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Comment by ALittleLight | Hacker News Reader

I just skimmed this - but I didn't see any reference to the fact that clubhouse basically failed. I think you can absolutely learn a lot from failure, but doing so does require you to realize that failure has happened. The vibe I get from this is more "how to recreate the success I experienced at clubhouse" which doesn't seem quite as valuable to me.

Clubhouse is in a rare position - they exploded, were definitely in hyper growth, and then disintegrated. Clubhouse seemed like it hit an effect where the network stopped being a positive. When they were small and used by elite people, they were super popular and exclusive. When everyone got in there it was basically clubs for... I don't even know how to name the people, but not really that valuable. Basically like a nightclub - cool if it's exclusive and lame if everyone can go in. I'd much rather read an insider's take on this unique perspective.

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Yup that's kinda how I saw it: when it went from being a exclusive clubhouse party to an open warehouse party, I became much less interested.

For a while, it was a place where I could interact with an invite-only subset of humans with real names on the internet. I really loved that aspect of it. As it opened up, I saw people using fewer real names, fewer links to real name social media accounts, just felt less exclusive and more just like Twitter. At that point, I think Twitter Spaces started taking off.

The question I ask is how to build an online space that is exclusive, without the draw to make it for the masses?

Not sure if the metaphor works because warehouse parties are way cooler than elitist parties in all fairness.

I assume they mean an unadvertised warehouse party, where you only know about it by being part of a group.

That is pretty much most real warehouse parties.

ah, I may have flubbed the analogy, maybe what I meant was more from dinner party to massive dance party but still wanting to have a dinner party conversation.

haha, fair point, maybe warehouse wasn't the best example. I think maybe it's not about whether one is cool or not but what one expects. I would go to a clubhouse to have an exclusive conversation with 10-20 people about a specific topic, I probalby wouldn't want to have that same conversation with 10-20 people I met in a huge warehouse party. I might like to dance amongst the masses and thrive in the anonymity, but would have a different feel.

I think the biggest problem I had with clubhouse was everyone treated it as a place to grow their brand and personal network via some weird combination of bragging about what they’re doing and soapboxing.

The sheer number of introductions I had to sit and listen to any time I joined one…it was absolutely baffling. We’re talking sometimes 15 minutes of just sitting there as every person introduced themselves, every project they are working on, their experience, their favorite shows, their workout routine, etc.

The one time I actually found a conversation about gear talk (film/video) it was just a couple of folks who were new to the industry all trying to power network with each other. It was weird. Podcast ones were just people treating it like their podcast.

I'm curious if when someone joined Clubhouse had a huge effect on their experience. I don't remember too much of this when I joined in Dec 2020, but maybe it was already there and I was just in different rooms.

When did you join?

I got my invite January of 2021 (just pulled up the app for the first time in easily a year and was still logged in).

Ah ok, then maybe we were just in different rooms, I think even at that point it was less of a clubhouse and starting to become more of a bar with multiple rooms, DJs, outside areas, conference room, etc :-D

> The question I ask is how to build an online space that is exclusive, without the draw to make it for the masses?

Google+ kind of accomplished this with Circles; a way to create invite-only communities within the larger platform. A few of the social media sites have bolted on something similar, but none have really designed around it like Google+ did.

Yeah, I wonder if how Google+ did it, still attaches the overall brand with the masses. Aka, Google+ wanted everyone to use Google+, just subsegment within it. Almost as if everyone lives in the same house but there are millions of rooms.

I'm curious about the brand that says, "Nope, we're an online platform just for 10,000 people" or "who make this much money" or "who are in these communities."

I wonder what examples already exist, if any, that tie the whole brand to a specific online exclusivity.

Isn't that what subreddits are?

Maybe, I think they are still rooms in a much larger house (Reddit) vs being an exclusive house in itself. Also, I don't know much about subreddit membership, are some private and invite only?

Yeah, I think so?

Otherwise I think you just end up with niche forums like this one or discord channels and whatnot.

But Google+ failed, so I don't know if they did accomplish this, to be honest.

Well find a price people are willing to pay for it. You probably reach a point where you need to pay all this elite but the listeners cant be milked any more and you need more people to maintain the pyramid.

That s why no one can do it: if you want to speak to Warren Buffet you ll be more successful having something that interests him to say, and no amount of trying to cheat reality can hide for long that asymetry: there was nothing in it for the VIP but milking you.

