On January 24, 2021, I was invited by Hara-san of DCM Ventures to host an event on Clubhouse — about Clubhouse itself. These are my notes from that discussion, plus observations from using the product. Clubhouse will keep evolving (especially after its recent large funding round), but I wanted to capture a personal snapshot of where it stands right now.

  • In one phrase: it felt like an American social club moved online. Highly exclusive by nature. At the same time, their public messaging emphasizes D&I — how they reconcile those two things will be interesting to watch.

  • Social hierarchy is baked into the product. A Zoom webinar has two roles: host and audience. Clubhouse has four: host, speaker, "friends of hosts and speakers," and audience. Room type controls which roles exist — open rooms have all four, social rooms have three, closed rooms have two.

  • This makes Clubhouse fundamentally a social-graph product. The opposite of interest-graph products like Mirrativ or mixi communities. (Mirrativ is a Japanese live-streaming platform; mixi is a Japanese social network with topic-based communities.)

  • Which means people who already have social-graph capital — existing audience, celebrity or influencer status — get the most out of hosting. They control who hears them. And since nothing is archived, they can say things they might not commit to in writing. No receipts.

  • For audiences, the product generates strong FOMO (fear of missing out). "If I don't tune in right now, I might miss something from that person I follow." That compulsion brings people back to the app repeatedly.

  • For someone like me who produces a lot of podcast content, the experience looks different. The big appeal is that it requires essentially zero preparation — conversation becomes content. But that only works when both the speaker and listener have names (social capital). Anonymous conversation generates less value.

  • From a listener's perspective, the experience is actually less convenient than podcasts. You can only listen at a specific moment in real time — that's the source of the urgency, but also a limitation.

  • My biggest open question: will people still be using this in 30 days? I genuinely don't think there are enough people who have enough to say on an ongoing basis. The barrier to starting is low; the barrier to sustaining is extremely high.

  • In capital markets, I sense FOMO-driven investment as well. The Series B announced this morning — led by a16z, with reportedly 180 angel investors — is drawing attention. I'm quite skeptical that their announced creator monetization features (tips, tickets, subscriptions) will actually work. I can't think of a tipping model that worked well within a social graph. As for audio broadly: "if people show up, you can monetize" has not been proven. This might be speculative investment based purely on the expectation of a consumer breakout — which is actually very characteristic of consumer products, and I find it entertaining to observe from the sidelines.