Live Episode! Clubhouse: Paul Davison and Rohan Seth

So today we're releasing a special live episode of the show. It's my conversation with Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, co-founders of the social media app Clubhouse. I spoke with Paul and Rohan back in April for a how I built this live event that we did on Clubhouse. Now If you don't know what Clubhouse is, that may be because you choose to ignore news, and that's okay, no judgment. But basically it's a social media app, but in audio format. Clubhouse allows people to gather in audio chat rooms to discuss anything from sports to politics to networking. And currently the app has over ten million users.

Clubhouse launched in March of twenty twenty, just as the pandemic began shutting things down. The timing couldn't have been better since there was a newfound demand for people to connect virtually. Paul Rohan officially started working on what would eventually become Clubhouse a year earlier in 2019. It was the first business they ever worked on together, which is surprising because before that They kind of lived parallel lives.

Both attended Stanford for undergrad and grad school. Both spent time working at Google, and both started social media apps that were eventually acquired. The first place their path could have crossed was at Stanford. Rohan came to the US from India and was getting his undergraduate degree in computer science. And Paul was trying to break into the startup world while he was at Stanford's graduate school of business.

And honestly. Um it's probably generous to claim that I that I knew what I was doing. You know, I was just really interested in Getting involved in the startup world. And so I like the idea of going Back to Stanford.

and just immersing myself in that. So It was a great experience. I I went back to school there and spent most of my time just working on independent research projects, working with local startups and and entrepreneurs, doing small group dinners and and faculty lunches and and thinking about startup ideas and

Business school, I think, is kind of what you make of it. for me personally, I really wanted to spend my time getting really involved in in the start up world. It it was great for that. I mean, I I think Silicon Valley it it's still a special place and it was a special place back then where

There are So many interesting projects being built. Um and if you have some free time to to explore, it can be uh it It it was really great. You know, I I I got a lot out of it and really enjoyed it. But y you never know what would have happened if you had taken a different path, but but I really enjoyed my time there. And and why you were there, I mean you had no idea that eventually the the guy that you would

who became your co founder for this was also there. No, I had no idea. But I do think it's funny to imagine if we had just crossed paths there. I'm sure we did. I've we probably did. Probably walked by each other. And and at that time sort of Two thousand seven, two thousand eight, I mean you're both At Stanford. Um, Paul, you you got your MBA in two thousand seven. Um

But but around this time um I mean there's there's this explosion of, you know, new startups, right? I mean a lot of the companies we talk about today were just getting started, Slack and Airbnb and you know, these these huge Uber I mean these u Uber would come later, but these huge companies that we talk about now We're really kind of beginning to um to c to kind of crystalize. The ideas were kind of crystallizing. These founders were finding each other As well.

Were you guys were you looking at that, were you looking out and seeing that happen and and starting to to think to yourself, what could I do? What's what's an idea I could maybe bring out into the world. Rohan, were you were you thinking that way? Yeah, actually it was. Um I think it was when the Facebook platform first came out. And I think that was the first time that I really, really started to think about what could I build on top of this platform? And I always wanted to start my own company.

Um, the reality was that I was still in an H one B visa. And I couldn't. And so I I just continued working at Google and just kept building stuff there. hoping that one day I would get a green card so that I could work in my own company.

Meantime, um Rohan, you you're fully in at Google. I mean you would you would end up staying with Google I think until twenty Something like twenty twelve, right? Yeah, I think I left around February of twenty twelve.

And and Paul, what about you? Where you while you were at business school I mean a lot of folks we've had on the show who have been to to the G S B like Andy Dunn of Bonobos and and and others. I mean they they met their co founders at at you know in business school or they

they developed a network of people that they would eventually work with. Um w were you thinking were you like constantly thinking what is what is the thing I I could do, I could start? Oh yeah, all the time. I mean and It's funny, I remember. Brian Spaley, who who's Andy Dunn's co-founder. They were both they were both classmates of mine. And I remember one day in class

Spaley was coming up and he was looking at my pants from all different angles. And and I said, He said, May I help you? And he said, I'm thinking of starting a pants company and I wanted to ask you some questions about your pants. And and I remember him selling the first pair out of the trunk of his car and trying to convince Dunn to come in and start it with him. And uh you know, another classmate of mine was working at at Facebook at the time and she was trying to decide whether to drop out of school and and we were thinking Yeah, I remember talking about it and saying, Well

Well my space is a lot bigger, but Facebook is growing a lot faster. And and then another friend of ours joined Facebook in two thousand six and we said, Oh, that's cool that he joined Facebook. Too bad he didn't too bad he didn't join really early. And Uh I I mean It's Uh you're constantly being inspired by people doing things like that. And you know what I what I really appreciated was How

The the culture. really encourage that. Like I I actually interned at Google. When I was in school And had a great experience there, really uh, you know, interesting company, smart people. And I decided not to go back there full time because I wanted to go do something earlier stage.

And I remember talking to my classmates about it or or to my professors, and without a single exception, every single one of them, their response was That's awesome. Congratulations. And they all felt Google's a wonderful company, but the spirit really encouraged you to build. And and to start things and and Maybe it

uh, you know, romanticized it or or over Glorified it, but For someone who's interested in that stuff naturally. It's it's just, um it's really inspiring to be surrounded by people who are taking a swing and and trying and trying and trying even if they're getting knocked down every time.

