clubhouse

Let’s check in on community-focused startups • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 29, 2022Posted in chief, clubhouse, EC Media, On Deck, Social, StartupsNo Comments

Over the past few years, community has been a buzzword for tech startups looking to sell a product or service based on their definition of a useful network. The pandemic stress-tested these business models, with some companies seeing that consumers weren’t willing to pay fees in exchange for advice they could find on Twitter, while others realized that focusing on a target user was more important than finding the biggest total addressable market possible. It’s part of the reason I had so much fun interviewing founders from Clubhouse and Chief last week at ZebethMedia Disrupt. I spoke to the founders of these companies to understand how they’ve evolved to deal with a bewildering new normal, and while a social audio app and a private membership community for women in leadership are quite different in strategy, they shared the same vibe: Less is more. Clubhouse’s product-market fit Paul Davison, Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, was fast to address what others described as Clubhouse’s fall from grace. He said that the app’s early hype saw it grow 10x in users month over month, a boom that broke a lot of the underlying infrastructure of the app. For months, he said, people had a bad experience on the app because of tech issues and the inability to find a room that matched their interests.

Clubhouse’s Paul Davison on Twitter, the impact of hype and what happened • ZebethMedia

By zebethcontrolPosted on October 27, 2022Posted in clubhouse, EC Media, EC TechCrunch Disrupt 2022, Hype, paul davison, Social, TechCrunch Disrupt 2022No Comments

For most venture-backed social companies, a period of hypergrowth seems like it would be the dream. It means the app broke through the noise of thousands of others, resonated with a mass market of people and didn’t need to spend a penny on marketing. Clubhouse, however, offered a retort to that perspective. The app’s fall from peak, both in terms of daily active users and general fanfare among techies, has been intriguing after its splashy invite-only start. Paul Davison, Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, spoke about changes at the company at ZebethMedia Disrupt last week. “We had a couple of months of insane, silly, unsustainable 10x month-over-month growth,” Davison said. “I think what people might not appreciate is that Clubhouse has kind of moved into all of these different verticals, and they probably don’t appreciate the size of the community and the activity and the diversity and the range and all the conversations that are happening.” He added: “I don’t think hype is good, I don’t think extreme hypergrowth is good for a company. The ideal is to grow at a steady pace.” Let’s not hype up hype Davison described Clubhouse’s “hype moment,” during which the app grew users 10x month over month and took the No. 1 spot at the App Store in Japan, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany, Brazil and Italy. While the company was able to use that momentum to raise over $100 million in financing, with its latest known round closing in April 2021, Davison grounded the narrative. The co-founder said that the 10x growth lasted two months and spiked the app’s Sensor Tower metrics, which “shaped the narrative” when downloads began to slow down. In reality, the hype stressed the infrastructure, Davison admitted.