9 ms·

Founders’ Email to Clubhouse Employees

131 points by davidbarker 3y ago

bkm 3y ago
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-acquisition-talks-with-clubhouse-on-potential-4b-deal/ 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.
- sosodev 3y ago
  The owners would have gotten a nice exit. The employees would have probably ended up laid off anyway, right? edit: actually looking at some posted salaries it seems some employees were given quite a lot of equity
  - dylan604 3y ago
    Definitely under the new management team
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    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.
    - yellowapple 3y ago
      > 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.
      - trilobyte 3y ago
        That may have been better than what inevitably happens anyway.
- matthewdgreen 3y ago
  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.
  - chemmail 3y ago
    Clubhouse is literally just software that artificially limited things to be popular by: 1. Limited users 2. Limited to iPhones. 3. Having no history or recording of conversations.
  - gkoberger 3y ago
    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.
    - matthewdgreen 3y ago
      Twitter already had a large community and set of creators while Clubhouse really didn't. Moreover, most of the Clubhouse users already had Twitter accounts and just switched their audio conversations to Twitter Spaces once that product became available. I think at this point it's obvious that Clubhouse was not worth $4B (10% of Twitter's final sale price!), so no point in arguing about that. The interesting question is: what combination of bad judgement and groupthink made anyone think it was in the first place.
      - adra 3y ago
        In a world of fast and loose cash, people find justifications for spending fast and loose. I don't think it requires too much more than that. Crypto firms running on good will and hype managed to get billions of $ (in crypo-bucks) to dump their money, much of which is completely gone. You could argue overvalued, but in the world of pets.com, this is far from the worst example of outsized speculation.
- xwdv 3y ago
  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.
  - sixQuarks 3y ago
    Mark Cuban did even better with broadcast.com. sold it for billions right at the beginning of the dotcom boom, bought a basketball team. there was also a guy who sold a browser to Apple for over $100 million.
  - boeingUH60 3y ago
    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-beverly-hills-whatsapp-1203604615/ https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/jan-koum-house-beve... 2- https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonrise/owner/ https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonrise/owner/ 3- https://www.thedrive.com/news/26322/these-are-the-10-drool-worthy-porsches-whatsapp-co-founder-jan-koum-is-selling https://www.thedrive.com/news/26322/these-are-the-10-drool-w...
    - jonny_eh 3y ago
      Those are some pricey dopamine hits.
    - skinkestek 3y ago
      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.
      - urbandw311er 3y ago
        What do you mean by “paid them”? I thought WhatsApp was a free service.
- rvz 3y ago
  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, slow release of the Android app caused them to lose steam to Twitter and Discord during the social audio race of 2021 at the time. [2] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044382 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26705535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26705535 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659374
  - Prbeek 3y ago
    Who launches an IOS first app in 2023? You are telling android users that they are not important
    - nikanj 3y ago
      They are plenty important, but they're not rich. iPhones are not the majority of the market by any stretch, but they do form a majority of the phones well-off people use. I know you and your coder friends use Android despite having plenty of money, but the general public sees Androids as the budget option.
      - travem 3y ago
        > iPhones are not the majority of the market by any stretch It depends on which market you are looking at. In the US market Apple apparently has a 57% share according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-market-share-in-the-us-by-vendor/#:~:text=Manufacturers'%20market%20share%20of%20smartphone,the%20second%20quarter%20of%202022 https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-....
    - saddd 3y ago
      I don't have links to back this up, but I believe the following two statements are true in US markets, based on my anecdotal industry experiences: - The majority of mobile apps that only launch on one native platform (but are eventually available on both Android and iOS) launch on iOS first. - The majority of mobile apps that are only available on one native platform are only available on iOS.
- nemo44x 3y ago
  Never say no to your first billion. It's the hardest billion to make.
- nprateem 3y ago
  Greed
DANmode 3y ago
Suppose that's about as well as such a note can be done, with exception of not guaranteeing against future layoff(s), only alluding to it ("strength").
Laaas 3y ago
I had completely forgotten Clubhouse even existed. Surprised it's not more than 50% laid off.
- gnicholas 3y ago
  We don't know the upper bound on how many were laid off, just that it was < 50%. > we’re scaling back our org by over 50%
- stevehawk 3y ago
  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?
  - ryanSrich 3y ago
    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.
    - singleshot_ 3y ago
      What’s a zip? (Aside from being a pretty hard thing to search for…)
      - ryanSrich 3y ago
        Zero Interest rate Phenomena
      - jazzyjackson 3y ago
        zip, zilch, zero, nada, null, ngmi
JumpCrisscross 3y ago
Are there reliable estimates of Clubhouse's runway?
- MrDunham 3y ago
  in the article they state "still hav[ing] years of runway"—before the layoffs. seems like they've extended it to around a half a decade?
reducesuffering 3y ago
Anyone still unconvinced a16z is just throwing darts at the wall?
- danpalmer 3y ago
  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_.
  - bastawhiz 3y ago
    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.
  - JumpCrisscross 3y ago
    > 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).
  - rchaud 3y ago
    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.
clpm4j 3y ago
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.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  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-severance-package-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-layoffs-generous-seve...
  - alfalfasprout 3y ago
    Yeah but Airbnb is one of the few profitable tech companies.
  - highwayman47 3y ago
    I would WANT to get laid off if I could get that deal
0xB31B1B 3y ago
Glad 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.
rvz 3y ago
There 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. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32229956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32229956
