Mark Cuban says he helped Justin Kwan with livestreaming before he co-founded Twitch's precursor Justin.tv

Investor and enrepreneur Mark Cuban was one of the many celebrities who were part of the Twitch and YouTube livestreams hosted by AustinShow, Pokimane, Valkyrae, and others on October 22, 2024. During the broadcast, Cuban regaled the Twitch stars with a story about his interactions with Justin Kan, the founder of Justin.tv, the website that later became Twitch.com.

For context, Justin Kan and Emmett Shear co-founded Justin.tv in 2007, and Twitch was founded as a spin-off for gaming content in 2001. Justin.tv was shut down in 2014, about a month before Amazon acquired the company.

While talking to the streamers on Twitch and YouTube, Cuban claimed that Kan had visited him before launching the website with Shear and asked him about livestreaming:

"This dude named Justin came to me and started asking me about streaming, which turned into Justin.tv, which became Twitch. So that's like my backstory for Twitch."

This impressed AustinShow, who noted:

"Oh wow, so you have known about this for quite some time."

Cuban then said he was in the know about Twitch even before most of the streamers on the Discord call were born:

"Oh yeah, I go way, way, way back. Before you guys were born!"

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Mark Cuban talks about starting the "very first streaming company" while talking to Twitch and YouTube stars

On October 22, 2024, it was announced that a host of prominent Twitch and YouTube stars would be doing a livestream with Vermont US Senator Bernie Sanders as part of the Harris-Walz presidential campaign. With time, it was revealed that other personalities, such as Mark Cuban and Mark Hamill, would also be joining the broadcast.

While Sanders was only on for a brief moment, clips of Cuban talking about the history of popular culture and livestreaming have garnered significant attention on social media. One thing that fascinated the streamers on the call was when Cuban revealed his connection to the foundation of Twitch.

Cuban claimed that he had already started the "very first streaming company" before Justin.tv was launched:

"I started a company before Justin.tv called Audionet, which turned into Broadcast.com which was the the very first streaming company ever."

For the unaware, Broadcast.com was founded as Audionet back in 1995. After Mark Cuban bought into it, the company would transform into a streaming service for sporting events and presidential conventions. At the time, it had over half a million users.

Yahoo! acquitted Broadcast.com in 1999 for a whopping $5.7 billion. However, its services got discontinued when Yahoo! Broadcast Services shut down in 2002.

During the livestream, Mark Cuban also clarified that, contrary to rumors, he had never bid $200K to play video games with Pokimane in a charity auction held some months ago.