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Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

blog.clubhouse.com

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Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#51

Post by skinkestek »

boeingUH60 wrote: post #28
xwdv wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Wait till you hear about Jan Koum, who took over $10 billion from selling WhatsApp to Facebook and has become a prominent collector of mansions, superyachts, and rare Porsches [3]. 1- https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/jan-koum-house-beve... 2- https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonrise/owner/ 3- https://www.thedrive.com/news/26322/these-are-the-10-drool-w...

He has to live the rest of his life as someone who sold of millions of enthusiastic users to exactly the company we paid them not to become.

Well. I guess he is happy with it. What's worse is I guess most people would take that deal at some point.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#52

Post by nemo44x »

bkm wrote: 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.

Never say no to your first billion. It's the hardest billion to make.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#53

Post by bratao »

paxys wrote: post #29

Layoffs always suck, but one thing that's encouraging to see is that every single tech company is offering a lot of support and very generous severance packages to affected employees, wayyy beyond what is required by law. In other industries in most states the norm is to be escorted out of the building with your last paycheck, that's it.

It's good to see tech companies offering generous support to laid-off employees, but veterans of past downturns warn that this generosity may only last during the initial wave of layoffs.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#54

Post by JumpCrisscross »

danpalmer wrote: post #16
reducesuffering wrote: post #7

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_.

> If you throw 100 darts and get 1 hit that grows by 1000x, you're up 10x which is a nice return

This math breaks down when you’re unilaterally pushing up valuations and writing massive cheques. That your concentration and downside. It’s why Andreessen lags its peers on returns. If you’re a founder, take their cash (obviously), but understand you’re closing doors (so take a lot of it).

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#56

Post by Prbeek »

gowld wrote: post #39
gkoberger wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Their IOS first app and invite only launch alienated many potential users and gave an opening to Twitter to launch spaces with a huge audience.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#57

Post by nperez »

Saw this coming. Clubhouse was exciting at first when it was a place where you could pop in on random celebrity conversations, but now is mostly a place for bad bad business advice, bad relationship advice, and clout chasers trying to get rich quick

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#58

Post by Prbeek »

rvz wrote: post #26
bkm wrote: 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.

There was no chance that Twitter (who already had periscope) would accept a $4B+ deal to buy Clubhouse. In fact, it was very predictable as I said here before the acquisition talks that Twitter would push on with using Spaces instead of buying Clubhouse. [0] The hard truth was that Clubhouse launched too slowly and even Twitter Spaces launched faster than Clubhouse to release their Android app. [1] The invite system,…

Who launches an IOS first app in 2023? You are telling android users that they are not important

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#59

Post by uptownfunk »

volkk wrote: post #50
uptownfunk wrote: post #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…

> that can be disrupted by a twitter hackathon. hindsight is 20/20. you shouldn't necessarily be deterred by building something that a large company can also build. there have been plenty of examples that contradict this point. BUT there's nuance here. i think in this case, the venn diagram of the userbase at Twitter & the users on clubhouse is basically a circle: the type that love to ingest information, stay on top…

Fair but any reasonable business leader will assess the risks and at least have a plan to get around them, and who knows they may be working towards that and hence the layoffs.

It seems they tried to go after the golden goose (build a platform) but instead existing platforms basically ate their lunch. That coupled with the changing social dynamics from reopening were too strong headwinds to weather with their current business model.

What this means is they are basically back to square one, and need to build a new product and pray they get to PMF. If they are lucky they will have some reusable components.

It will be interesting to see what happens to them and what they choose to go after in the next stage of their journey.

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