And and Paul, you You went to go work for a company called Benchmark. um the the venture fund um to work as an entrepreneur in residence. Um while you were at benchmark You I I guess you had like

more than maybe ten, up to ten different ideas that you were kind of noodling on. Probably some were just you know, notes on paper and and others maybe um you got a little bit deeper on and I know you eventually landed on one called highlight, which we'll talk about in a sec, but tell me what w some of your ideas were while you were there. Oh man, I probably had hundreds of different ideas, and they were probably mostly bad ones. Um, you know, I I think a lot of them were looking at consumer products. that I wanted to see exist in the world. You know, pain points that you have every day.

Things like Uh, I I remember I was looking at receipts for a while. Like it's pretty crazy that you go and buy something and you they give you a slice of a tree and ninety nine percent of the time you don't want it. And the times when you do need it, you can't find it. And it it's just it it's a really bad system. And that was a problem that I wanted to solve as a consumer. Or another one that I wanted to solve was classifieds and and Craigslist. You looked at what was happening there, it was such a

Such a valuable business, but the interface was so lacking. And you had new pieces of infrastructure like Facebook and location services and other things emerging. And then there were problems that I wanted to solve in the world like. You know, uh people was a theme that I kept going back to a lot. Right, the th this notion that the people in our lives, the the people we become friends with, the people we marry, the people we do things with, the people we start companies with. They're the most important thing in the world. I mean nothing affects our lives and our happiness.

more than the people around us, but the way that we learn about people. And the way that we bring new people into our lives is just incredibly random and inefficient. And so I ended up working on highlight in that spirit, but I'd also looked at new ways to think about dating services or or friend matching services or or um other related products. Let's talk about highlight for a moment. Yeah.

Because um and and no judgment. I'm not judging you, but it s sounds creepy to you. This sounds creepy. Sounds a little creepy. You you land on this idea called highlight and you actually pursued it. This was a real product available, an app available. And basically It would use your phone's location. And then the app would um

Based on your location, it would say hey Um this person who is a mutual friend of of yours is around or this person has sh your sh shares your interests and they're around too, and it would enable you to Have serendipitous meetups um you know, in in you know, I don't know, you're walking around um let's just say part of San Francisco and you look at the app and you're like, Oh, there's somebody who shares my interests and they're they're turning a corner and we might be m up right now. That's right. You know, this is it's an interesting concept. And it was all opt in. So it only worked with other people who also had chosen to install the app and and and wanted to be part of it. But as you were walking around it would occasionally buzz and say.

your friends in that cafe right there. Or that guy over there knows your brother. Um or that person's from your hometown. And it was mind blowing. Like I know I'm biased, but it was so much fun to work on. Like it was the type of thing where you just work on it till you fall asleep every night and then you dream about it every night. And it's the only thing that you want to be doing. People used it for for knowing when friends were around, for for dating, for professional networking, for recruiting. It it was before Tinder, too, so there weren't really social norms around that.

And and the last thing I'd say is I didn't realize I I had never put two and two together and realized how Thematically similar.

Highlight and clubhouse were until someone pointed it out to me on the app here some some months ago. But they're both about connecting people, right? And and that's something that that I've always really enjoyed working on because I think if you can do If you can help people do a better job of that. I don't know, so much good comes of that, right? I mean it's

It people are everything. They're the foundation of everything we do. And and so it was just a problem space that I was really excited about. Around that time I think you and Rohan first met this is two thousand eleven. Um I wanna go back to you, Rojana. How how do what do you remember about

Meeting Paul. How did you guys meet? What was your first impression of that guy? Yeah, me. Um we got connected through mutual friend Elad. And I think we met at a happy hour. And we just started talking about products. I I don't remember exactly what, but I think it was one of those things where We both just like loved playing with every new product and we started talking about it. And um

Because I had some experience in location and Paul was Starting to think about highlight. I think we just kept talking, um, you know, about how I could be helpful there and Yeah, just sharing some of my uh you know, my knowledge around

I don't even remember at that time, maybe Android battery life or something. Yeah. Pretty boring. Um I I guarantee I was trying to recruit him to come work with me. Yeah, I'm trying to think what my first impression of Paul was. I think it was mostly just like, oh man, this this guy just like exudes positivity and energy. Paul, you went to you you you raised some money. um to to build this app. And I think you you started a company. You create a company called MathCamp. And through Math Camp you built um highlight. You raised about five and a half million dollars in

in funding from different investors and um I think you kind of premiered or the the sort of coming out coming out party for for Highlight was at South by South West in twenty twelve, right? Yeah, that was in the early days of it, you know. Um We we got a lot of attention at South by South West that year. That's right. That was it was um Yeah, you know, that was during the era where every year at South by South West people like talking about

What was the app everyone's using this year and what was the big breakout? And it was highlight. I mean that was the app people that year at South by South West. You had young people walking around Austin like wearing I guess white turtlenecks with the highlight logo on it. Um one promoting the app and meeting people. I mean there was a lot of buzz around it. Did you go back to San Francisco thinking I did it. I I'm this is it. Like this is gonna be the thing I do.

