Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929

Paul Davison is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Clubhouse, the startup that believes people are at the centre of every moment, providing a platform to talk with friends and meet new friends. To date, Paul has raised over $310M with Clubhouse from a16z, DST, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, and many more. Prior to co-founding Clubhouse, Paul was the Founder of Highlight, a location-based consumer social service backed by Benchmark. Before Highlight, Paul actually spent time at Benchmark as an EiR. ------------------------------------- Timestamps: 0:00 Intro 0:32 The founding of Clubhouse 4:10 What did you learn from building Highlight? 7:25 Advice for first time founders building a team 10:00 What were the signs Clubhouse was working? 14:22 Why has Clubhouses numbers decreased? 18:00 What are the guiding metric of Clubhouse? 20:06 Live vs on-demand audio 23:10 Media loves to build up to tear down 27:50 Was the Twitter offer tempting? 30:31 Social graph vs recommendation media 32:43 What do you think of Twitter Spaces? 34:29 Rise of authenticity in social media 41:05 Are you bullish on Web3? 43:23 Favorite book and why? 43:55 Biggest thing you got right and wrong with Clubhouse? 44:32 What’s the hardest part about your role with Clubhouse? 45:17 How did you get Elon to join Clubhouse? 46:19 If you could remove one thing from your daily schedule, what would it be? 46:43 How to deal with hype 48:45 Biggest thing to break when growing Clubhouse 49:56 Where is Clubhouse in 5 years? ------------------------------------- In Today’s Episode with Paul Davison We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Startups: How Paul came to found Highlight in the early days of consumer social? What elements worked with Highlight that he took with him to Clubhouse? Which elements did not work that he learned from? 2.) Clubhouse: What Worked: What does Paul believe are the primary reasons that Clubhouse grew so fast? What metrics does Paul use to determine true product-market-fit and stickiness? What is good retention on Day 1, Day 7 and Day 30? How important is 12-month retention? 3.) Clubhouse: What Did Not Work: COVID: Does Paul believe that Clubhouse was the COVID antidote we all needed? How sustainable is that if so? What trends make it more sustainable? Live Does Not Work: How does Paul respond to Mike Mignano’s comments that “live does not work”? Why does Paul believe that Clubhouse is not a content platform? Quality: Does Paul agree that the quality of live is not as good as the quality of produced content? Is that a problem? If the quality is worse, what is significantly better about live? 4.) The Future of Social: Does Paul agree that we are seeing the disregard of the once hailed social graph in favour of a new era of recommendation media? What does this mean for Clubhouse? With the rise of the likes of BeReal, how does Paul think about the importance of authenticity in the next wave of consumer social? How does Paul forsee Web3 and the next generation of consumer social being interlinked? What will it take for Web3 to break through? What are the core barriers today? Does Paul agree that the best consumer social tools empower creators with Superhuman powers? 5.) Lessons on CEOship: What are Paul’s biggest lessons on successful company building? How does Paul manage the criticism and negativity of the press personally? How does Paul maintain the morale internally when the press cycle is so negative? How has Paul adapted himself to gain a thicker skin and not pay as much attention? Items Mentioned in Today’s Episode: Paul’s Favourite Book: Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood ------------------------------------- Subscribe to the Podcast: https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/paul-davison/ Follow Harry Stebbings on Twitter: https://twitter.com/HarryStebbings Follow Guest on Twitter: https://twitter.com/pdavison -------------------------------- #PaulDavison #Clubhouseapp #Clubhouse #consumersocial #HarryStebbings #20VC