Microsoft’s Mixer Streaming Service Loses Its Two Co-Founders

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Microsoft’s Twitch competitor Mixer has lots its two co-founders: Both Matt Salsamendi and James J. Boehm, who co-founded the startup that eventually became Mixer in 2011, have both left the company over the past 2 weeks. The departure comes just a few weeks after Mixer poached famed video game streamer Ninja from Amazon’s Twitch.

Salsamendi announced his departure on Twitter Thursday, calling Mixer’s evolution “an incredibly exciting journey,” and vowing to remain a part of the Mixer community. “Even though I’m turning in my badge, I’m not gone,” he said.

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Boehm made similar assurances in his farewell tweets, which he published earlier this month. “I’m proud of my achievements with the Mixer team and my time at Microsoft,” he said, adding that he was excited about the future of Mixer.

Boehm said that he would announce his next career steps soon. Salsamendi already revealed that he was about to leave the video game industry to focus on a very different field, saying: “I’m ready to try something a little different — lasers!”

Boehm and Salsamendi founded a video game server hosting company as teenagers, and incorporated a subsidiary focused on game live streaming in 2014. Initially called Beam, the streaming service launched in early 2016, and was acquired by Microsoft by the summer of that year.

“Going into the acquisition as a young founder, I truthfully wasn’t sure what to expect,” Salsamendi wrote Thursday. “The support we received from across Microsoft was humbling for me and the experience I’ve gained in the last 3 years is irreplaceable.”

Mixer made its biggest move yet to catch up with Twitch in August, when video game live streamer Ninja announced that he would be moving his streams to the Microsoft-owned service. Ninja had long been Twitch’s biggest star, with a total of 14 million followers. On Mixer, his audience has since grown to around 2.4 million fans.

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