No I I I mean I would say far from it, but it it was a really exciting time. It was the first time I had ever started a company. And it's uh When you encounter your product in the wild and in

People come up to you and and, you know, or or you're talking with people and and They ask what you work on and you tell them and they say, Oh wow, I love that product. You know, or or I met my girlfriend on that or

They they come up and they tell you stories about all these amazing moments that it created. I I love that. I love it. It's so satisfying for me. I think the potential of social products and communication products Is so It's so large, right? It it's uh th they can impact our relationships and they can impact society in such a big way. But they're really hard.

And there's a lot of luck and there's a lot of timing. And that honestly, they're not rational things to work on because they almost always fail. And and highlights certainly didn't get the escape velocity that we were hoping for. At at the time you wrote an article for CNN.com And I'm quoting just a line you wrote. Uming more about the world around you just makes life better. You're responding to to people who are critical of this app, saying this is like a privacy thing and it's a little weird, and he wrote, in another decade we're gonna look back and wonder how we ever got by without this kind of stuff. Now

some of your friends who I think really like you and admire you have been quoted in in articles as saying Paul is very optimistic almost to a fault. Which I I think it's a an actually an entrepreneur has to have. But I mean you were really optimistic about the prospects for this app. Yeah, I think that's right.

I think that's right. And I think you come to You learn a lot as you build, right? And and you come to appreciate the the nuances and The hard parts. Um, I I still believe that it's It's crazy that we walk around and and don't know anything about the people around us and that you

You run into an old friend and you forget their name and there's literally no way for you to To get that data. And so you just avoid eye contact and pretend you didn't see them. I I I do think that our our grandchildren will think it's crazy that that's the way the world used to work. Just like i we we can't imagine a world without

the internet and without instant access to information and and phones. And and so I s I still believe that. But yeah, you could y I think the time frames and the exact ways that you get there are Hard to predict sometimes. Well, I think there's something to that.

But It didn't work. Highlight didn't catch on. It it I mean, let's just be clear, it it it failed. That's right. That's right, absolutely. And why why do you think it did? Why do you think it didn't catch on? Uh I think there are a number of reasons. I I think there are technical challenges back then. Battery life was a big one. I think if you used the app for a full day it it ate two thirds of your battery life, you know. Um

I I think the the location infrastructure I think was still pretty nascent back then. And and And the company was just two of us. It was my co founder, Ben. And me?

So I think there are technical challenges, but I also think there are social challenges, right? Like I remember talking with a friend of mine. About this idea that Uh, you know, you could be standing in line at Starbucks and The person next to you Could know your name and and

You know, you could see the common connections you have. You could see if you both went to the same school or or if you know they they were from your hometown or they knew your sibling. Um That's the last thing I want. We always approached it in a very opt in way.

And and it was only the people who who wanted to use the app that that would have Uh you know, any information shared with anyone. But I think that um I think it's very hard to know exactly what information to share. With exactly which people.

In exactly which context. All right, so you are let's pause on highlight for a sec, and and I know that I'm I'm a little bit off the time timeline here because I'm I'm moving to two thousand fourteen, but but Rohan, uh you've been patiently um listening to Paul's story. Um I wanna I wanna ask you about what you eventually left. uh working uh at Google and you started your own you founded your own company called Memory Labs and I guess Uh my ex my sort of description of this and and you can you can improve on it is it was basically a journaling app, right? It it it allowed people to take photos and journal entries and um create an an archive on their phone, basically.

Yeah, I'd say it wasn't really just one app. We just tried a lot of different ideas. So the the the main hypothesis for us was uh yeah, I I just like love recording everything about my life. I was one of those crazy people who who would at the end of the day I would talk I would try to capture who I hung out with, where did I hang out with them, what did we talk about, what was the most important thing that happened to me that day. And I love journaling and that's something that I wanted to built for other people. And so when I founded Memory Labs

Um I didn't know what form that was going to take. So you know, that's why I kind of went with a labs metaphor and the idea was let's build a bunch of different apps. And see which one sticks. Um, and uh the the main thing that I tried to do was try to make it really, really easy for you to capture and share your memories. Um with the idea that eventually you'll have this amazing journal.

That you'd keep for yourself. Rohan, meantime, memory labs, you're working on memory labs and uh I think you worked on it for about three years. And then eventually in tw twenty seventeen you sold it. Um, to a company called Open Doors. They acquired it. Yeah, actually, um it was a talent acquisition, you know, uh the acquiring company took care of our investors and we just got regular jobs. Right. Um and uh we were just happy to work there. You know, we we had been

uh working in the startup for three years and it was um Y your identity is attached to this thing. And it's hard to let go of it, but In fact, it was far from being in the money, you know, we we had worked on memory labs for a few years, taking very low salaries and

Um so it was just nice to work for a company that could pay us uh a regular wage. Yeah. How did you know Paul, how did you know when it was time to just pack it in with highlight that it was just It was not worth

Spinning another month or two months or trying something else. It was really hard for me. It it was I mean, I was so emotionally attached to it and it was such a part of my identity. And it's it's really hard to

to to give up on it. And so I think when we decided to work on other apps Um We Uh there there wasn't a single point where we just sort of said this isn't working.

But um it it was a lot of conversations between my co founder and me. And um uh you know, we We then spent another couple of years just really working on other products that were related, um, tangentially, but but different products.