cloudking 3y ago
It'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.
- hellomyguys 3y ago
  There's already a handful of well known companies providing that. It wouldn't surprise me if Clubhouse was built off of one of these APIs already.
  - cloudking 3y ago
    Such as? I haven't found any plug n play solutions, just APIs like Twilio.
- davidbarker 3y ago
  Clubhouse used — and I believe still uses — Agora (https://www.agora.io/ https://www.agora.io/) for the audio parts. I'd love to know how much it costs them.
ericzawo 3y ago
There was a period in late 2020 where I was convinced Clubhouse would leapfrog Twitter as the place where valuable industry-facing conversation and information would be housed.
- vkou 3y ago
  The problem is that valuable industry conversation and information isn't all that valuable. A billion monkeys slinging shit at each other is.
  - lotsofpulp 3y ago
    If it was valuable, you would be selling it or making trades or business decisions with it, not giving it away for free.
- nerdbert 3y ago
  It's audio. That means it's very slow to consume and requires much of your attention. That is never going to get the same sort of usage numbers as something you can flit in and out of like Twitter or Instagram.
paxys 3y ago
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.
- bratao 3y ago
  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.
say_it_as_it_is 3y ago
> 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?
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  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.
- paxys 3y ago
  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.
- dangerwill 3y ago
  If their employees all have macbooks that can be wiped remotely then yeah that isn't uncommon at this stage. My company allowed laid off folks to keep their laptops after the wipe. Probably just avoids a logistical headache getting the machines back from remote employees.
  - CharlieDigital 3y ago
    Big time logistical headache. Not only the cost of shipping itself, but then also reimbursing all of the employees for that expense. Then receiving hundreds of units and then having to check them. What are you going to do with these machines? Now spend time to sell them? Store them? By the time you're ramping up hiring, the machines are outdated. Then you need to pay IT to clean them up and refurbish them. And your new employees don't get the dopamine hit from opening a new MacBook and latest hardware.
- codemac 3y ago
  Back in the day, NetApp did something similar. It's sad it's not more common, it really helps folks apply for jobs if they don't have a pile of laptops at home. Though, as the price of computers have come down, it's less common for folks to not have a computer at home - it's still a wonderful gesture that's very low cost.
nkotov 3y ago
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.
- dilyevsky 3y ago
  The crypto/nft bros and wannabe influencers killed it for me. It’s sort of tolerable when you can scroll away this crap in half a second not so much when you’re forced to listen to them interject a conversation with their nonsense
uptownfunk 3y ago
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.
- volkk 3y ago
  > 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 of bleeding edge trends, be on top of what "thought leaders" have to say, information influencers, brand builders, etc. This demographic of people that would immediately get a lot of use out of a clubhouse clone built directly into Twitter. Clubhouse messed up royally here by not selling
  - uptownfunk 3y ago
    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.
choppaface 3y ago
Soooo Clubhouse has raised over $100m . Is it unusually nice that such an early start-up is giving 4 months, acceleration, and more? Yea! A lot of A- and B-stage layoffs have paid far less. But with so much funding, it’s very very hard to see this move as anything other than massive C-level incompetence. Good job trying to make it look like accountability though.
- conductr 3y ago
  Some times you hit the puck so hard the hockey stick cracks. Not sure it’s fair to call it incompetence but they’re being decent in the acknowledgment of it.
  - choppaface 3y ago
    You’re thinking of being too early to the market, which is exactly what didn’t happen. Clubhouse’s case is much closer to the explosive growth that physical country clubs and golf courses saw in late 2020 and 2021. It’s a niche product that caught serious waves. I guess some VCs like to compare high ROI with athletic excellence but hockey is actually nothing like surfing.
jonny_eh 3y ago
Clubhouse should make a Twitter clone already, it'd be great justice.
nemo44x 3y ago
As Twitter proved, Clubhouse was a feature and not a product.
- dopeboy 3y ago
  For a brief moment, it looked like they were bringing in a new demographic that wasn't active on twitter. So I could've seen a moat there. Agreed on pure tech - never saw it a pure moat in itself.
nperez 3y ago
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
highwayman47 3y ago
I never understood the hype around this app and I was surprised they still exist. This is a prime example of a low interest rate phenomenon.
desireco42 3y ago
Dang, I would love to be fired at Clubhouse :). Honestly!
manv1 3y ago
IMO the real problem with Clubhouse was it was for the intelligentsia and their hangers-on. That's not a profitable market. Advertising dollars chase the masses, and what the masses want is, well, celebrities, the good looking, the attractive, and the funny. The public is chasing dopamine hits, and advertisers chase the public.
- vxNsr 3y ago
  Yea it’s not clear how you collect money on the product aside from charging a subscription fee. Random ad interludes don’t work that well in a live setting, and most people aren’t looking at the app for most of the time they’re using to make visual ads work.
satvikpendem 3y ago
What are they pivoting to?
misssocrates 3y ago
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 https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-from-drew
- celim307 3y ago
  Layoff ops are pretty standardized so I would be surprised if there wasn’t a template that has been commonly agreed upon to be as neutral in tone as possible
mxxx 3y ago
> The world needs what Clubhouse is building Really?
b0sk 3y ago
> The world needs what Clubhouse is building No
kernal 3y ago
4 months severance and they get to keep their laptop. Very generous for a small startup.
sdf4j 3y ago
I still resent them for forcing the project management app called Clubhouse to get a rebrand [0]. Well, maybe not forced them, but a result of the dynamics during the zero interest rate era. [0] https://www.shortcut.com/blog/clubhouses-name-is-now-shortcut https://www.shortcut.com/blog/clubhouses-name-is-now-shortcu...
- dimgl 3y ago
  Yeah I was going to comment on this. It's an unfortunate situation because I'll forever know the product as Clubhouse, but now they changed their name.
throwawayjs 3y ago
Few years ago it was the great resignation. Now it’s the great layoffs.
fightclubhouse 3y ago
[flagged]
kar5pt 3y ago
Everything I've heard about clubhouse is that it's just a cesspool of toxicity.

