Let Luce 🖤

100M is a fun milestone and I’m proud of how far our team has come. But ultimately it’s a vanity as we aren’t where we need to or should be. The truth is we haven’t removed the beta tag from our logo for this reason. When we launched Kick, we rushed to market. We knew the opportunity was there and we went for it. But the reality is we shipped with weak plumbing, purchased tech and lacked experience in streaming. We’ve spent the better part of three years paying for that, quietly rebuilding from the ground up while trying to keep the lights on and the platform growing at the same time. That work is almost done. The foundation and team is more solid now. And that means we can finally start moving with the force and direction this platform deserves. We know our app sucks, we’ve got it to a point where it’s almost crash free but the experience is weak. We are taking our time to rebuild this fully native from the ground up and I have been personally involved in this project to ensure its success. Don’t worry we aren’t going to pull a twitch here and full tiktokify. On the creator side we ended all our Saudi level contracts that gave us short term growth and buzz at the expense of longevity and good content. We’ve vastly improved our unit economics while steadily growing viewership and it’s allowed us to invest in steady growth of our kick partners via clipping and KPP. We’ve removed and rejected thousands of accounts from KPP over the past few months for viewbotting and system abuse. We’ve deleted tens of millions of fake spam accounts. Our next step is to correct the system so real creators with real communities will not have to compete against bots or rely on staff favoritism for discovery. We’re actively rolling out our V1 algorithm (10% of users so far) that will make Kick the best long form streaming platform for authentic engagement and discovery. We have started rolling out ads but you may have not even noticed because we are doing our best to make it as non-obtrusive as possible. It’s our commitment to find ways to make this a sustainable business without extracting from our streamers and user experience. 100M users on a broken foundation was the hard part. For what comes next we’re ready and more motivated than ever. @StakeEddie and I have invested close to $1b into this because we are insanely passionate about this business and believe in the future of streaming. We’re determined to see this through 👊🏽