's going to happen. But
(25:04):
with the Twitch community, I know when I first started streaming,
I was personally like, Okay, I'm not doing gaming content
per se. So do you think it's because there are
people that have been there since day one who don't
really want to see the platform evolve into Because you
guys are evolving into different platforms. I mean you're talking
(25:25):
about cooking, you're talking about singing, You've twitched things now.
I mean, there's so many different lanes that you guys
are moving into as you should. You're the number one
streaming platform in the world and you've got fifteen million
daily users, so why wouldn't you. But do you think
that there's the community you have to be careful with
them because they are so specific or is that just
(25:49):
an assumption that I'm having. I think that with any
kind of change, people are always to be resistant to it,
and people act on different ways. It kind of goes
back to what else 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,
(26:10):
even if it is for the betterment of everybody. We're
not trying to change the platform. What we're looking at
is adjacent content, right, So if you're a 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 going to continue to be a gaming platform.
(26:30):
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's also
available for you to do, but our core focus is gaming.
There are going to people who are going to 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, the
most welcoming platform, and people feel like it's a safe
(26:51):
place for them to be themselves. So with the streamers,
because you work with them so closely, I do want
to talk about without 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
(27:14):
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
(27:35):
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
vectors like running advertisements and the stream selling subscriptions, which
is effective 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
(27:59):
of other victors. 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 toolings for
(28:21):
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 overlays on my stream, I can kind of
uncustomized 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
(28:43):
just be something that possible 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
(29:04):
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. Is
that to the discretion of the streamer. It's discussion stream
so that do you guys have certain guidelines like you're
(29:25):
not allowed to do this for any amount of money,
So there are. We want streamers. We want to make
sure that they're upholding themselves to a safe standard. We
don't want them hurting themselves along the way. We don't
want you taking shots for subs because people are giving
you money to to do so, like you're going to
get yourself hurt and we don't want that happening. And
and to that point, we have had celebrities reschedule interviews
(29:48):
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 dreaming 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
(30:09):
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 Burnard 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.
(30:33):
I mean, Bernard comes in different shapes and forms in
different variations overall, I think 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.
(30:55):
I understanding where they're coming from and try to ultimately
understand what we 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,
(31:17):
for from my personal standpoint, like this entire, like my
entire commitment this year has been focusing on how do
we minimize that bur now because it is becoming more
apparent in situations like the Draking 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
(31:38):
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 descriptions.
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 subscribe options in terms of
(32:01):
the run numbers if you're looking from a raw standpoint,
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
(32:23):
confuse that with the dates that they take off from streaming,
as people are unsubscribing to them or they're losing subscribers,
And inevitably, like anytime we take off, yes, you're losing
traffic here channel, but we are trying to get creative
with how we resurface content in your channel and also
how do we alleviate that anxiety because ultimately that's my
(32:43):
biggest pain point right now, was like I hate seeing
people 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 starts, say, interfear 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 is
too much at stake. I think a lot of it
is feeling irrelevant if you step away, is that the
(33:07):
audience is fickle? What what do you think it? I
think there's multiple um, there's multiple multiple sizes. There's multiple
things that kind of come into play here. One of
them is definitely momentum, especially like if a new game
comes out Fortnite. When it first came out, you know,
early on it was a beta game and they experimented
as a battle rail and it didn't really start to
(33:28):
pick up momentum until you know, season one, passive, season
two and starts to create new content around it, and
at that time it starts to really build up momentum.
It soon as a game, and so people start to
kind of hop on start playing Fortnite as a whole.
And I think with streamers in general, Yeah, it's kind
of like the slow, more feeling of like if I'm
not live, I'm missing out, I'm missing out on capturing
(33:49):
an audience. There's a lot that goes into it, really.
Uh yeah, I mean, it's it's it's such a complex.