And ended up uh ended up selling the company and what was basically a talent acquisition in in two thousand sixteen. And Paul, you sold your company to Pinterest, and again, uh it was it was it was a talent you described as a talent acquisition, so This was not like All of a sudden Paul Davison, I'm assuming. gets a a a you know a huge payout from from Pinterest and is set for life and goes and works for them for a year or so, right? This was not the case. Yeah, no, far far from it. No. You try and do

Right by your investors and your team as as much as you can, but but it's certainly nothing in that camp. Yeah, and and and Rohan, you went and worked for open doors, I think, for about um two years as well. And b both of you kind of Sep separately kind of.

You know, left. I mean a around that time, um you you would have a a a a life changing experience you you and your wife um had a baby? Lydia and um

And and I guess she was born with a a a rare genetic mutation That um that that causes impairments and and a mutation where th there I I guess there were no clear treatments at the time for Uh.

What how what What you did and what happened. Yeah, so um yeah, Lydia was born uh December of twenty eighteen. And I I think I remember my plan was, you know, I was gonna go on my path leave, and then after that I was gonna start a company, I was gonna think about stuff. And um, you know, uh twenty four hours after she was born. she started having seizures and um you know a few weeks later we found what the root cause was, which was basically this random mutation.

And uh Yeah, it was devastating. Uh we we Um but we did. what we had to and we we tried to educate ourselves the best we could. You know, we we uh dived into the research.

And uh we just decided that we were gonna do whatever it took to try to improve uh her quality of life. She was Supposed to have never um Sit up. crawl walk talk um she you know this was

This this is gonna be a pretty devastating, um reality for her and for us. And uh one of the things that I had learned while uh we were diving into the research was Uh there was a class of technology that that that could be used for to silence certain kinds of genetic mutations. And they were just not being used for

Mutations like Lydia's. Um because they were considered too rare. And that that just did not make sense to us, like calling them rare and not cheating them. You know, we have uh you know, my b my wife and I are both computer scientists and the way we looked at it was We have six billion characters of code in our DNA.

A mutation in a single character can cause a disease. And statistically it's unlikely for too many patients to have the same mutation. So this was a classic long tail problem where you have a lot of these one off mutations But they collectively affect millions of Kids like Lydia.

And uh it was anything but rare. And so we we kind of spent a lot of our twenty nineteen trying to understand what we could do. um who we could partner with. to um to to to fix these kind of mutations. And what we learned was Um, really where science needs to move towards is this idea of

personalized treatment. So you target an individual mutation rather than um try to find a drug. That can treat many, many mutations at once.

And so Uh, we had learned about a scientist who had done this once before. And uh that's the hope that we needed. You know, we started an organization, uh uh one of our limiting factors were uh, you know, we weren't independently wealthy. Uh so we we raised uh funds for for Lydia's treatment. And then uh try to come up with a plan so we could help

Uh uh scale this technology for for other kids. You you you founded the group called Lydian Accelerator Um what a what a story. I guess This is around the time when the two of you reconnect.

Yeah, so I mean um It's funny because um w when I was um when I started Laddy and Accelerator, that was around June of twenty nineteen. Um, I just reached out to folks in my community. And I um just wanted to

you know, brainstorm how we could uh raise money for this, but also how do we scale this? And Paul was uh, you know, one of the first people that I could think of. He's just so creative. He's You know, somebody that I've always admired.

And Paul was kind enough to offer his time, so we m we met in a coffee shop and Soma. I think Paul you ran over from the Presidio. Which I still found pretty impressive. Um and uh just spent the next few hours just brainstorming how we could help Lydia and children like her and I think we we did that several times over the next few weeks. Um, and I was very, very grateful for Paul's time and he was just so creative and

uh we were able to get to a really good place, uh uh with regards to the fundraising It it's um I I have I have three kids myself, right and uh I I just I think it's really inspiring. What Raw and did like he

He doesn't talk about it much, right? But But I mean really he spoke with hundreds of people. And I mean,

You can just see from like a father to a father just the love that he has for his kid and and he figured out that there was a way to make a cure for her and he said, I'm gonna go figure out how to do this and figure out how to fund it and and raise money for it. And I I mean as

I was his friend. But I was also like hugely inspired by what he was doing. So I don't think I did. That much for it, but I was really grateful that I could Try and help him think through it a little bit.

As you guys Started to talk through. Those ideas. How How did you start to talk about

Maybe working together on on a project. Yeah, I think it was just one of those things where we we just spent a lot of time together and we were both starting to think about, you know, what do we do with our day jobs.

And um I think after many sessions we just had like Let's just work together. We don't know what we wanna do, but we wanna work together. And I think uh initially we said, let's not do anything in social. We're we're just too old. We have families and it's hard and unpredictable.

And uh so we just said like let's work on something more boring and uh just a little bit more predictable. Uh I think we were thinking about uh areas like productivity and education and marketplaces. And when you when you started to talk about collaborating on something. Um I mean presumably both of you guys have you're both engineers, so so The two of you alone had the skills to to potentially build something. Right, is it right?

I I am a pretengineer. I haven't coded since college, but But yes. Like the way we the way we ended up collaborating is that we'd work together a lot on the product side of things. And then Rohan was doing all the engineering and I was doing all the pixels and and screen. So it was a pretty good

Yeah, we always joke about it like Paul was wasn't great at eng uh at design and I wasn't great at engineering. I hadn't coded in three and a half years or something. We we we were looking like Roland was saying, we were looking at education and marketplaces and productivity. All products that we wanted to have exist in the world. But nothing as high beta and unpredictable as as straight up consumer social. Be because it's just uh At the time when we were talking about doing it, I was

Forty and and had three kids. Like I I shouldn't be building a social app, right? That's not that's not a smart thing to do. When we come back in just a moment, how Paul and Rohan created Clubhouse, even though they knew how complicated social media platforms can be. And why they knew there was something special about live group audio conversations. Stay with us. I'm Guy Raz and you're listening to How I Built This.

