Long before they built a live-streaming giant, tech entrepreneurs Justin Kan and Emmett Shear launched an online calendar called Kiko while studying at Yale University (The Economic Times). Developed in August 2005 with backing from startup accelerator Y Combinator, the service aimed to carve out space in a growing digital market.
That trajectory shifted sharply in April 2006 when Google introduced Google Calendar (The Economic Times). The competing service quickly applied heavy pressure on Kiko, which struggled to monetize its free platform or develop a planned enterprise product.
Faced with a mounting disadvantage, the founders chose an unconventional exit strategy. In August 2006, Kan and Shear listed Kiko’s website domain and computer code up for auction on eBay, ultimately closing the sale at $258100 to winning bidder Tucows.
Shifting From Calendars to Live Video
The eBay exit provided a clean break, allowing the duo to pivot toward entirely different territory. By 2007, Kan and Shear launched Justin.tv alongside co-founders Michael Seibel and Kyle Vogt. The project began as a live-streaming experiment featuring a camera strapped to Kan’s head so viewers could follow his daily life.
As the platform expanded to welcome outside broadcasters, gaming emerged as one of its most popular categories. To better serve that specific audience, the company launched Twitch in June 2011 as a dedicated hub for gamers to watch and broadcast gameplay.
The Amazon Acquisition
Twitch scaled rapidly over the next few years, eventually overshadowing its parent experiment. By July 2014, the platform boasted more than 55 million unique visitors who had watched Twitch content in July and over one million broadcasters had contributed videos.
That massive growth caught the attention of Amazon, which announced in August 2014 that it would acquire Twitch for approximately $970 million in cash (The Economic Times). Amazon founder Jeff Bezos noted at the time that the company looked forward to helping the gaming community move faster.
While the eBay auction of a calendar startup did not guarantee future success, it cleared the path for two entrepreneurs to start over.
