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Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

blog.clubhouse.com

31–40 of 119 posts

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#31
I liked the way this was written. No BS, just straight up, "We need to reset". It's refreshing to hear.

I stopped using Clubhouse after being an early user for a couple of months. Some conversations were good, but most weren't quality conversations and over time I stopped paying attention to the app. I think the final blow was Twitter spaces which I don't pay attention to either.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#32
post #4

I 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?

Clubhouse was a product that had the most perfect launch timing in the past decade: a social gathering app right as the COVID pandemic started.

That was it.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#33
Very generous severance. The writing was on the wall and if I am an investor this is the right call to make. The company needs to pivot, you need a lean focused team to have a chance at surviving the pivot.

Probably the expensive lesson learned here is don't bet your company on short-term trends (like COVID lock downs) that can be disrupted by a twitter hackathon.

One minor nit: don't use phrases like "people who are departing" in letters like this it just feels off. If you want to act like you're owning it then you need to own it.

> "we work hard to support the people who are departing"

Anyways wish those who are being axed the best of luck (it's a tough market right now) and hope the company is able to realign on a trajectory for success.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#34

> Laptops. We will allow everyone who is impacted to keep their company-issued laptops, to help them research and apply for new roles. Is this common?

No. Most companies don't want you keeping a machine filled with proprietary information and credentials, even if your access gets rolled after you're terminated. But if the company is about to hard pivot and they're laying off half of the people who know proprietary information, I suppose it doesn't make much sense to care much.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#35

> Laptops. We will allow everyone who is impacted to keep their company-issued laptops, to help them research and apply for new roles. Is this common?

I think every company acknowledges that there's next to zero value in the hardware itself. Large companies have policies to collect them due to data/IP protection policies. Smaller ones probably don't care as much.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#36
post #23
post #2

Sad 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.

Every time I hear of another founder passing on a multi-billion dollar offer, I think back to Tom from MySpace and how he sold MySpace off for a lot of money and went on to live happily ever after. Smartest guy in the social media game.

This is a viral "feelgood" story that keeps circulating but MySpace was a project within an existing company, eUniverse, later InterMix. Tom and Chris DeWolfe were employees of InterMix, not founders. Intermix was acquired by News Corp. for $580M. Not sure how much equity Tom ended up with. It certainly could have been enough to allow for a "normal" early retirement but I'm not even sure about that. I had some dealings with Brad Greenspan, the CEO of Intermix, after the MySpace sale. Presumably he had far more equity than Tom or Chris, and let's just say that he did not behave like someone who was financially secure.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#37

Anyone 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_.

The point is to be good at throwing darts and knowing what to throw darts at. One in 100 random companies doesn't become a unicorn. The whole point of being good at investing is to be able to create a positive feedback loop that allows you to both continue throwing darts (well) and pay yourself handsomely. Not to spray darts at fads and hoping you're barking up the right tree.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

What’s a zip? (Aside from being a pretty hard thing to search for…)

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> Clubhouse was a kinda cool social network that came out at exactly the right time during COVID.

Alternatively, is was a COVID-specific fad with a doomed user experience / network model that never expanded beyond the SV cultural bubble.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#40
post #11

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.

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...

Yeah but Airbnb is one of the few profitable tech companies.
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