Item — HN Reader

It is possible. Here’s how:

- reach out to 20 biggest streamers on twitch and get them to agree to move to your platform, the same way spotify got Joe Rogan to move from YT to Spotify

- with signed agreements ready get funding

- build the platform, and all accompanying streamer tools, preferably fix all major issues that twitch has

- set the date for launch

- launch, with all your onboarded twitch streamers streaming “we moved to platform x” on their abandoned twitch channels

- profit

Note: this requires a few million USD, but it is definitely doable. In fact, YC could get a few investors and build this in a year, if they wanted to.

6 comments

I think you're heavily underestimating necessary investment. I would say by a factor of 2 easily[1] in practice more like 3-4 because once you go in you want to have a decent chance of success. Also ignoring the fact that as soon as it starts working, you have Amazon on your back with much much deeper pockets than you to keep market of viewers acting irrational.

Anegdata, I just stopped listening to Joe Rogan, despite liking Spotify more than Youtube. I was on the fence anyway, I'm lazy and so on.

It seems to me that we're at the point where it takes the next generation of kids for a new service to get into a crowded space. Because popular people on the platform (it's always about these hubs, that you got right I think) just become older and less relatable.

1. https://checkpointxp.com/2020/12/17/highest-paid-twitch-stre... take into account that somebody likely paid for most pixels on the screen before they even start streaming

Mixer kind of tried to do the same thing and failed. Twitch is more of a community at this point and is really hard to disrupt. I follow more than a dozen streamers on twitch and one of them moving to another platform isn't much of an incentive for me to change my primary platform. If anything it's an annoyance.

Isn't that what Mixer did, and failed?

Among others. It’s easy to beat twitch from a comment section, but well funded companies have tried and failed.

I like the formula, though I'd maybe instead aim for 200 mid tier streamers with good growth potential for the same money.

The 20 biggest streamers alone would require well over 8 figures, possibly even 9 figures. Cloning Twitch's functionality would cost millions as well, as well as millions in monthly running costs. CDN bandwidth is not cheap.

Mixer and other big players tried this and failed, with tens-to-hundreds million usd spend involved.