131 points by davidbarker 3y ago

bkm 3y ago

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-acquisition-talks-with-clubhouse-on-potential-4b-deal/ 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.

sosodev 3y ago
The owners would have gotten a nice exit. The employees would have probably ended up laid off anyway, right? edit: actually looking at some posted salaries it seems some employees were given quite a lot of equity
- dylan604 3y ago
  Definitely under the new management team
- gkoberger 3y ago
  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.
  - yellowapple 3y ago
    > 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.
    - trilobyte 3y ago
      That may have been better than what inevitably happens anyway.
matthewdgreen 3y ago
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.
- chemmail 3y ago
  Clubhouse is literally just software that artificially limited things to be popular by: 1. Limited users 2. Limited to iPhones. 3. Having no history or recording of conversations.
- gkoberger 3y ago
  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.
  - matthewdgreen 3y ago
    Twitter already had a large community and set of creators while Clubhouse really didn't. Moreover, most of the Clubhouse users already had Twitter accounts and just switched their audio conversations to Twitter Spaces once that product became available. I think at this point it's obvious that Clubhouse was not worth $4B (10% of Twitter's final sale price!), so no point in arguing about that. The interesting question is: what combination of bad judgement and groupthink made anyone think it was in the first place.
    - adra 3y ago
      In a world of fast and loose cash, people find justifications for spending fast and loose. I don't think it requires too much more than that. Crypto firms running on good will and hype managed to get billions of $ (in crypo-bucks) to dump their money, much of which is completely gone. You could argue overvalued, but in the world of pets.com, this is far from the worst example of outsized speculation.
xwdv 3y ago
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.
- sixQuarks 3y ago
  Mark Cuban did even better with broadcast.com. sold it for billions right at the beginning of the dotcom boom, bought a basketball team. there was also a guy who sold a browser to Apple for over $100 million.
- boeingUH60 3y ago
  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-beverly-hills-whatsapp-1203604615/ https://www.dirt.com/gallery/moguls/tech/jan-koum-house-beve... 2- https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonrise/owner/ https://www.superyachtfan.com/yacht/moonrise/owner/ 3- https://www.thedrive.com/news/26322/these-are-the-10-drool-worthy-porsches-whatsapp-co-founder-jan-koum-is-selling https://www.thedrive.com/news/26322/these-are-the-10-drool-w...
  - jonny_eh 3y ago
    Those are some pricey dopamine hits.
  - skinkestek 3y ago
    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.
    - urbandw311er 3y ago
      What do you mean by “paid them”? I thought WhatsApp was a free service.
rvz 3y ago
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, slow release of the Android app caused them to lose steam to Twitter and Discord during the social audio race of 2021 at the time. [2] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26044382 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26705535 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26705535 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659374 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26659374
- Prbeek 3y ago
  Who launches an IOS first app in 2023? You are telling android users that they are not important
  - nikanj 3y ago
    They are plenty important, but they're not rich. iPhones are not the majority of the market by any stretch, but they do form a majority of the phones well-off people use. I know you and your coder friends use Android despite having plenty of money, but the general public sees Androids as the budget option.
    - travem 3y ago
      > iPhones are not the majority of the market by any stretch It depends on which market you are looking at. In the US market Apple apparently has a 57% share according to https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-market-share-in-the-us-by-vendor/#:~:text=Manufacturers'%20market%20share%20of%20smartphone,the%20second%20quarter%20of%202022 https://www.statista.com/statistics/620805/smartphone-sales-....
  - saddd 3y ago
    I don't have links to back this up, but I believe the following two statements are true in US markets, based on my anecdotal industry experiences: - The majority of mobile apps that only launch on one native platform (but are eventually available on both Android and iOS) launch on iOS first. - The majority of mobile apps that are only available on one native platform are only available on iOS.
nemo44x 3y ago
Never say no to your first billion. It's the hardest billion to make.
nprateem 3y ago
Greed