From NPR. Hey, welcome back to How I Built This from NPR. I'm Guy Raz. So Paul and Rohan have now reconnected, and they know they want to work together, but They're not entirely sure. How?

How did you guys get on the idea of audio of social audio? Oh man, I think um Yeah, I like We both just had such an independent interest in audio. The very last thing that I worked on at Memory Labs, you know, when I finally felt like, okay, this memory thing isn't gonna work. Nobody cares about journaling.

was um Was an audio app. Um the AirPods had just come out and I just felt it was so exciting if we were all gonna be walking around with these AirPods, like what could you build on top of that? And so I built this app called with my co-founder, um also another Rohan, I built this app called Phone a Friend.

And the way it would work was uh you would open the app, you would press a button. And it would notify all of your friends on the app that you were free to talk. And the very first person who uh said except. would get connected to you.

And it was an audio conversation. And as more friends were free, they would join in the same conversation. So um as you can imagine it's not very dissimilar from club uh from Clubhouse, but uh the the the key difference was That it was only for your close friends.

So you would press a button and it would only notify four people. And most of the time it wouldn't work because your four friends weren't free. But when it did work, it was just Magic. It was just one of those things that you were free, you had a couple of minutes to kill. Um, you know, uh I remember this anecdote where uh an episode of Game of Thrones ended and I wanted to talk to my friends, I pressed a button and then we were just you know, uh discussing theories for hours after that. So You guys are talking about

Audio. Start talking about audio. And and you're f and and p Paul, I mean you're you're sort of Were you like a podcast listener? Where was that Yeah. So my interest in audio was it was more on the personal side. Like I think when I was working on Highlight, I remember I had this realization one day that I had stopped reading books.

And it made me sad because I love reading books, but I was just working all the time, and if anything, I was skimming headlines and I decided to give audiobooks a try. And it was amazing. You could speed them up. You could listen while you were running or driving or in bed at night, and suddenly I started. Reading all these books again. Um, and and then I got into podcasts and and and that was great too. And and I kinda never looked back. I I went all audio all the time. But I had always

Found it a little frustrating. That it was so hard to find good Spoken audio content because there's no reason it should be. There's there's no reason it should be. Like if you're a smart person, informed person, a funny person, you have domain expertise. You can just talk. And and people would love to listen to you, right? Like y I'm sure you've had

the experience where You've caught up with a friend for coffee and and left feeling really energized because it was a great conversation and you learned a ton the you know, it it's not hard to create good spoken audio content. The challenge is that it's hard to produce it. And to distribute it.

As I'm sure you know Guy, right? Given the constraints of of the RSS based ecosystem. Like Um For most people, it's really, really hard. Like if you think about it.

For most mediums that have emerged, you can just pick a username and press a button and create content, right? For text, you have Twitter, for photos, you have Instagram, for video, you had YouTube, now TikTok, and and they have things like hashtags and app mentions to help you get distribution, and it just works. But for spoken audio, think about how it works. You First off, you ha you have to Say to everyone. Hey, I'm gonna start a podcast. And you have to give it a name that's different from your own and commit to doing it at this regular cadence. And then you have to. uh, you know, reach out to friends and ask them to be a guest on your podcast, which doesn't have any distribution. And and then you have to schedule time with them, which takes another week or two, and then you have to learn about microphones and studios, and and then you'd record it. Then you have to do post production, have intro music and cover art, and then you set up RSS feeds. Like you shouldn't have to know what RSS is in order to talk.

And and then you put it out there. And oftentimes you don't know how many subscribers you have, people comment on it, and you can't even respond as the creator. Be because those comments live across ten or twenty different apps. You don't know how well you're doing. It's hard to monetize. It's really difficult, and on top of that. We forget.

That the foundation of terrestrial radio Is the fact that these conversations can be live or near live and interactive. You think about the most popular formats on terrestrial radio, you have live sports, breaking news, listener calling shows, morning and evening commute shows where you talk about the events of the day. And because podcasts have this delay between when you record them and when people can listen to them, you can't do any of that. And so we kept coming back to that. And say Ah man, how how how do you fix that? And and after talking about it a lot and thinking about all these different incarnations.

We eventually said Ah Damn it, we have to build a social app again. And and and I mean I I I can understand the problem that that you were trying to solve for, right? Because you're right. I mean there are are challenges with the RSS feed and podcasting is

Is complex. I wanna I I don't wanna go too But I think this is an important thing. Uh important um Uh

idea that I wanna I wanna just noodle on for a minute here, which is I don't think making good audio content is easy. It's very hard. The best Audio podcasts.

The the those are shows that are really hard to make. And so I think it's true that you can Have an interesting conversation. Um between two people at a coffee shop. But I don't actually think that

That's common. Like I have had lots of interesting conversations in my life where I've thought, huh, that was a great conversation, but but In hindsight, I'm not really sure if I recorded it and put it out into the world, other people would find it interesting. Um but I but but to your point I I understand. I I I agree that that there there are there's a lot of friction in

You know, for for for somebody who doesn't have a platform like like I do. um to get out into the world in in in audio. It's it's it's it's t it's hard. It's tr it's tough. Yeah. And one thing I I think I We've come to appreciate Through building this product.

