The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 16 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Shear: Twitch pitched 40 venture capital firms and every single one passed
“We talked to 40 VCs, everyone turned us down.”
Shear: Game streaming acts as marketing; movie streaming is substitution
“Watching a movie for free on a service instead of buying the movie to watch it is a substitution for what you're doing. But watching someone else play a game is actually marketing for the game.”
Shear: Twitch revenue relies on mid-sized streamers, not top-tier channels
“What's interesting about Twitch is we actually have this very thriving middle class, because big streams monetize much more poorly per viewer than medium-sized streams do. And so there's this, most of the money actually gets made Not in the top tier of streame…”
Shear: Content cannot go viral on Twitch because broadcasts are ephemeral
“Unlike most social media, You can't really go viral on Twitch. It's almost, because it's live, it can't go, you can't get to, oh my god, look at this, millions of people see it. It's like, however many people saw it, it's over.”
Pokimane says online harassers act out in extremes to seek attention
“A lot of these people really just want your attention. They don't know how else to get it. They don't know how to get it in a positive manner, and so they will go the complete extreme opposite route”
Pokimane: Content creators must diversify across platforms like income streams
“Also diversifying in the same way that you would want to diversify your streams of income. As a content creator, you have to do the same with your online platforms.”
Siminoff: Amazon is the only tech giant that elevates acquired companies
“Amazon was the only large company that I saw or felt
When they bought companies truly like brought it to the next level. Like I, you know, with audible and IMDB and Zappos and I mean, you look at Twitch, like you look at all the, they've just kept founders and…”
McKenzie: Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear became an early Substack investor
“I remember on the first demo day we did, which is the one that's for YC alumni, Emmett Scheer came up to me and he said, Emmett Scheer, founder of, co-founder of Twitch, who was on the show a couple years ago, yep. Yeah, he's like, I look at you guys, I'm real…”
Shear: In 2011, just 200 streamers drove 80% of gaming viewership
“There were about 200 people who are streaming video games across every service, including ours, who garnered maybe 80% of the total audience at the time.”
Shear: Twitch's final funding round before Amazon was valued at $100M
“The last round we raised had been a hundred million dollar valuation, not that long ago, a year ago, year and a half ago.”
Shear: Justin.tv gaming grew 25-30% monthly for nine months before Twitch launch
“We'd been growing at 25%, 30% a month for Almost nine months before we ever launched Twitch.”
Citron: Automating Twitch subscriber perks drove Discord's viral growth among streamers
“So, we built this integration using Twitch's APIs so that you could, if you subscribe on Twitch, you would get access to a Discord server, and if you stop paying, after, like, a grace period, you would just get removed, and it was just automatic, and Discord e…”
Pokimane earned $2,000 monthly for early Twitch stream logo sponsorships
“Around that time, sponsors and companies started entering the space and they started sponsoring streamers like me. So for example, They would just say, okay, for 2000 dollars a month, you just need to put our company logo and branding on your stream. You need …”
NWSL partnered with CBS and Twitch for international broadcast rights
“We have CBS as a partner, and we have Twitch as a partner, and Twitch had our international rights.”
Pokimane has 5M Twitch followers and over 20M followers cumulatively
“That's why you say, oh, you have five million on Twitch, but cumulatively you have over twenty million followers.”
Pokimane attributes early Twitch growth to networking and niche Facebook groups
“For me personally, I think it was a lot of networking. Some of my viewers would mention my stream to other streamers, and then I'd make friends that way. So it had quite a bit to do with the networking, and a lot to do with just organic growth, and a bit to do…”