Clubhouse, a new San Francisco, US- based Startup, describes itself as “a drop in the audio chat platform”.
There are no videos or text messages to be seen, & yet this app has reached 3 portentous milestones already in its short life – its raised over US $110 million from 3 notable investors including heavyweights Tim Kendall & Andreessen Horowitz. It has also won the prestigious Golden Kitty Product Of The Year for 2020 on Producthunt; & Elon Musk joined the platform on the 1st of Feb for an interview with the Good Time Show. Musk then took the reins & proceeded to conduct an interview with Robinhood’s co-founder, Vlad Tenev, about the company’s recent actions during the GameStop debacle where they restricted trading to limit their users’ losses; a decision which has seen criticism on a mass scale.
Founded by Paul Davison & Rohan Seth, less than a year ago (March 15, 2020), the app is available on the Apple App Store (in beta phase), but it’s membership is currently exclusive – you have to get an invitation to join or know someone who is already on the platform, willing to invite you.
Their mission statement is “Clubhouse is a new type of social product based on voice. It allows people everywhere to talk, tell stories, develop ideas, deepen friendships, & meet interesting new people around the world.”
The Clubhouse app has managed to garner a host of illustrious celebrity users, which include the likes of Ashton Kutcher, Jared Leto, Chris Rock, Oprah Winfrey, Kevin Hart, MC Hammer, Jack Dorsey (Twitter’s CEO), & now Elon Musk. Elon Musk’s appearance caused near chaos on the app – chat rooms are limited to 5000 users & this number was almost instantaneously achieved. 2 additional overflow rooms also quickly filled up, which is quite remarkable since the app, reportedly, only has about 10,000 current members.
Clearly, Clubhouse has gone after high profile “names” to raise its desirability status. This coupled with its exclusive “invite only” policy has people joining the waiting list by the thousands. For now, the founders say that they are just not ready to launch to the general public, but that, along with allowing their users to earn from the endeavors, is the general aim. However, whatever it is that they are planning they most certainly are getting more than a few things right.
Image credit: Clubhouse