Is When When you listen to a conversation It's a Different.

set of things that you're optimizing for. Like when I listen to a podcast, I'm optimizing for insights per minute. And I want well produced, short, punchy podcasts that uh where I'm learning a lot. If I miss ten seconds of it, I'll rewind and make sure that I heard it. But But when I'm in clubhouse.

It's a different feeling. I'm optimizing for a different thing. It it's almost like being in a room with friends. Or getting to listen in on Comforting and human about it. And it's and it's more about that connection.

Rather than just Getting content. Uh uh that's as high quality. uh you know, as can be.

So it's I I agree with everything that you're saying. And and you know, we're learning a lot about the medium through building this. Rohan, did you think that what we're doing here now, this is what it would be? No, not at all, actually. I mean Maybe we had a rough idea of what kind of things we wanted to enable.

Um But you know, the very first thing that we built was uh something called Talk Show. And that was a couple of months before Clubhouse. And uh the way talk show worked was you uh press a button and you would select the person, select the guest that you wanted to go live with.

And um you would post a link on Twitter. People could listen in and submit questions. Um, you know, you could bring somebody up from the audience uh to speak with you. But it very much felt like this.

rehearsed thing where you were scheduling time with someone and you were interviewing someone. And that was the very first thing that we built. And we did a couple of hundred shows and we realized very, very quickly that While the life. Portion of that was really, really exciting. And for all the reasons that Paul mentioned, you know, you don't have to post produce it, you can have real-time interaction with the audience. Um

Uh the reason why it didn't work was It was still really, really heavy weight, but So a typical creator on talk show. had to be pretty motivated to schedule a time with a guest and prepare for the show. And because it was recorded Uh the end show would actually end up

sounding a lot more like a podcast. Um and it wasn't that exciting. Yeah. And and I think we got better at saying, okay This doesn't work. We don't believe that this has that this is durable. And so we shut it down. And we moved the pieces around and ended up launching the first version of Clubhouse in March of last year. In the very first version of the app. The whole app was a single room.

There was no follow graph. Everyone followed everyone. There was no concept of an audience. Everyone was a speaker. And we had a Slack integration set up, so any time a new person would join Rahana and I would be on the phone working. And then I'd I would just hear Like the little bit of a

Little notification and I would hang up to go, gotta go, someone's joining, someone's joining and I jump into the road. It looks like you're trying to use Clubhouse. How may I help you? And half the time they would just leave because they didn't know who this guy was, but the other half of the time they would stay and someone else would join and someone else would join. Uh the the way it was described to me about a year ago, uh was a friend of mine in in the Bay area who was on it and he said, Oh, you gotta join this thing. It's it's like a small group of people talking about really interesting things and um Uh they were they just sort of described as like it's like the TE conference, but the the kind of like side conversations and to be honest. You know, that that kind of turned me off at the time because I I thought, you know, it's like that Groucho Marks line, you know, I I never join a club that actually wants me as a member. Right? Like I I was sort of turned off by that

Exclusivity. idea. Um But I guess I mean it sounds like that w invite only strategy Was What, like design to to generate

buzz around uh around it? I mean is that is that the idea behind it, Paul? You know, the whole notion that That it was an exclusive space. was was never something that we had intended. Uh really for the for the first

four or five months of the company, it was just the two of us. And we were on the app. twelve, fourteen hours a day just talking with people while we were building it, getting feedback. And we we didn't have a website, we weren't in the app store, we didn't have any social media accounts, we We we weren't doing press or anything like that. And it wasn't because we wanted to be secretive or or build anything exclusive.

It was just'cause Y you don't expect products to work and and we didn't want to go Try and generate hype. Uh because this thing probably wasn't gonna work. We just wanted to stay focused on the product and on the community. And I I would say P

You know, we started to hear from people that it was some secret exclusive thing. That was never our intention. Right. We always wanted to build it for everyone and to open it up as fast as we can. T To get the product right first. Um you

I mean Yeah, again, it it's it's it's an overnight success story that took twenty years, right, because of of previous failures. But you you you very qu quickly attracted big investors, um, Andreessen Horowitz, um You know ten million now they've put in I think more than a hundred million.

Um and a lot of other uh a f uh several other Um big investors uh in in Silicon Valley. Um It seems like

that happened very quickly. Like it uh you almost didn't have to pitch people to do that. That people were kind of banging down your door to get in in inside of this thing. Um is that is that Accurate? No, I don't think so. I mean we're

hugely grateful that anyone would want to use this product or or invest in the product. But it but it goes back to what I was saying before. We just wanted to stay focused on the product and the community. So so over the first few months after we launched One thing that we notice is that Um people kept coming back. And and we've been doing this stuff long enough to know that doesn't you that doesn't usually happen. But but there's something about it that was resonating with people and it and it was really the other people on the app, like You know, you know, eventually we

Had some people ask us about investing. And and we just sort of said, Wow, thanks so much. Um we we don't need money right now'cause we had raised a small seed round earlier in the year. Um, you know, but we'll let you know if we if we decide to raise money. And internally we just sort of said, Well

You know, if it if it continues to work then Then we should still be able to raise money. If we get new data that makes us think it's not gonna work, which is the most likely outcome, then then we don't wanna have A bunch of money. And we're not capital constrained, um'cause just two of us.