DANmode 3y ago

Suppose that's about as well as such a note can be done, with exception of not guaranteeing against future layoff(s), only alluding to it ("strength").

Laaas 3y ago

I had completely forgotten Clubhouse even existed. Surprised it's not more than 50% laid off.

gnicholas 3y ago
We don't know the upper bound on how many were laid off, just that it was < 50%. > we’re scaling back our org by over 50%
stevehawk 3y ago
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?
- ryanSrich 3y ago
  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.
  - singleshot_ 3y ago
    What’s a zip? (Aside from being a pretty hard thing to search for…)
    - ryanSrich 3y ago
      Zero Interest rate Phenomena
    - jazzyjackson 3y ago
      zip, zilch, zero, nada, null, ngmi

JumpCrisscross 3y ago

Are there reliable estimates of Clubhouse's runway?

MrDunham 3y ago
in the article they state "still hav[ing] years of runway"—before the layoffs. seems like they've extended it to around a half a decade?

reducesuffering 3y ago

Anyone still unconvinced a16z is just throwing darts at the wall?

danpalmer 3y ago
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_.
- bastawhiz 3y ago
  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.
- JumpCrisscross 3y ago
  > 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).
- rchaud 3y ago
  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.

clpm4j 3y ago

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.

gkoberger 3y ago
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-severance-package-2020-5 https://www.businessinsider.com/airbnb-layoffs-generous-seve...
- alfalfasprout 3y ago
  Yeah but Airbnb is one of the few profitable tech companies.
- highwayman47 3y ago
  I would WANT to get laid off if I could get that deal

0xB31B1B 3y ago

Glad 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.

rvz 3y ago

There 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. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32229956 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32229956

cloudking 3y ago

It'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.

hellomyguys 3y ago
There's already a handful of well known companies providing that. It wouldn't surprise me if Clubhouse was built off of one of these APIs already.
- cloudking 3y ago
  Such as? I haven't found any plug n play solutions, just APIs like Twilio.
davidbarker 3y ago
Clubhouse used — and I believe still uses — Agora (https://www.agora.io/ https://www.agora.io/) for the audio parts. I'd love to know how much it costs them.

ericzawo 3y ago

There was a period in late 2020 where I was convinced Clubhouse would leapfrog Twitter as the place where valuable industry-facing conversation and information would be housed.

vkou 3y ago
The problem is that valuable industry conversation and information isn't all that valuable. A billion monkeys slinging shit at each other is.
- lotsofpulp 3y ago
  If it was valuable, you would be selling it or making trades or business decisions with it, not giving it away for free.
nerdbert 3y ago
It's audio. That means it's very slow to consume and requires much of your attention. That is never going to get the same sort of usage numbers as something you can flit in and out of like Twitter or Instagram.

paxys 3y ago

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.

bratao 3y ago
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.

say_it_as_it_is 3y ago

> 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?

