Clubhouse launched in April 2020 and took a valuation of 100 million dollars when it had only 1,000 users.
One year later, it’s April 2021 and the company held a valuation of 4 billion dollars, with 13 million downloads.
Just a little perspective.
Facebook bought Instagram for 1 billion dollars when it had 25 million users.
Clubhouse took a value of 4x as much money when it had under half as many users.
But for Clubhouse, growth collapsed in spring 2021.
February had 9 million downloads.
April had 900,000 downloads.
Today, despite being available on Android & iPhone for the first time, they only had 2 million weekly users, which is lower over early 2021.
And here’s why this gets to the point that where Silicon Valley tends to care more about VC dollars over users.
Twitter Spaces
Facebook Live Audio
Reddit Talk
Fireside
Post Clubhouse, several big companies launched competitors to it and now Silicon Valley is going hard with another attempt.
Callin
The former CEO of Zenefits and founder of Yammer raised 12 million for a Clubhouse clone called Callin.
The idea, I honestly believe is better. Focus is doing what Clubhouse does, but all convos are recorded and it still keeps the social element. Goal being to be much more like a podcast versus a bunch of people sitting around board.
But even though it’s better, there’s not a ton of evidence it’s really worth it.
Clubhouse still does exist.
Several startups launched successfully as Clubhouse clones.
Several mega companies launched carbon copies.
And worst part?
None of them are that successful.
Clubhouse doesn’t have that many users and growth hit a clear plateau.
The other clones only had some growth in foreign markets.
The big companies don’t seem to be getting much engagement and Facebook/Twitter have users on for a week as a fad.
Callin exist and the big company competitors exist, because they looked at what VC’s were doing and not actual users.
4 billion dollar valuation
Ignore the low user engagement.
Ignore the declining downloads
Ignore the relatively small user base.
4 billion dollar valuation was it and it’s why people are going to try and build this concept over and over again.