So let's just stay heads down and and keep building. And so That's what we did for a long time. Um until we felt that we we needed to raise some money and then we raised some money. twenty twenty I mean y your your timing could not have been more impeccable, right? I mean

You launch this in like March of twenty twenty. And um the whole country, the whole world. Shuts down. Um and Every I mean, so many tech companies saw huge growth because people were at home and they were

um you know chained to their to their computers now. Um You guys saw this explosive Demand. Um

in twenty twenty and with that Came. and and began uh the inevitable Um challenges of any social media.

platform. Um you know, rooms where there was um you know, anti Jewish and and racist and misogynistic, um

conspiratorial th I mean this is this happens. It comes with the territory. I mean I wanna kinda drill down on this a little bit because You guys are in a slightly um strong position to to to tackle this now How do you deal with that? I mean you're now you've got a country here. You are the um prime ministers and presidents of the country. Yeah, I mean uh I think you're right. Yeah, you know, moderating um

Social communication is uh complex and uh moderating group audio is uh has its own set of sets of challenges, right? Um uh one of the things that we we we realize It's not just audio, it's live group audio. And each of those terms live, group, and audio.

um have their challenges. So With life, y you end up in the situation where Um it's a living thing. It can evolve and Any direction. It's ephemeral. Um

That that makes it very, very diff uh different from other forms of social media. And because there's not a recording. sometimes things get misrepresented and there's a little bit of a game of telephone. Uh there's complexity to the group part. You know, and Clubhouse groups form dynamically, people you know, people you don't know.

Uh, that creates a really, really different dynamic as well. It's not just one person posting something. And uh that's unique to Clubhouse where people create content together. But uh you end up in these situations where Um, different members of a group may have different preferences.

So if in this conversation, uh, you know, you want to block someone, but I don't. Oh what should happen. Uh should they only uh sh should they only be able to hear audio from the person who hasn't blocked them? Or do we just not let them into the room at all? And so

We spend a lot of our time trying to think about these group behaviors and scenarios and design for them. Um and then finally, you know, audio has its own um uh things that we're learning about. So Um, it's just such a powerful medium, but you know, we've Uh

we we have also learned to appreciate the challenges. How do you how do you moderate tone? How do you moderate When someone is not calling on someone. How do you moderate when someone interrupts someone constantly? Um and you know, uh we have a set of principles that have helped us make some product decisions.

Um I may maybe Paul you could start. Talking about that. Yeah, yeah. We decided early on that if you can keep

The creator in control. And and give her the ability. to decide who is in the room and who is on stage and and to make those decisions. then it's a much better experience in the end for everyone. And so we tried to design the network structure with that philosophy in mind. So when you start a room

No one can join unless you let them. No one can come up on stage unless you choose to let them come on stage. We've also tried to Do a lot of other things with the product. To make you feel Like you can have an authentic conversation. So that's why there aren't any hearts flying in the air and and you don't have like uh

an applause meter that you have to monitor every time you say everything. We designed it to be hands free. uh as a speaker and as a consumer. So that you can just multitask, you can ha you can have all this found time. You can relax when you're speaking And that's really powerful. Like with audio, you have all of the

the intonation and an inflection and fidelity and and tone and bids and asks. But you don't have any of the anxiety of video. You don't have to worry about what you look like or how messy your house is. So people lie down. On their couches, on their beds, and they stare at the ceiling and they just talk for hours and hours and hours. But do you just accept as a fact? That there just will be racists and misogynists and and anti Semites who are just people who are cruel. Th there's just a fact of life and that you will it's you just can't it's like whack a mole, you just will not be able to

to control every instance of that? Do you just I mean I'm just I I'm curious, do you just accept that as a fact? We have clear user guidelines against any form of Racism, anti Semitism, hate speech, abuse, bullying But when you're building a product for the whole world

You have to know that there are bad actors in the world. And so you have to do your best to build a product that is durable. to to those forms of abuse. And you're never gonna catch everyone, but but you have to Always make it a priority.

That's the most important thing, and a core part of our mission. is to create a space where people with different opinions, with different lived experiences, with different views on the world Can come together and have conversations that are important and and that can be difficult. And they can sit in a room with someone and hear them talk. For hours. and and challenge them and leave that room changed.

W with if nothing else, an appreciation, a a better appreciation for where that person comes from. I think there's not enough of that in the world. And I think because of Because of the fact that we often live in places with people that look a lot like us that have the same background as us, and we work in places where that's true also. You you don't often get a chance. in the in the real world to be in a room with people that

That have lived a totally different life from you. And and and that's a core part of our mission. So so we don't We we want to allow liberals and conservatives and people with all different opinions To

to find a home here. And um it we think that's really important. So I wanna I wanna move on and ask you about There's an article that came out as That

uh says that Clubhouse you and and Rohan are are are potentially razing around or having conversations with folks to raise around at a four billion dollar valuation. And you may or may not want to confirm that. But I mean right now, Paul. This app is

Really hot. it's been written about in the Times and and and everywhere. I mean it's the Wall Street Journal there have been articles everywhere. Um we're doing an episode of How I Built This about it, right? And we generally don't do episodes of How I Built This on companies that are a year old. We we like to have five to ten years. You know, something to talk about. But you know, you started I mean you you had this app highlight. Which was the hottest app at South by South West. And I wonder I don't and I'm not trying to pour water. I think this is an amazing Medium an app that you've built, but I I is there is there part of you that's like, ooh, I've kind of been here before where I was the the bell of the ball kind of thing. I mean, d does any part of you w worry about that?

