This Week in Startups · Thursday, October 1, 2026
Justin Kan revealed on This Week in Startups that when Justin.tv launched in 2007, gaming content represented only 3% of the platform's streams. It wasn't until around 2010 that the team recognized gaming's potential after seeing significant growth driven by games like StarCraft 2 and Halo 3. This realization led to a strategic pivot, eventually birthing Twitch.
“Well, so we launched this site in 2000, October 2007. and that anyone could stream anything and people streamed. There was a lot of like people trying to make talk shows and a lot of social kind of broadcasting, like someone would just be hanging out. And then there was this nascent category, which kind of grew that mostly focused on trying to get celebrities and things and like, you know, more famous people to create content.”
“His argument was, this is the only type of content that I actually want to watch. Right. Starcraft 2 had just come out. Oh. So that was driving a lot of interest. Absolutely. And that was driving a lot of YouTube videos. And he wanted to watch live streams.”
“His argument was, this is the only type of content that I actually want to watch. Right. Starcraft 2 had just come out. Oh. So that was driving a lot of interest. Absolutely. And that was driving a lot of YouTube videos. And he wanted to watch live streams.”