We could probably talk about that for two hours. I
guess the main question is as somebody who is dealing
with these people on a day to day, it's almost
like these are your children in a sense. I mean
a lot of them, Like like you mentioned, you Ninja
was around during justin tv ds, So a lot of
(34:10):
these people you have seen grow from you know, zero
followers to millions of followers. So there's a sense of
responsibility to keep them on track and you want them
to continue to grow. But then there's this paternal feeling
you probably have to protect them as well. Going back
(34:32):
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, What
is it like now? How do people now apply to
(34:53):
be a partner. So the vector now is we have
an internal system that's kind of automated half of the
the trouble of like applying. So what you gotta do
now is actually qualify for the metrics through what we
have in our desperads, like twitch achievements. So if you
have to attain seventy five years for about two to
three weeks so that you're maintaining consistency, and it has
(35:13):
to be raw numbers, so like you can't have that
from people hosteeing you, from people 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 and once they apply, the same exact flow as
(35:34):
how it is from the past, which it's like they
get to tell us about themselves but now we've been
able to reduce the valling 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 able to
see what metrics you really need to attain to get
to that point back, and they didn't have that. Sometimes
(35:55):
it would take us weeks on end to get back
to you because of theVolume of applications being so high.
But now we've been able to cut that back and
being able to keep it focused on quality over quantity.
And it's okay if you want to answer this. But
I'm sure a lot of celebrities, because they hear about Twitch,
are like, oh, I don't really know what twitches, but
I'm gonna start streaming. Let me just make a call
and become a partner. Is it like that for them
(36:18):
or do they have to go through the process just
like everybody else. They have to go through the process
like everybody else, Because um, I'll be honest with early on,
that was something that we out of excitement, We're like, yeah, okay,
let's get this guy on board. Let's get this gall
on board. But what ended up happening is they get
really excited, they do it for about a week and
there are other work kind of comes into play and
takes up their time, which is perfectly fine. But we
(36:39):
ultimately we welcome everybody and we we want everyone to
be on Twitch. But if we want people to commit,
we want to be able to see that commitment from
them too. So I usually asked them, like, look happy
that you're excited about it, like you see a stream
for two to three weeks, just to make sure that,
like you know, you're going to actually be sticking on board.
And at that point, if you are meeting the criteria,
then we can we can talk about partnership. How many
(37:01):
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
(37:25):
spending less time communicating on a macro level nowadays and
focus much more on a micro level, So talking to
individual partners, I'm out here in l A right now
meeting 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
(37:46):
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 comedian 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
(38:09):
broken downto each of those regions and for us, we
we serve them 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
(38:29):
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,
(38:51):
but also just like a from an interaction standpoint, and
there's a lot that we do. We have usually parties
of these events that gives us a big opperatunit to
like communicate and reach out to partners. So we've wise
not being able to talk to you in the past
and really build up like a personal relationship and really
forged that bond between the partnerships team and the individual
careers because ultimately, the way I look at things, the
partnership seems like Tron and the partners are really the users.
(39:14):
We're fighting for them. Yeah, and and with thirty thousand
partners and even dividing it up by games and style
of gaming, whatever it is, how are you dividing your
time like you're in l A. I'm sure there are
thousands of, if not tens of thousands of streamers that
are partners in l A. How do you decide who
(39:34):
you're going to meet with and have get face time with?
Because I'm sure everybody would love FaceTime with you? Is
it just the top streamers they get the FaceTime like
any other industry. So from my particular role right now,
because I am focused on strategic partnerships, I focus on
a lot of the particular relationships that we have some people,
A lot of it maybe top streamers, but it also
(39:55):
might be large entities as well, So studios particular like
networks and groups, organizations e. Sports organizations that work really
closely with a lot of just like up and coming
talent that are coming from off platform that have strategic
value some of its top partners. Some of it isn't,
but it kind of varies. But my goal is like
if I find out that there are partners in a
(40:16):
particular region or a particular area and I'm gonna be
out there, I usually do my dual diligence to like
reach out to those individuals and let them know, Hey,
I am in the area, because you'd be surprised there's
a ton of partners here in l A. Yes, but
if you're to look at Omaha, Omaha, Braska, there's not
that many people out there. And I'll usually try to
reach out to those individuals and say, hey, I'm gonna
be in town, it'd like to meet for coffee, for lunch, whatever,
(40:38):
maybe just like I can get to know you better
and better stand you and what we could be doing
better for you. Because everyone's got a different need, everyone's
got a different background in terms of how they came
into twitch and what we can do to improve their
life is an iterating process. So do you find yourself
advising a lot of the time and brainstorming with them
what what they could do. It's a lot of listening,
(41:00):
a lot of conversating, a lot of conversing. Should say
it's not a word of conversating a lot of conversing,
but I would say it's a two way conversation most
of the time. Is there a question that you you
keep hearing over and over that that is happening so
often that you're like, wait, this is something that we
should probably address as a whole. Is there something that
you're noticing streamers are concerned about or wondering like, how
(41:24):
do I improve this or how do I Is there
a common question, yes, but it's usually based on trend
depending on what's going on in the communie at the time.
It could be regarding a particular topic, it could be
related to stuff that's happened in the past, whether it's
trending right now on twitch? What is what is something
that you're seeing a lot of the streamers and partners do.
I think burnout is probably like the hot topic right now.
(41:46):
Um I would say burnout and also work life balance.
I start to see that become much more apparent more
now than ever. And what's really cool and what's really
encouraging to me is I'm seeing a lot of streamers
actually get together that live in the same region, same area,
actually go out and planet trip or planet outing. It's
do stuff personally and not have to worry about are
they producing content around it, are they streaming the content
(42:08):
or anything like that. They're just focus on having fun
and being themselves. Because that balance is super crucial crucial
to you as well. So how do you because it
doesn't seem like a nine to five job at all,
and these people are not streaming nine to five. So
how do you set boundaries for yourself and and have
a healthy work life balance. Because I'm sure you're in
(42:30):
l A. You're going to be out all night tonight
meeting with every single person that is in l A
and wants to meet with you for every single coffee
and every single drink. For sure, it's kind of two things. One,
you have to have the affinity to like want to
talk to people. If you don't, this job is definitely
not for you. For me, I'm naturally extroverted, so being
able to interact and go out and do things is
very natural and very easy for me. I don't necessarily
(42:51):
burn out from it, and I think that aids meing
being able to be successful and what I'm doing, and
also kind of not have to worry too much about
the boundary but to when it comes, it's actually defining boundary.
I usually get myself a cut off time, So if
I'm feeling tired, if I'm feeling like I'm low in energy,
if I'm feeling like I'm not able to be as
up beat as I need to be, as you give
myself a cut off time. So whether they be midnight,
one am or whatever. That's usually like my boundary that
(43:14):
I set for myself. You should tell people like, hey,
to this point, like I need to go back and recharge.
But from my end set of the boundaries is not
so difficult as it is for streamers. And the reason
why I say that is I'm working with one on
one individual people and they understand the need for being
able to like take a step back and recharge with yourself.
I think creators streamers in general based a much more
(43:37):
widespread issue that I would like to help them out with,
which is they're looking at it from macro level. They
have hundreds of thousands, sometimes tens of thousands of people
that they have to I hate to use this word,
but like a piece, you know. And it's really about
setting the right boundaries for yourself for those creators, right,
teaching them to say, look, you don't you're not gonna
be able to make every single person happy, and if
(43:58):
you are, you're going to bring yourself out of the
expa to that. So you need to be able to
be okay with putting your foot down in training your
community to say, hey, this is when I need my
me time, this is when I have my family time
and that stat I'll come back tomorrow. You'll continue to
have me at that point, but like I need to
be able to have my my boundary. So going back
to to answer your question again, Like, I think it's
(44:19):
fairly easy for me, just because the people that I
work with are very understanding that and very respectable. Whereas
with the people that I work with creators, for them,
it's much more difficult because they were dealing with people
on the internet who are not exactly the most reasonable. Yeah,
and I think you lightly touched on this, and this
may be an uncomfortable question to answer, but why do
you think you're so good at what you do? I
(44:40):
I mean, you mentioned you you fucking love it. You're
an extrovert. But there's there's something more because like I mentioned,
and I wasn't totally serious, but it does feel like
a casting director a bit, because you're you're spotting these
stars and you've seen a lot of people come up
from nothing to being seven figure streamers. Yeah, why is
(45:01):
this what you're gonna, I believe, continue to do and
why are you so good at it? I appreciate that,
um uh, it's something I strive to be better at
every day. I think for me, this is the fact that,
like I have an opportunity to do something I absolutely love.
I love video games, I love people, I love helping
people out. I'm able to combine those three things into
(45:22):
something really meaningful for me on a day to day
and I don't want to lose that, Like it's such
a special thing to me. It's like this is constantly evolving,
it's constantly growing, and you've seen Twitch evolve over the
last five six years, Like God knows what's going to
happen in the next five to six after this. I
definitely think that there's life beyond streaming, and we want
(45:42):
to help people think about that, but we also want
to be able to build upon their business within Twitch
as well. UM my goal is to keep people stuck
on Twitch twenty four hours a day streaming. I want
them to be able to have the life that they
always want to have, but I also want them to
be able to do that in a way that is
enjoyable for them and for a lot of people. I
do see people who experienced stream or burnout, but also
see that they love streaming, like this is something that
(46:04):
they genuinely enjoy doing. It's just about teaching them and
empowering them to set the right boundaries. And that's something
that everybody has to kind of figure out in their
different type of footing, because everyone's got a differentackgroun, everyone's
got a different type of lifestyle. So I see Twitch
becoming a household name, see it becoming more mainstream than
it has become. I see it becoming something that is
a staple to to not only individuals, but even brands
(46:26):
and organizations as a whole um, something that they embody
and really really really embrace and represent on a day
to day just like they do with other other content mediums.
But beyond that, you know, we're we're thinking about the
future and we're not. We're we're not leaving anytime since
we're here to stay. What do you think that's Twitch
apart from every other platform the heart and soul. You
(46:49):
will not you will not find another company that hires
people that day and day out like their dedication. What
they do, what keeps them going is to like make
the lives of not only the community but the streamers better.
Like everybody that works at Twitch gives a funk about streamers.
Everybody gives a funk about the community. Everyone gets a
funk about making this the best place possible. That was
(47:10):
true for me when it was employees. It's true for
me now over a thousand employees. And I guarantee when
it's ten thou whatever that number may be in the future,
like it'll continue to be that. And usually when I'm
interviewing people, I just nod because I have to just
agree with what they're saying. I can firsthand tell you
that that is true because I was there when Twitch
first started and when big things happened, and everyone everyone
(47:34):
who works at Twitch, and I think this is the
community who's also streaming and watching it. There's this unique
passion that is so genuine that you can't fake that.
And I think that's why Twitch is only going to
continue to get bigger, and the streamers are going to
continue to get bigger, and the opportunities are as well.
(47:54):
What do you think is a common misconception about streamers.
I think people think that they make a ton of
money off of playing hours of video game video games
and and and that's it, and they go on and
live a spalling life where they make it rain on themselves.
It's a lot of work, it's a huge commitment. I
think a lot of people forget that being a creator
(48:14):
in general, streamer for that matter, you're not just a creator.
You you play multiple roles and some that are assumed
and some that are not assumed based on how your
community is, and a lot of people will turn into
these communities to these individual streamers for multiple things. Sometimes
they're having a bad day, they need a place to
be able to just reset and and and and have
a good laugh, or someone that they want to watch
(48:35):
play high caliber gameplay because they really they really want
to get better and there's an opportunity for them to
be educated by that person. Everyone's got different reasons, and
I think ultimately for streamers, they're really the ones that
are wearing multiple hats. They're ultimately like their own little startup,
and they don't really get the credit that they deserve.
They really don't very well put. And there's a few
(48:56):
just rapid fire questions that why kind of dug around
for what people were interested to hear from you, And
again you don't have to answer, but it would be
cool if you did. Who's your favorite streamer? You know,
this is like asking to pick a favorite child, but
You've got to have a favorite streamer that you just
either it's because you love the story or you actually
(49:16):
just love watching this person. Yeah, I man, there's so
many different stories. Like favorite, like big Dude right now
stilly killing it. I would say Shroud. The reason why
I say Shroud is when I first got hired a Twitch,
Shroud was streaming Counterstrike um, and back then Counterstrike wasn't
really that big of a game in the directory, and
(49:38):
Shroud would legit like write me every two weeks telling
me like why he deserves to be a partner and
how he's like changing content on his channel to able
to make him more engaging, to make it more fun um,
and he would check in with me and it was
like the cutest ever and I fucking love every bit
of it. He he obviously he got partnership and he's
killing it, but like look at him now, you know
he's really made something for himself. And I love people
that have like not only that to nasty, but that
(49:59):
commitment to be better, to improve upon themselves. I love
people like Tim and Tatman. Tim's also someone else that
I partnered a while back, and Tim worked as a
social worker before working or before streaming on Twitch, and
I remember, I think it was like in February, February
January he called me and I was like driving home
from work and he was like, dude, I think I'm
(50:21):
gonna do it. I'm like, do what. He's like, I
think I'm gonna go full time. I think I'm gonna
quit my job. And here's a day in March that
I'm planning on doing it. I'm kind of scared, but
I think I'm just gonna go for it. Man, and
he he hasn't looked back since, and he's been able
to make something for himself too. In terms of current
favorite streamer, I hate to do a shameless plug for him,
but a buddy of mine from high school. His name
(50:42):
is Joey Joey Cow. I think his channel name is
Joey Chaotic. Shout out to Joey Chaotic. So Joey Joey
is an amazing person. He's got a world of energy.
