A leaked video shows the head of Microsoft's competitor to Amazon's Twitch telling employees to stay positive, not 'complain and nag' (MSFT)

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  • Business Insider obtained a video excerpt of new Microsoft Mixer General Manager Shilpa Yadla’s town hall last week with employees.
  • Her comments seem to indicate some discontent among Mixer employees, who she urged to focus on the positives of the business, which competes with Amazon’s Twitch.
  • “Either you want to complain and nag or whatever and feel negative about everything,” Yadla said in the video. “I cannot tolerate negativity,” she also said.
  • Yadla’s comments come at a time of transition for Mixer after the company’s cofounders left Microsoft in October, amid other leadership changes within Microsoft’s broader gaming division.
  • Last year, Mixer scored a big win by signing Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, arguably the biggest streamer in the world, to an exclusive deal — luring him away from Amazon’s Twitch.
  • Click here to read more BI Prime stories.

The new head of Mixer, Microsoft’s answer to Amazon’s wildly popular Twitch, told employees to stop acting so negative about the state of the service, in a video excerpt of a town hall team meeting reviewed by Business Insider.

“I’ll ask all of you to decide where you want to be. Either you want to complain and nag or whatever and feel negative about everything,” Shilpa Yadla, who was named general manager of Mixer in December, said in the video. “Positivity is what gets us anywhere,” Yadla said elsewhere in the video. “I cannot tolerate negativity.”

Microsoft confirmed the authenticity of the video to Business Insider, but declined to offer more details on the record. The recording, nearly three minutes long, contained video footage but no audio, instead using subtitles to relate her remarks.

Yadla’s comments come at a time of transition for Mixer. Matt Salsamendi and James Boehm, who founded the service under the name Beam in early 2016 before selling it to Microsoft later that year, departed the company in October, amid other leadership changes to Microsoft’s overall gaming division.

At the same time, the division has scored some major coups: Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, arguably the most well-known streamer in the world, signed a deal in August to move from Amazon’s Twitch platform to Mixer, with Michael “Shroud” Grzesiek following suit not long after. Blevins’ deal with Microsoft is said to worth as much as $30 million.

However, the video suggests that some Mixer employees may not be feeling great about their situation. In the video, Yadla encourages Mixer employees to trust and respect one another and focus on the positives. There are two types of people in the world, Yadla said: those who focus on the reasons why they could succeed and those who focus on the reasons why they could fail.

“We have an organization like Microsoft investing in our business, we have…awesome talent together here and we have a product that is so awesome, so exciting,” Yadla said in the video.

In the video, Yadla is standing next to a slide titled “org culture.” The slide includes a quote consultant Peter Drucker — “Culture eats strategy for breakfast” — and relates the story of Olympic champion Karoly Takacs. Takacs was a national-level right-handed shooter who lost his right hand in an accident, trained himself to shoot with his left hand, and won four Olympic medals.

Before becoming general manager of Mixer, Yadla was the head of engineering at Xbox monetization services. She also spent nearly a decade at Amazon, according to LinkedIn.

Got a tip? Contact this reporter via email at astewart@businessinsider.com, message her on Twitter @ashannstew, or send her a secure message through Signal at 425-344-8242.

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