I don't think about it in that way. I I think that Highlight received a lot of media attention. But the product, the the community, the metrics were We're very different from uh w what we see with Clubhouse and and

I I think that I've got a lot of humility and a lot of gratitude from having built a lot of products that don't work. And and I think Rohan and I Both um U have approached things differently this time around.

And we've tried to focus on the things that we think matter. We try to ruthlessly prioritize the features and and move really quickly. And And not be fooled into thinking something's working when it's not. And we don't talk about

funding because we don't think that's An important milestone. There are sharks circling the water. Uh and I shouldn't say sharks, but but you know, this is a competitive environment. You were you guys were the first out of the gate. You've got thirteen or fourteen million users now and a h a lot of demand.

Uh but Twitter's got this uh um thing, you got an audio social app. Facebook everybody knows they're working on Discord has something going. I mean Instagram's got something. LinkedIn's working on something, Slack's working on something, they're all seeing the success of Clubhouse and they're saying We we gotta go after this. Um

So how do you stay ahead of the curve? I mean We the you know Vine, Periscope. I mean we've seen other there have been other stories like that before. So how do you stay ahead of the uh the curve and make sure that you don't End up that way.

I think that Audio is Audio is a durable medium. Like I like I was saying before, it's relatively new in the world of social networking, but it is the oldest medium. We've been gathering with other people and talking since the beginning of civilization. I think it's the foundation of

of civilization. And um You know, this idea That you could open your phone. And and be sitting in a room with five or ten interesting people that that you can learn from.

And and and you can laugh and pass along knowledge and be educated and make friends and close the app at the end of the session feeling better than you did when you've opened it. That's I think that that is durable. And I and and I believe that many other networks will incorporate Audio.

into their experiences. And And we just try and focus on what we're doing. I think if we stay focused on the product and and if we stay focused on the community. That that's going to uh To give us the best chance of of building something

Um Something That we're really proud of. Before we go, uh quick question for you. Um w I mean, you've got a long way to go. And and you know, the obviously the valuation is is one metric and it's a number people are focused on, and I know that is not something you want to talk too much about. It might make you squirm a little bit, but

Um but you do have a long way to go. You've got to prove this out. And but you've achieved a lot already. I mean it's it's been it's certainly the the sort of hottest app of Uh so it was the hottest social media app probably since TikTok. Um which is saying a lot. And and um particularly popular among uh like Gen Xers, I find.

How much of of of what you've achieved so far with this app and and this company do you attribute to your hard work and your Experience and how much do you think has to do with luck? I think there's a whole lot of luck and uh a huge amount of luck and a huge amount of timing and a huge amount of Um

I mean just those two things, I guess. The the one thing I would say that is heartening Is that You know, like I was saying before You do feel like you get better at

At pattern matching. And avoiding the mistakes that you've made before. And and um I feel really grateful that I get a work with Rohan and and with our team. Um be you know, to to be able to work with people that make you better.

and and can push back on on bad ideas that you have. So I do feel like We've gotten better over the past. Yeah. ten, fifteen plus years of of of being in the batting cage working on these things. But there's so much luck and there's so much timing and

And we like the thing that you said, Guy Um We have so much. more work to do and so many more things to figure out. And we don't Uh y that's not lost on us for a second.

And and we're just grateful we gotta give it a swing. I w I would say like when we set out to build Clubhouse. We were y you were asking about this earlier, Guy. Like I think in a lot of ways for me This is what We had hoped.

It could be. You never expect it to work. You go back to all the times you've tried to build stuff and the years and years you've spent working on things. And They they generally just don't work. And and

W the way we look at it right now, it's Uh we don't know what the future holds. But But when we think about the potential Boy, that's like asking what can you do with voice?

Th there's a lot you can do with voice. What can you do with text? What can you do with video? You talked about the good things and the bad things. It's It's it's the first thing you hear when you come out of the womb is is someone's voice. Right. It's

how you deepen friendships, it's how you learn. It it's how you establish new relationships. You think about politicians talking to their constituents and And musicians Putting their phone on the kitchen countertop at nine thirty on a Thursday and and just singing for

for fifteen minutes and you can feel like you're with them in their kitchen listening to their dog bark and And Yeah, and people talking about the games and the markets and scientists and and academics sharing research and and people learning new languages and and the thing that I get most excited about is The idea that That no matter where you live.

No matter what your economic situation is, no matter what small town You're in or who you have access to. You can open up the phone. And you can be in the room. You can suddenly be in the room.

It's Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, co-founders of the social media app, Clubhouse. This conversation took place at a virtual live event on Clubhouse in April. To find out more about NPR's virtual live events, visit nprpresents.org. This episode was produced by Liz Metzger, with music composed by Ramteen Arablui. Thanks also to Farah Safari, Janet Ujon Lee, John Isabella, Julia Carney, Neva Grant, and Jeff Rogers. I'm Guy Raz and you've been listening to How I Built This from NPR.

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