Salary through the end of August is a pretty nice severance. Still unfortunate for those laid off, but this might be the most generous package I've seen so far.
Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
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Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#12Sad to hear. In an alternate timeline they would have accepted the $4B+ Twitter offer and had a nice exit along the way. https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/07/twitter-said-to-have-held-... The hard truth is software can't be patented and Twitter could copy the concept verbatim without paying them a penny.
Hard to believe that Twitter was willing to offer $4B for a service they managed to recreate themselves for (presumably) a tiny fraction of that cost. Makes you wonder if all the AI panic right now is going to end up going the same way.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#13Salary through the end of August is a pretty nice severance. Still unfortunate for those laid off, but this might be the most generous package I've seen so far.
Airbnb's was 3.5 months + 1 week for every year you've been at the company, along with a full year of COBRA.
https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-layoffs-generous-seve...
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#14Glad this isn't corporate mumbo jumbo but a real assessment of where they're at. Its impossible to make the changes that clubhouse needs to make, and iterate at the speed they need to iterate at with a large team, and the founders don't hide the ball. I don't use the product, and I don't think its going anywhere, but I appreciate the candor from the founding team.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#15Sad to hear. In an alternate timeline they would have accepted the $4B+ Twitter offer and had a nice exit along the way. https://techcrunch.com/2021/04/07/twitter-said-to-have-held-... The hard truth is software can't be patented and Twitter could copy the concept verbatim without paying them a penny.
Hard to believe that Twitter was willing to offer $4B for a service they managed to recreate themselves for (presumably) a tiny fraction of that cost. Makes you wonder if all the AI panic right now is going to end up going the same way.
They weren't buying the technology, they were buying the community + creators on the platform.
This has nothing to do with AI at all. Clubhouse was a kinda cool social network that came out at exactly the right time during COVID. AI is something we've been working towards since the 50s, and over the next few years will change absolutely everything.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#16Anyone still unconvinced a16z is just throwing darts at the wall?
That's kinda the point of VC maths though. If you throw 100 darts and get 1 hit that grows by 1000x, you're up 10x which is a nice return.
I agree that a16z has a lot of hubris, and their more recent investments seem to be going off the rails a bit (entirely personal opinion), but I don't think they would argue at all over the idea that most of their investments _won't work_.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#17There is no reason or justification as to why Clubhouse was valued at $4B. A failure pump and dump scheme with a16z left holding this heavy bag. Still not making any money and burning through cash.
I'd give them at least 5 years [0] to run out of money without funding and a maximum of 10 years of existence that they will either be shutdown or acquired.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#18It's a shame, the idea is good, just not defensible against copy cats.
I think they missed an opportunity to pivot into voice chat for websites/apps as a service. I see big value in how Discord does ambient voice chat as a feature of a server, and I think that could translate well into smaller communities that live outside Discord in websites/apps. Provide the service in an easy to use slick API/SDK, and handle all the heavy lifting of voice data/p2p etc.
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#19I had completely forgotten Clubhouse even existed. Surprised it's not more than 50% laid off.
wouldn't suppose you could tell me what it's for? I see someone saying that Twitter recreated it.. but that doesn't mean anything to me.. their website is so arrogant as to basically only offer a link to download the app.. because I should just.. "know" what they do?
Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees
#20I had completely forgotten Clubhouse even existed. Surprised it's not more than 50% laid off.
wouldn't suppose you could tell me what it's for? I see someone saying that Twitter recreated it.. but that doesn't mean anything to me.. their website is so arrogant as to basically only offer a link to download the app.. because I should just.. "know" what they do?
It's essentially a conference call app. You create a room or space or whatever and you can participate or listen in on audio. Some have called it live podcasting. But it's a conference call in the most basic sense. Twitter copied it with Spaces, which feels like a more natural fit. The reason Clubhouse is so popular, or was so popular is that a16z funded it at the peak of zero interest rates. Clubhouse is a ZIP and will likely either get acquired or go out of business as it seems many have stopped using it.