Emmett Shear (born 1983) is an American

Internet entrepreneur An Internet entrepreneur is an owner, founder or manager of an Internet-based business. This list includes Internet company founders and people brought on to companies for their general business or accounting acumen, as is the case with some CEOs ...

and

investor An investor is a person who allocates financial capital with the expectation of a future Return on capital, return (profit) or to gain an advantage (interest). Through this allocated capital the investor usually purchases some species of pr ...

. He co-founded the live video platform

Justin.tv Justin.tv was a website created by Justin Kan, Emmett Shear, Michael Seibel, and Kyle Vogt in 2007 to allow anyone to broadcast video online. Justin.tv user accounts were called "channels", like those on YouTube, and users were encouraged t ...

. Shear became the

chief executive officer A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

Twitch Twitch may refer to: Biology * Muscle contraction ** Convulsion, rapid and repeated muscle contraction and relaxation ** Fasciculation, a small, local, involuntary muscle contraction ** Myoclonic twitch, a jerk usually caused by sudden muscle c ...

when it was spun off from Justin.tv, a position he held until March 2023. In 2011, he was appointed as a part-time partner at venture capital firm

Y Combinator Y Combinator, LLC (YC) is an American technology startup accelerator and venture capital firm launched in March 2005 which has been used to launch more than 5,000 companies. The accelerator program started in Boston and Mountain View, Californi ...

. In November 2023, he was briefly the interim CEO of

OpenAI OpenAI, Inc. is an American artificial intelligence (AI) organization founded in December 2015 and headquartered in San Francisco, California. It aims to develop "safe and beneficial" artificial general intelligence (AGI), which it defines ...

Early life and education

Emmett Shear grew up in

Seattle Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...

, Washington, where he attended the Evergreen School for Gifted Children. There, he met his eventual co-founder

Justin Kan Justin Kan (born July 16, 1983) is an American internet entrepreneur and investor. He is the co-founder of live video platforms Justin.tv and Twitch, as well as the mobile social video application Socialcam. He was also the co-founder and fo ...

at age eight, and the two were bonded by their accelerated math classes and playing '' Magic: The Gathering''. Shear studied

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, information, and automation. Computer science spans Theoretical computer science, theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, and information theory) to Applied science, ...

as an undergraduate student at

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

, and graduated in 2005. He attended with his eventual Twitch co-founders Justin Kan and

Michael Seibel Michael Seibel (born October 7, 1982) is a partner at Y Combinator and co-founder of two startups – Justin.tv/Twitch and Socialcam. He first joined Y Combinator in 2013, advising hundreds of startups, and has been active in promoting diversity ...

Career

Y Combinator

Shear and Justin Kan have been part of

's first class in 2005. As part of Y Combinator, the two built a calendar application called Kiko, which they eventually sold on

eBay eBay Inc. ( , often stylized as ebay) is an American multinational e-commerce company based in San Jose, California, that allows users to buy or view items via retail sales through online marketplaces and websites in 190 markets worldwide. ...

for around $250,000 after

Google Calendar Google Calendar is a time-management and scheduling calendar service developed by Google. It was created by Mike Samuel as part of his 20% project at Google. It became available in Software release life cycle#Beta, beta release April 13, 2006, ...

was introduced.

Justin.tv

In March 2007, Shear and Justin Kan, along with

and

Kyle Vogt Kyle Vogt (born ) is an American technology entrepreneur known for his contributions to autonomous vehicle technology and live-streaming platform technologies. Vogt is a co-founder of Cruise Automation, a developer of self-driving car technolog ...

, launched

, a 24/7 live video feed of Kan's life, broadcast via a

webcam A webcam is a video camera which is designed to record or stream to a computer or computer network. They are primarily used in Videotelephony, video telephony, live streaming and social media, and Closed-circuit television, security. Webcams can b ...

attached to his head. It quickly obtained some media coverage. In October 2007, the site added the possibility for other users to host their own broadcast. Three years later, the platform had secured $7.2 million in venture capital funding and reported a monthly user base of approximately 31 million unique visitors. Its gaming-oriented spin-off Twitch eventually became more popular, and Justin.tv was closed on August 5, 2014.

Twitch

After Justin.tv launched in 2007, the site quickly began building subject-specific content categories like Social, Tech, Sports, Entertainment, News & Events, and Gaming. Gaming, in particular, grew very fast and became the most popular content on the site. In June 2011, the company decided to spin off the gaming content under a separate brand and site. They named it TwitchTV, inspired by the term

twitch gameplay Twitch gameplay is a type of video gameplay scenario that tests a player's response time. Action games such as shooters, sports, multiplayer online battle arena, and fighting games often contain elements of twitch gameplay. For example, fir ...

. On August 29, 2011, Shear became CEO of Justin.tv, and remained in that role as the company rebranded around Twitch in 2014, which had quickly become its core product. On August 25, 2014, Amazon officially acquired Twitch for a reported $970,000,000. Emmett shear manifest talk

In March 2023, Shear announced that he was resigning as CEO, and that Daniel J. Clancy would take over.

Investor Activities

Shear became a part-time partner at

in June 2011, where he offered advice to the new startups in each batch.

OpenAI

On November 19, 2023, Shear was named as the interim CEO of OpenAI, following the removal of

Sam Altman Samuel Harris Altman (born April 22, 1985) is an American technology entrepreneur, investor, and the chief executive officer of OpenAI since 2019 (he was Removal of Sam Altman from OpenAI, briefly dismissed and reinstated in November 2023). He ...

by the board two days earlier. On November 21, an agreement was reached to reinstate Altman as CEO. It was previously reported that Shear had threatened to resign as CEO if the board could not provide evidence to support Altman's removal. Shear has publicly stated that he is concerned about the impact AI can have on civilization, estimating his "P(Doom)" (

subjective probability Bayesian probability ( or ) is an interpretation of the concept of probability, in which, instead of frequency or propensity of some phenomenon, probability is interpreted as reasonable expectation representing a state of knowledge or as quanti ...

of an existential catastrophe from AI such as human extinction) as between 5 and 50 percent.

Philanthropy

In March 2020, during the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

, via Twitch, Shear donated the initial US$1 million to start a SF New Deal, a non-profit organization which ordered meals from San Francisco eateries and delivered them to people in need. The organization was started by his Yale college classmate Leonore Estrada, who owned the Three Babes Bakeshop in San Francisco's Bayview neighborhood.

Notes

References

External links

* * {{DEFAULTSORT:Shear, Emmett 1983 births American information technology businesspeople Living people Y Combinator people Twitch (service) people Amazon (company) people 21st-century American businesspeople Businesspeople from Seattle OpenAI people