He prior to streaming on Twitch, was working at Tiffin
Coo making a ton of money just selling rings and
jewelry to people, and he just wasn't getting the fi
filment that he needed and he came over my house
(51:03):
one night and we're just talking about streaming, and I
was like, dude, like, you're a b boy. He breakdances,
he travels around the world competing, like he's done law content.
I'm like, why don't you just go out there and
just do something on twitch for the funk of it?
And within sixty days of him streaming for fun, he
quit his job and like he's been able to make
the full time living. Now he's living in Taiwan doing content.
I think he's actually like back in the States right
(51:24):
now this moment. But I would say my favorite guy
currently at the moment would be my boy Joey. I
love that. What is the one thing about streaming that
you don't like that you wish you could just wave
a magic wand and change? Um. I hate the perception,
or despise the perception that if you're not a partner,
(51:44):
you're not a good streamer. I really want to get
rid of that. Do you think that because it's so
hard to become a partner now? I do think that
it discourages people to even stream in the first place.
And do is that I would argue that the barrier
to its partnership is actually much slower than what it
used to be. I think it's more about the perception
of Once you hit partner status, people assume that people
(52:06):
are just gonna make your rein on you and that
you're gonna make a fun ton of money and your set,
and people look at partnership as a status and as
an aspirational latter. I think attaining partnership is definitely a
point that people should hit, and it should be something
that they aspire to do. But there's much more in
the progression beyond just hitting partnership, And I think a
lot of people are missing us true being a partner
(52:27):
as being a good streamer, and that's not true. You
could have thirty five viewers, you can still be incredibly talented.
You may not be qualified to be a partner at
that moment, but you're still someone who is incredibly talented.
You are a good streamer. And for people who aren't familiar,
the biggest perk of being a partner is just very
simply put, the opportunity to make money. Right, Yeah, now,
there is there is monetization opportunities prior to partnership, Like
(52:50):
we have an affiliate status, which is pretty easy attained
as well. You only need three viewers, so that that
allows you to do a lot of the similar features
as you can with a partner, just having a partnership,
having a partnership with which has a higher level of
support not only from Twitch as a company as a whole,
but also with the opportunities that come with it. But again,
I don't want people misconstruing that as I'm a good streamer.
I'm not a good streamer. Another perfect segue to round
(53:12):
out this beautiful interview. What advice would you give someone,
because Twitch can be a very intimidating place, what advice
would you give someone who wants to dabble in streaming
but they are scared shitless? What piece of advice do
you give them to get them to do their very
first stream. I would pick a piece of content or
(53:35):
a game that they know for sure they'll enjoy, Have
a friend or two watch, tune into a stream, and
just have fun with it. Don't worry about what happens
after the fact. If you're really worried about people saying me,
ship to you like, have a friend moderate for you,
in fact, maybe even high chat initially, just just so
you're not really thinking about it. But get yourself in
the most comfortable state as you can pick out a
(53:56):
favorite game that you like to play, maybe have a
friend play with you. Don't worry about all the wells,
the bells and whistles of like having a cool set
up in your camera set up and overlays and all ship.
Just just do it. You wouldn't have fun. Do it,
didn't have fun, and then one day you'll just be
making millions just like that, Just like that. Well, thank
(54:17):
you so much for stopping by. I feel like I
could talk to you for another Like every topic we
touched on, I feel like has lots of players, so
we had to kind of keep it high level, 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.
(54:37):
I'm happy to have it. Yeah, it sounds for having
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 here forever. I know. I want
a job there too. Now hiring we are, Well, let's
talk off air, all right, well, thank you guys for listening.
(54:57):
Hope you guys have learned a thing or two I
su did. Yeah, we're going to talk to other people
from Twitch as well, which I'm really excited about because
the world of Twitch is just there's just a lot
going on and it's really cool and you guys are
disruptors in the best way possible and I think it's
very very cool what you guys are doing. So yeah,
we'll howk on. Thank you, Thanks guys, thanks for listening.
(55:19):
Tootles Behind Influences a production of I Heart Radio and
t DC Media
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