Fact
When speculation IS the product vs. when it just fades
Shaan distinguishes Bitcoin from hype assets like Zed Run, Top Shot, and Clubhouse: for Bitcoin, higher prices from speculation actually make it a better store of value, so speculation creates the product. For games and collectibles, speculation eventually fades and there's nothing left.
“And both games and speculation sort of fade over time with everything except for Bitcoin because For Bitcoin, the speculation is actually what makes it valuable. You know, people speculate that the price will go higher. The higher the price goes, the more it actually is a store of value. So the speculation actually creates the product, whereas that's not the case for ZET.”
Idea
Money likes: charge a micro-coin to like a creator's viral post
Shaan reimagines the like button as a 'money like': liking a post costs a tiny amount of that creator's coin, so when a post goes viral the creator earns instead of the platform capturing all the value. He cites his own Clubhouse tweet that 7 million people saw but earned him nothing.
“The last one is what they call money likes. So let's say, uh, like, let's reimagine the like button. So instead of just being able to smash like on everything, let's say that it costs a tiny amount of coin to like something. So for me putting out a good post, like let's say that Clubhouse thing I did that went viral today, all I got was fame. I didn't make any money off the fact that 7 million people saw that thing. Twitter made money, but I didn't make any money.”
Steal thisLet fans pay a micro-amount to engage with content so creators capture upside from virality, not just the platform.
Prediction
Partial
Why Clubhouse will fail: the growth-vs-retention catch-22
Shaan predicts Clubhouse fails because it serves two incompatible jobs: content (great growth, terrible retention) and chilling/making friends (great retention, no growth, since you don't recruit friends to a make-friends app). He forecasts a pivot, a Facebook acquisition, and the founder quitting.
“So any platform where the value prop is to make friends, I'm not gonna bring friends. So now you have sticky retention, but now you have no growth. And in the other world, you had fast growth but no retention. And so you're stuck in this catch-22. And so then, just to kind of round it out, you eventually get disillusioned. You realize this shit's not gonna work. You try to pivot. You eventually sell the company to Facebook.”
Prediction
Partial
Why Clubhouse will fail: the growth-vs-retention catch-22
Shaan predicts Clubhouse fails because it serves two incompatible jobs: content (great growth, terrible retention) and chilling/making friends (great retention, no growth, since you don't recruit friends to a make-friends app). He forecasts a pivot, a Facebook acquisition, and the founder quitting.
“So any platform where the value prop is to make friends, I'm not gonna bring friends. So now you have sticky retention, but now you have no growth. And in the other world, you had fast growth but no retention. And so you're stuck in this catch-22. And so then, just to kind of round it out, you eventually get disillusioned. You realize this shit's not gonna work. You try to pivot. You eventually sell the company to Facebook.”
Story
Shaan already built Clubhouse — it hit 4M users and stalled
Shaan reveals his viral takedown was 70% lived experience: he previously built an app nearly identical to Clubhouse that grew to 4 million users (Tony Robbins, ESPN, the Jonas Brothers, Oracle all on it) before hitting the same retention walls he now predicts for Clubhouse.
“I built this before. Like, we built an app so similar to this, it grew to 4 million users, and Tony Robbins was using it and ESPN was using it and the Jonas Brothers and then Oracle was using it. And then, you know, some of the tech guys and the 37signals guys were using it and it was awesome. Product Hunt was using it. And then we hit the, you know, we get to 4 million members and we just started to see these same issues and we tried everything to fix it.”
Story
VCs fought over Clubhouse by hosting shows to win the deal
Shaan describes how funds courted the hot Clubhouse round by hanging out on the app after work; a16z's Andrew Chen won the deal partly by agreeing that Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz would host public shows and open their celebrity Rolodex.
“Andrew Chen, who you were, you know, hanging out with, actually was the one who ended up winning the deal. And I think as part of it, I'm sure they agreed to host some shows. So they have like They have the Good Times show, which, uh, that's the one that Elon Musk came on the other day.”
Fact
Why today's startups scale faster: 100x market, 10x usage, ad networks
Calacanis argues entrepreneurship is timing: when he was a founder the market was ~20-30M broadband homes, but now 2 billion people carry smartphones with stored credit cards and check them all day. Combined with sophisticated ad networks, this is why companies like Clubhouse go 0 to 10M almost overnight.
“Now you look at the market, we've got 2 billion people with high-speed smartphones in their pockets. So just do the math on that. It is 100x the desktop market that we used to address”
Steal thisRead the platform shift before picking your startup; a 100x bigger addressable market is doing half the work.
Number
Blab died at 10% monthly active: 4M users, 400K active
Shaan reveals Blab hit 4.5M total users in ~16 months but only ~400,000 were monthly active. A ~10% active rate told them the app would not work.
$10
Monthly active user rate · percent
“US has 4 million users, and I think on a monthly basis we had 400,000 active. That's why we knew this is not going to work, because 10% of your user base being active every month is too low.”
Story
Clubhouse as a one-month network arbitrage in early Silicon Valley
Shaan describes hopping into early Clubhouse rooms to meet hard-to-reach Silicon Valley people (like Ev Williams) who'd never take a coffee but would shoot the shit at 1 AM — a network arbitrage window that closed once the masses arrived.
“And so I thought there was like this arbitrage, network arbitrage opportunity where you could just like get on Clubhouse early and meet a bunch of cool people. Like, I, you know, we hung out one night with Ev Williams and I talked about, you know, like Twitter early on and shit like that. And like, that was cool. I would have never otherwise had that conversation.”
Steal thisGet into a new social platform during its insider-only window to build a network you could never buy.
Prediction
Miss
Sam: Clubhouse is a cool gadget but will be dead in 3 months
Sam predicts the buzzy audio app Clubhouse is not a real business and will be gone in three months, comparing it to HQ Trivia, a fun app that served its purpose and died.
“It's a really cool gadget. It's going to be gone in 3 months. All right. And I hate saying that because like I said, I don't like being haters. I like, I want everyone to win. I think this is a cool, it's like fucking Wikipedia, it's a cool gadget, horrible business. Like HQ, like it was a fun app, awesome, served its purpose, it'll be dead.”