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Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

blog.clubhouse.com

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Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#81

Post by rchaud »

matthewdgreen wrote: post #12
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.

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.

That's $4b in Twitter stock though. What would that even have been worth now, assuming they remained public?

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#82

Post by satvikpendem »

Prbeek wrote: post #58
rvz wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Everyone (who wants to make money from their app)? I own an Android and I'd still launch an iOS app first because the vast majority of mobile revenue comes from iOS, not Android. At the very most I'd use Flutter to launch on both platforms at once but I'd still prioritize the iOS side.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#84

Post by rchaud »

nikanj wrote: post #62
Prbeek wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The invite-only launch was a selling point. "It's a exclusive service, but if you score an invite, you might have a casual chat with a bunch of billionaires and SV bigwigs."

No surprise then that it became a hotbed of hustlebros and MLM salespeople within months.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#85

Post by stronglikedan »

rchaud wrote: post #81
matthewdgreen wrote: post #12

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.

That's $4b in Twitter stock though. What would that even have been worth now, assuming they remained public?

More, since Twitter is better, more lean, and more popular than ever.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#86

Post by samwillis »

rchaud wrote: post #81
matthewdgreen wrote: post #12

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.

That's $4b in Twitter stock though. What would that even have been worth now, assuming they remained public?

It looks like the share price in April 2021 was on the nose the same price Elon paid.

So the investors and founders would have converted $4B in Twitter stock to cash almost 1:1, that's not bad.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#87

Post by rchaud »

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_.

This kind of math can be pretty damaging because for every failure, the VC needs the one hit to be bigger and bigger. And with investments like Airbnb that are only "disruptive" due to breaking the law, A16z is incentivized to leverage lobbyists and other tools to simply change the laws to favour their pet investments.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#88

Post by trilobyte »

yellowapple wrote: post #48
gkoberger wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At that time, I don't think so. It was an incredibly small team back then, and the CEO of Twitter at the time was Jack. It likely would have remained (somewhat) independent, at least in the short term, similar to Vine and Instagram. And given equity, I assume almost all employees would have become millionaires.

> It likely would have remained (somewhat) independent, at least in the short term, similar to Vine and Instagram. And then get shut down a few years later in the medium-term, similar to Vine.

That may have been better than what inevitably happens anyway.

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#89

Post by HWR_14 »

rchaud wrote: post #81
matthewdgreen wrote: post #12

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.

That's $4b in Twitter stock though. What would that even have been worth now, assuming they remained public?

It would have converted to approximately 3.3 billion USD when Elon bought Twitter. However, even if twitter wasn't purchased and no one sold while it sunk to $17/share (which is about the average of estimates people were making when Elon finalized buying it), it still would be over a billion dollars as an exit. Do you think Clubhouse is a unicorn now?

Re: Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

#90

Post by misssocrates »

Is there a template these companies are working from?

> If you are among those impacted, you will receive a calendar invite to a 1:1 meeting with a manager in your department within the next 10 minutes.

Dropbox also today:

> If you've been impacted, you'll be sent a calendar invitation within the next 30 minutes for a 1:1 with a leader on your team https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-from-drew

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