20VC: Clubhouse Founder Paul Davison on What Went Right and What Went Wrong | What Does Clubhouse Do Now To Regain Mindshare? | Why Clubhouse is not a Content Platform? | What is the Next Wave of Consumer Social and Does Web3 Play a Role? |

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.

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