bastawhiz 3y ago
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.
paxys 3y ago
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.
dangerwill 3y ago
If their employees all have macbooks that can be wiped remotely then yeah that isn't uncommon at this stage. My company allowed laid off folks to keep their laptops after the wipe. Probably just avoids a logistical headache getting the machines back from remote employees.
- CharlieDigital 3y ago
  Big time logistical headache. Not only the cost of shipping itself, but then also reimbursing all of the employees for that expense. Then receiving hundreds of units and then having to check them. What are you going to do with these machines? Now spend time to sell them? Store them? By the time you're ramping up hiring, the machines are outdated. Then you need to pay IT to clean them up and refurbish them. And your new employees don't get the dopamine hit from opening a new MacBook and latest hardware.
codemac 3y ago
Back in the day, NetApp did something similar. It's sad it's not more common, it really helps folks apply for jobs if they don't have a pile of laptops at home. Though, as the price of computers have come down, it's less common for folks to not have a computer at home - it's still a wonderful gesture that's very low cost.

nkotov 3y ago

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.

dilyevsky 3y ago
The crypto/nft bros and wannabe influencers killed it for me. It’s sort of tolerable when you can scroll away this crap in half a second not so much when you’re forced to listen to them interject a conversation with their nonsense

uptownfunk 3y ago

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.

volkk 3y ago
> 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 of bleeding edge trends, be on top of what "thought leaders" have to say, information influencers, brand builders, etc. This demographic of people that would immediately get a lot of use out of a clubhouse clone built directly into Twitter. Clubhouse messed up royally here by not selling
- uptownfunk 3y ago
  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.

choppaface 3y ago

Soooo Clubhouse has raised over $100m . Is it unusually nice that such an early start-up is giving 4 months, acceleration, and more? Yea! A lot of A- and B-stage layoffs have paid far less. But with so much funding, it’s very very hard to see this move as anything other than massive C-level incompetence. Good job trying to make it look like accountability though.

conductr 3y ago
Some times you hit the puck so hard the hockey stick cracks. Not sure it’s fair to call it incompetence but they’re being decent in the acknowledgment of it.
- choppaface 3y ago
  You’re thinking of being too early to the market, which is exactly what didn’t happen. Clubhouse’s case is much closer to the explosive growth that physical country clubs and golf courses saw in late 2020 and 2021. It’s a niche product that caught serious waves. I guess some VCs like to compare high ROI with athletic excellence but hockey is actually nothing like surfing.

jonny_eh 3y ago

Clubhouse should make a Twitter clone already, it'd be great justice.

nemo44x 3y ago

As Twitter proved, Clubhouse was a feature and not a product.

dopeboy 3y ago
For a brief moment, it looked like they were bringing in a new demographic that wasn't active on twitter. So I could've seen a moat there. Agreed on pure tech - never saw it a pure moat in itself.

nperez 3y ago

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

highwayman47 3y ago

I never understood the hype around this app and I was surprised they still exist. This is a prime example of a low interest rate phenomenon.

desireco42 3y ago

Dang, I would love to be fired at Clubhouse :). Honestly!

manv1 3y ago

IMO the real problem with Clubhouse was it was for the intelligentsia and their hangers-on. That's not a profitable market. Advertising dollars chase the masses, and what the masses want is, well, celebrities, the good looking, the attractive, and the funny. The public is chasing dopamine hits, and advertisers chase the public.

vxNsr 3y ago
Yea it’s not clear how you collect money on the product aside from charging a subscription fee. Random ad interludes don’t work that well in a live setting, and most people aren’t looking at the app for most of the time they’re using to make visual ads work.

satvikpendem 3y ago

What are they pivoting to?

misssocrates 3y ago

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 https://blog.dropbox.com/topics/company/a-message-from-drew

celim307 3y ago
Layoff ops are pretty standardized so I would be surprised if there wasn’t a template that has been commonly agreed upon to be as neutral in tone as possible

mxxx 3y ago

> The world needs what Clubhouse is building Really?

b0sk 3y ago

> The world needs what Clubhouse is building No

kernal 3y ago

4 months severance and they get to keep their laptop. Very generous for a small startup.

sdf4j 3y ago

I still resent them for forcing the project management app called Clubhouse to get a rebrand [0]. Well, maybe not forced them, but a result of the dynamics during the zero interest rate era. [0] https://www.shortcut.com/blog/clubhouses-name-is-now-shortcut https://www.shortcut.com/blog/clubhouses-name-is-now-shortcu...

dimgl 3y ago
Yeah I was going to comment on this. It's an unfortunate situation because I'll forever know the product as Clubhouse, but now they changed their name.

throwawayjs 3y ago

Few years ago it was the great resignation. Now it’s the great layoffs.

fightclubhouse 3y ago

[flagged]

kar5pt 3y ago

Everything I've heard about clubhouse is that it's just a cesspool of toxicity.