Remember when live-audio app Clubhouse was the bright future of the media and tech industries, to such an extent that bigger companies were falling over themselves to copy it?
It seems a long time ago now. A number of those copycats have shut down (including Spotify’s) and now Clubhouse itself has announced a major round of layoffs.
“We’re scaling back our org by over 50%,” announced co-founders Paul Davison and Rohan Seth in a memo to staff.
“Clubhouse was designed to be a place where you could come together with friends, meet their friends and talk. It works really well when your friends are on the product and you have the time to meet up,” they continued.
“Millions of people in our core community know this. But as the world has opened up post-Covid, it’s become harder for many people to find their friends on Clubhouse and to fit long conversations into their daily lives.”
In other words, what seemed like a strong product/market fit in the pandemic has dissipated. The market has changed, but the product hasn’t followed it.
“In order to fix this we need to reset the company, eliminate roles and take it down to a smaller, product-focused team,” wrote the founders, while stressing that Clubhouse has “years of runway remaining” to figure out what to do next.
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