Twitch CEO’s Day in the Life, From 5-Mile Run to Late-Night Livestream

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Dan Clancy, the 61-year-old CEO of Amazon-owned Twitch, who lives outside of Portland, Oregon. It’s been edited for length and clarity.

When I was an undergrad at Duke, I double-majored in computer science and theater — an unusual combination that often raised eyebrows. Most people couldn’t see how the two fit together.

Fast-forward a few decades, and my path led me deep into tech: earning a Ph.D. in AI and computer science and working at places like NASA, Google, YouTube, and Nextdoor.

By the time I arrived at Twitch, I was seen primarily as a tech executive. But at my core, I’ve always been a creative. Being CEO of Twitch gives me the rare opportunity to bring both sides of myself — technologist and creative — into a single role. Here’s what a typical day looks like for me.

BI’s Power Hours series gives readers an inside look at how powerful leaders in business structure their workday. See more stories from the series here, or reach out to the editor Lauryn Haas to share your daily routine.

I wake up at 7 a.m. and run five miles

I usually wake up naturally. I don’t worry about an alarm clock. I try to exercise in the morning unless I have a super early meeting. If my meeting starts at 9 a.m., I’ll wake up at 7 a.m. or so, and then I’ll try to be out running by 7:30 a.m., and I’ll run four or five miles. I will get back about 8:30 a.m.

In 2017, I started running regularly. In the past, I’d run for three months and then I’d stop. This time I gamified it and it stuck. Then I started biking, I started swimming, and then I did two Ironmans. I did a number of half-Ironmans. I did a half-Ironman last year.

I use a Garmin. I’m not training right now, but when I am training, I’ll try to exercise twice a day. Aside from bike riding or swimming, I like to white-water kayak.

Usually, I am at my home in Washington working remotely, so I don’t need to worry about commuting. I try not to look at my phone. It’s always tempting to start swiping in some random app, but in general, I very much try to avoid. If I’m swiping for five minutes, it’s probably Instagram.

I drink Coca-Cola, not coffee

I’m not a coffee drinker and I’m not much of a breakfast eater. At one point, when I was trying to lose weight, I did intermittent fasting, and now I’m not intermittent fasting, but I still often don’t eat in the morning.

My bad habit is I drink Coca-Cola now. I try to keep it to one, and I don’t need it in the morning, but I do get caffeine. I always go through these cycles of saying, “I need to stop drinking Coke.” And then I stop for a while and I feel good about it, and then I start drinking it. Ever since I was young, I’ll keep flopping back and forth, and the family is constantly encouraging me to give up the habit.

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My day is back-to-back meetings

I spend most of the time meeting with people. It might be a product review or a go-to-market review. I have one-on-ones with various folks. Some days we have an off-site with our leadership team.

Slack is the primary channel. I still check my email regularly, but to be honest, my email now is dominated by messages I don’t need to pay attention to.

I have a 30-minute meeting later to sync on a personnel project. Then I have a two-hour quarterly business review. This is Amazon culture for managing what’s going on. Once a quarter, we’ll have a QBR for all of our business units. This one is for community health, which is the team that works on our moderation tools.

Lunch is usually some form of a sandwich. I’m not a fine-dining person. I just think, why should I spend 30 bucks on a lunch? I can afford 30 bucks on a lunch, but it seems like I don’t need it.

My generative hours are around midnight

There’s also times when I need to be generative. I find it hard to be generative in the same space and in the middle of a day.

Often, my modus operandi is that I’ll get going at 10 or 11 at night, and then I’ll just write till one in the morning. This probably was conditioned in me when my kids were young. I was working at NASA at the time, and then Google for some of it.

Google is a good example. Folks were staying late at Google in 2005, but I’d still try to get home at 6 or 6:30. I’d spend time with the kids, do dinner, run around outside. Half the time I’d fall asleep while putting them to bed. Then I’d wake up at 11:00 p.m., start catching up on email and writing stuff. People always joked that they would get these notes from me at 3:00 a.m.

I hang out and sing on livestream

Today my work day ends at 3 p.m. because I’m streaming tonight. I’m doing my first full charity stream with an organization GCX for St. Jude’s.

The beauty of streaming is very little goes into prepping it. I streamed Tuesday night and the prep work that went into the stream was: I showed up in the room where we have a piano, I turned on the computer, I made sure my OBS configuration was right, and I hit “Go live.”

On that stream, I talked with the community some, but then I played probably a handful of songs. Sometimes I like to drop in on other streamers and hang out with them. On that stream, I knocked on T Pain’s stream and we hung out for like 45 minutes chatting. Then I did an hour more of songs and signed off.

The other day I was mostly playing Tyler Childers’ songs. I’m a big fan of Zach Bryan, so I do a lot of his songs. Sturgill Simpson, Gregory Alan Isakov, and this guy Jeffrey Martin, who I think is amazing. Everybody knows “Let It Be” or “Take Me Home, Country Road” or “Piano Man,” but those aren’t the ones I usually choose.

I consider myself a mediocre piano player, but as I’m improvising, it sounds like I know what I’m doing.

I read and spend time with my kids after work

If I’m at home, I’ll do something with the kids at night. My son’s 23, my daughter’s 27. My daughter has an 11-month-old now. We all live close to each other.

I’m the one who often did the cooking, but that’s just because I’m a functional cook. I pick some form of protein, a tri-tip, steak, salmon, chicken. I pick something to do with potatoes, and then they’re like five vegetables that are my go-to. It’s fairly repetitive.

I mostly cook at home. I can’t remember the last time I had a non-work dinner where we made a reservation.

I’ll watch TV shows, but I don’t watch many movies anymore. I just watched “Paradise.” I liked “Your Friends and Neighbors” and “The Penguin.” A little bit of drama, but not a horror thing.

When it’s time to wind down around 10:30 to 11 p.m., I’ll lie down and read. I just finished reading “Long Island” by Colm Tóibín. I like novels, but I’m not really a Tom Clancy novel reader. I’m much more of a literary novel reader, something that has emotional connection. One of my favorite authors is Cormac McCarthy and his book “The Road.” I’ve read it a few times.

I fall asleep fairly quickly once I’ve started reading. Ten minutes and I’m getting sleepy.