I remember being in rooms where celebrities from one subculture were talking with celebrities of another culture. Maybe not so different than why some people would attend the TED conference or Davos.

I'm not saying I should necessarily be in the room lol. Just that maybe there is a way to limit it where there is a level of assumed parity among participants. For example, maybe Warren Buffett would like to talk with the guy behind moneyball from The Oakland A's about the influence of statistics on sports. I think yes it could dilute too much, I just don't think it necessarily has to.

Wasn't Clubhouse's biggest failure that they were offered $4 billion for a 4 month old company and said "no"? Or would it have never made it out of due diligence? It seemed to dissolve within what I think a DD period would still be happening, but not for a reason (business trends) I would assume would be directly allowable to cancel.

I'd appreciate it if people with more experience than me weighed in on if the acquisition could have been aborted, if it could technically have been aborted but probably would have gone through, or if it would have gone through cause a contract is a contract.

If you’re offered $4 billion, they could’ve negotiated that to their advantage and reduced or eliminated DD for a cool 2-3 billion or a very respectable $1 billion.

Now the last private valuation will probably be impossible to hit.

This exactly this. If someone offers you 4B for almost anything you always say yes.

A four month old company worth 4B would feel like an invincible rocket ship. Hard to be rational in that case. I’m sure they told themselves the story of Facebook turning down the 1B acquisition way back and saw themselves with the better story

I think the founders negotiated a secondary in series A - took a couple million off the table. I imagine a16z likely had some clause in the paperwork that prevented them from accepting an acquisition offer this early (I'm speculating).

Why would a16z want to block an acquisition offer that early?

Or rather, I could see how a VC might want to ensure that the offer is a sufficent ROI, either by preapproving a minimum or requiring signoff. But why wouldn't a16z want to take their huge returns? Did their partners see a better ROI anytime soon?

I'm not affiliated with a16z in any way, so I can't speak for their thoughts, but I do know that it isn't uncommon for VCs to have an "IPO or nothing" point of view. They invested in Clubhouse at a $4billion post-money valuation with what I imagine was/is a belief that it could be a $40billion exit in the future.

Oh, yeah if they invested at a $4 billion post I can see that exit being really unappealing.

I assumed they went in at an earlier round at a eight or nine figure valuation, so I was thinking it was a 10-100x on their money in a year or so.

It was definitely neat for awhile. I heard some great panels and conversations and learned some things that you'll never be able to find on Google - like did you know Tony Hawk learned to program on a TI-99/4A? Only way you'd know is if you were there when he said it in a forum with no record!

But I never found any groups I could participate in. There were vast deserts of interests - either because search was bad, or people simply weren't discussing those topics. I'd try to create my own rooms, but no one would ever join.

> Only way you'd know is if you were there when he said it in a forum with no record

And now here we are.

Knowledge is memetic. The good shit spreads.

Some of it, sure, but good luck capturing that knowledge in, say, Wikipedia. [Citation needed]

I mean, that's the thing, I heard a lot of PR about people interacting with celebrities, VCs etc. And people saying the _format_ was great as it attracted all these people. But the reality was the novelty attracted these people, and a VC that spends all day chatting with randomers won't be managing their investments very well so they would need to dial back, and the celebs who were enjoying the novelty were going to realise that any venue to interact with fans is capable of consuming "all their time", and want to go back to putting it back in its time limited box, so that aspect of the appeal was never going to last.

Then for the randoms talking to randoms type groups, voice chat is a big increase in commitment over Reddit/HN/whatever. You could argue that encourages better contributions, but it also discourages frequent contributions, which in turn helped the "fizzling out" effect

> a VC that spends all day chatting with randomers won't be managing their investments very well so they would need to dial back

I got the impression that the VCs using Clubhouse were just diverting some of their Twitter time.

Synchronous audio is way worse on time then async text. You can't simply divert Twitter time if you want to take any value (be it relevant for business or entertainment or ...) out of it.

Candidly, a lot of the reasons why Clubhouse failed is because it did not follow any of those lessons.

Source: I was an early Clubhouse employee and left a few months ago.

Could you say more? which lessons specifically, and how/why?

Yep! I had the same position back when Clubhouse was just getting super popular and was being called inevitable.

My comment then - "I am a strong sell on ClubHouse at a $2b valuation. Just like Medium and Quora, once the masses are allowed on, the noise will get too high and the signal will get lost." (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26144326).

Yeah, I agree that Clubhouse quickly went from "interesting" to "irrelevant" and to what now can only be described as "spammy", but I'm not sure this person sees Clubhouse as a failure, even though we might do from the outside.

One of the points from the article is the following:

> Lesson #4 — Beware of complexity creep

> Anticipate this, then build in early checkpoints. Define success and failure before a launch. Build a solid process and track the right metrics to help make objective, decisive decisions — and don’t forget to create a framework to sunset things!

And since the author is writing the blogpost from the perspective of "Here is how you can build something as successful as Clubhouse" instead of "Here is how you can avoid what we failed to avoid", I'm guessing whatever their definition of success/failure is, they seem to have hit it.

Worth keeping in mind if you actually want to build something that turned out like Clubhouse at all, if you're reading this article.

Basically a social capital Ponzi scheme.

Well put.

What was the fraud that was occuring with this social capital and how was the social capital of later participants used to pay social capital to earlier participants?

Look out, you're about to unlock forbidden knowledge about the nature of venture capital!

Wouldn't they suffer from Zoom fatigue as well? I still remember how everyone was.

"hey zoom cool! We can do online meetings...and it works."

But then quickly it became a drag.

I recall being in a Clubhouse session with Paris Hilton and another with Anthony Scaramucci and thought "wow, there are some interesting people on this platform" Yet, being on a call regularly would likely reduce this initial novelty factor real quick.

> I recall being in a Clubhouse session with Paris Hilton and another with Anthony Scaramucci and thought "wow, there are some interesting people on this platform"

Funny, that would give me the exact opposite response.

We all have different interest I suppose ;-)

Seems like the Clubhouse boosting party is beyond over. No justification into why VCs think that it is worth $4B. [0] I don't see a path for survival for this hype product and it turns out that nothing of value was lost as soon as its ideas were easily copied to death.

Nothing new was brought to the table that could not be copied. This is why the Clubhouse had nothing interesting inside it and my mind remains unchanged on this since [0].

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25883362

IMO, Clubhouse was a good idea for the zeitgeist (lockdowns) and had a lot of novelty value, but ultimately wasn't what people really wanted. What they really wanted was Twitter Spaces because that's the actual public town square and that's where "knowledgeable" speakers can have opportunistic discussions, pop in and have their say then leave.

Clubhouse should have tried to sell itself to Twitter as soon as possible, though I'm not sure it could have worked out regardless. It's just too easy to copy the idea, and they're unlucky because of that.

The difference is Twitter Spaces are lead by bigger influencers? What’s the point of being live for that? Or how is that much different than a podcast that has Q&A?

If something is lead by the main person/people, then it won’t be a natural sort of discussion right?

I don’t know how to get to Twitter Spaces, but did use Clubhouse a bit.

> If something is lead by the main person/people, then it won’t be a natural sort of discussion right?

That form may be perfect for the subject - the genius of Twitter Spaces is its flexibility: it can be indistinguishable from a podcast (with 1 person speaking), or a town hall where anyone/everyone can get to speak, and anything in between. I've been in some amazingly great/funny/informative Spaces - and it hinged on the quality of moderation.

FWIW, "a podcast with a Q&A" is valuable: it can draw out amazing insights from listeners in realtime - unlike regular podcasts that get discussed on Twitter after the fact, and without canonical answers.

Cool. I must not be a big enough Twitter user for them to reveal Spaces to me. Or I'm aloof and haven't noticed it. I'll look out for it now though.

> why VCs think that it is worth $4B

One VC: Andreessen Horowitz. Who are now knee-deep in the crypto rug-pull scam.

Maybe it's complementary to their portfolio: how many people have bought tokens after hearing about the projects on Clubhouse (or its clones)?

Except you can’t copy community. But you can kill it or cultivate it. The value of the best online communities won’t be the software but the people. Like HN.

Also important to note that their hypergrowth was a direct result of the pandemic.

When successful entrepreneurs say "timing is everything", Clubhouse is an example of that.

Its success was essentially luck, with VCs attempting to extrapolate its success to other entrepreneurial endeavors annoyingly.

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