Twitch CEO on the Future of the Creator Economy - and the Challenge to Keep the Platform Safe

Twitch CEO on the Future of the Creator Economy - and the Challenge to Keep the Platform Safe 19 May 2022 --- Emmett Shear is cofounder and CEO of Twitch, the fast-growing streaming service popular with video gamers, which was purchased eight years ago by Amazon for nearly $1 billion. Emmett is also a part-time partner for the startup accelerator, Y Combinator. Twitch has been in the news recently: It was the platform used by the alleged shooter of 13 people at a Buffalo grocery store to livestream his actions. The company says the stream was removed less than two minutes after the violence started, but, as Shear explained to HBR editor in chief Adi Ignatius, “there's obviously still work to be done” to make livestreaming platforms safer. Ignatius sat down with Shear in this episode of our video series “The New World of Work” to talk about: • Tactics and strategies for keeping platforms like Twitch free of racist, hateful, and abusive speech. • The present and future of the creator economy, which he says promises to be, for some, a more fulfilling alternative to not just the gig economy, but regular full-time employment. • Monetization, and how it works differently for small creators with 5 followers, and experts with 50,000 followers. • From his time at Y Combinator, the best pieces of advice he’s developed for young startup entrepreneurs. This interview part of a series called “The New World of Work,” which explores how top-tier executives see the future and how their companies are trying to set themselves up for success. Each week, HBR Editor Adi Ignatius will interview a leader on LinkedIn Live — and then share an inside look at those conversations and solicit questions for future discussions in a newsletter just for HBR subscribers. If you’re a subscriber, you can sign up for the newsletter here: https://hbr.org/my-library/preferences?movetile=newworldofwork. Follow us: https://hbr.org/ https://www.linkedin.com/company/harvard-business-review/ https://www.facebook.com/HBR/ https://twitter.com/HarvardBiz https://www.instagram.com/harvard_business_review Sign up for Newsletters: https://hbr.org/email-newsletters #HarvardBusinessReview #FutureofWork #Twitch Copyright © 2022 Harvard Business School Publishing. All rights reserved. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices