You are reading this, so I was not around to help America colonize the West. You were probably not around to help the man land on the moon. And you will probably have to wait a long time to help colonize Mars.
So, here’s a consolation prize: you may still have the chance to claim virtual territory at Clubhouse, the very busy social network dedicated to live audio, before everyone gets there. But hurry up: there are a lot of people trying to do the exact same thing.
The Clubhouse is a sparkling mix of AM radio and a really good tech conference, and allows you to set up or participate in online chats with famous people or your friends, or anyone in between. A few weeks ago, for example, Katie Couric, Paris Hilton and entrepreneur Bethenny Frenkel met in a virtual “room” that had over 1,000 people listening to their conversations; at some point later in the evening, the same venue turned into a discussion about the merits of bitcoin with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, Cheddar CEO Jon Steinberg and John Legere, the former CEO of T-Mobile.
The Clubhouse was launched less than a year ago and immediately caught the attention of Silicon Valley and other types of technology. Since then, it has grown rapidly, expanding its user base to include everyone from French speakers to black activists.
But there is a specific type of Clubhouse user that you will often encounter at the Clubhouse: the speculative Clubhouse user. He’s someone who wants to be at the Clubhouse because maybe the Clubhouse is a big deal, and they want to get in before that happens.
“You are looking at clay being molded now. What you see happening at the Clubhouse will now turn into something else, ”says Laurel Touby, who was successful in the first internet boom by building and selling MediaBistro, a jobs and events company.
Touby is now an investor in Supernode Ventures and says he tried out the Clubhouse last year, when other investors were fascinated with the service. She was not amazed, but eventually saw enough hints that it could be a social network with staying power. She says she decided to “drop [her] drawers and go for it ”, investing time in hosting Clubhouse rooms.
“I admit it. I wasn’t early enough on Twitter. It wasn’t early enough to join TikTok or other platforms. But this is a chance to get here early.”
Warning: like other social networks, the Clubhouse is not a unique thing. And the bigger it gets – the company recently announced that it now has 10 million weekly users – the more things it can or will become.
But it is impressive now to hear and see how many Clubhouse users spend their time at the Clubhouse talking about the Clubhouse: what will the Clubhouse be? How do people become advanced users at the Clubhouse? What existing company or sector will the Clubhouse explode?
It’s the kind of discussion that you probably wouldn’t see on early social media. That’s because people who joined networks like YouTube, Twitter or Facebook from the beginning were probably not thinking about how they could turn their presence on the platform into influence, money or career. This is not true now, and now all the major networks are clogged with possible influencers. The platforms do not yet have formal gatekeepers – but by allowing anyone and everyone to enter, the gates are getting clogged anyway.
Which is obviously part of the Clubhouse appeal – maybe it’s YouTube in 2006, and you can be famous just for coming. Or, alternatively, you can present a very clear idea of what you think you can do on a new platform. We are in a very smart age of social media.
“If I were starting a podcast today – I wouldn’t start a podcast, I would just come here,” Guy Raz, the most successful presenter on the How I built this podcast, told a Clubhouse room about … the future of the Clubhouse.
The Clubhouse itself actively courts the Clubhouse-obsessed user, providing Clubhouse users with ample opportunities to speak with CEO Paul Davison, who conducts a weekly live integration presentation for new users, where he guides them on the basics of features and etiquette. Clubhouse (it is not allowed to be racist or anti-Semitic; it is okay to leave a Clubhouse room in silence, without announcing your departure).
Davison also organizes another weekly live meeting for all Clubhouse users, where he updates them on product roadmaps and lets them talk about their complaints (which include some very real privacy concerns). Davison, a 44-year-old man who made several attempts to create a social startup before winning big luck last year, is a chatty and gregarious brand ambassador – almost the opposite of the taciturn and gnomish model of Mark Zuckerberg and Jack Dorsey.
Even more important: Davison was explicit about the idea that the Clubhouse could become a useful, or even profitable, place for users to open a store.
Twitter, Facebook and YouTube started without any concentrated effort to help users build their presence – and they were definitely not devising a way for early users to make money on their platforms. But when Davison announced a $ 100 million financing round for the Clubhouse in January, he made a point of explaining how users can make money in the future – perhaps they sell tickets or subscriptions to rooms they host, for example – and announced that some of the money the company has just raised would go to a “Creator Subsidy Program”, to be distributed to some advanced users who host popular rooms. This program hasn’t started yet, but it will be interesting to see the kind of people that the Clubhouse officially endorses with their money.
One thing you won’t find much at the Clubhouse: the young users who migrated from the beginning to Instagram, Snapchat and TikTok. This is probably the result of the company’s growth strategy – which, for now, is to require new users to receive an invitation from existing users, which means that you are more likely to see people who look and sound like the first technology influencers. and Clubhouse culture brought in for the first time and less like your children. That may change in the future, or perhaps the Clubhouse will continue to be a social network for seniors who like to talk and listen instead of texting and swiping. In any case, the relative lack of young people at the Clubhouse has not gone unnoticed by its current base.
“[Clubhouse users] it looks like they lost their boat when they went on Instagram, “says comedian and activist Baratunde Thurston, who said he signed up for the network last May -” to claim my name “- and then gave up after finding the platform populated mainly by capitalist ventures . At the end of last year, however, he returned and found a new group of users who were “smart, skeptical, cautious and also hungry at the same time. You have a group of relatively experienced social users who have good questions, ”he said.
There is also a very special subset of Clubhouse-obsessed users: the venture capitalists of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most powerful and important investment stores in Silicon Valley. They like the app so much that they invested millions of dollars in it leading that $ 100 million financing round and are using it as their own … club.
A16Z, as the company is known in Silicon Valley, is prominent and admittedly throughout the Clubhouse. Founders Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz present a recurring interview program dedicated to “unrestricted conversations” between them and other technology leaders. (There is some Chaining: Andreessen blocks many users – usually reporters he also blocked on Twitter – from listening to any conversation he hosts on the app.) Horowitz’s wife, Felicia, offers a weekly “dinner” that includes guests like Oprah Winfrey. And A16Z’s new partner, Sriram Krishnan, co-hosts another recurring talk show that featured Elon Musk interviewing Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev as the GameStop saga unfolded. He must also host a conversation between Musk and Kanye West, someday.
A16Z is also active behind the scenes: people familiar with the Clubhouse say that the venture capital firm played an important role in inviting celebrities to try the app, and that Chris Lyons, who runs an A16Z fund with the specific goal of increasing participation Black in the tech industry, she made a point of using her social network to get prominent black celebrities like Kevin Hart to try the app.
The Clubhouse’s newest round of investment already values the company at $ 1 billion. Therefore, the Clubhouse would have to be very, very large – like Twitter or Pinterest – for the A16Z to have a return on its money. But having a large part of a popular platform, where you can summon an audience whenever you have thoughts that you want to share? This is also worth something.