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Paul Davison

Co-Founder & CEO, Clubhouse · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutive@pdavison ↗LinkedIn ↗clubhouse.com ↗

Paul Davison is the co-founder and CEO of Clubhouse. He previously founded Highlight, a location-based social discovery app acquired by Pinterest.

18statements → 9claims → 7claims resolved → 71%fully supported → 3.83/5average certainty → 1.89/5average debate potential → 4.2/5argument clarity · the sources → 5said about them ↓

5 supported 1 partly supported 1 contradicted 2 not checkable as stated how the 9 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

2 predictions · 7 assertions · 3 opinions · 3 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 9 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 7 are resolved, and 2 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Paul argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Paul Davison refuses to make Clubhouse a fully distributed company
“I don't want to be fully distributed.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 44:49 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
The winning audio social network will be focused solely on spoken audio
“So I believe that the company who wins is going to be company that is fully focused on that medium.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 29:49 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
0% certainty 3
88% certainty 4
100% certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

Argument clarity: do they answer the question? how? →

4.2 / 5 directness 4.2 · coherence 4.6 · precision 3.9 · compression 3.6

redirected or did not address 2 of 25 assessed questions (8%). Watch them ▸

This is a score against a rubric. It is not a rank. Every host question → answer exchange is scored with names hidden on directness, coherence, precision and compression, 1–5 each, on meaning alone: disfluencies are ignored, and only raw unedited episodes count. This is the score that measures thought. Every scored exchange, scores shown → · The rubric and its checks →

How they sound: speaking style how? →

257 words/min while actually speaking · 13.5 um and uh per 1k words · 23 false starts per 1k · 32.1% of pauses land inside a clause

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,926 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

How the interview went all their pushback → series average →

Across 1 rated episode:

host pushback ▾ 6/10
pushed back at the host 2/10
setup questions received 55%

Everything Paul Davison said on 20VC that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Insight
Live audio fails for passive content but works for active socializing
“Live for content is really hard. From my perspective, Clubhouse is not about content. Clubhouse is about talking. Right. And like I was saying, 70 to 80 minutes a day, people are in these rooms and 30 to 40% of them are talking. They're hanging out with people…”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 21:31 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Average Clubhouse users spend 70-80 minutes daily, and 30-40% speak
“Our average person, if you join a room on Clubhouse on, on average, you're there about 70 or 80 minutes a day. 30 to 40% of people are talking, depending if you look on a weekly or daily basis.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 18:23 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Didn’t hold up
The winning audio social network will be focused solely on spoken audio
“So I believe that the company who wins is going to be company that is fully focused on that medium.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 29:49 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Paul Davison claims Clubhouse has years of cash runway remaining
“We have years of runway right now.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 30:22 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Paul Davison dismisses Twitter Spaces as a broadcast product, unlike Clubhouse
“Twitter is doing what they've done in the past, which is helping people broadcast to other people. And I think that, you know, the they've done a fine job at that, and it's pretty different from what I think we target at Clubhouse. And I can talk more about th…”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 33:52 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Clubhouse's public feed shows only a fraction of total network activity
“We have actively seen more and more rooms going private and semi-private over time. So you actually only see a fraction of what's happening on the Clubhouse network when you open the app, and that's increasingly true over time.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 35:37 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clubhouse is splitting into private user-created sub-networks called 'houses'
“Right now, one of the things that we're doing is actually splitting the network up into many different networks. So anyone, any person, any group, any community can create their own private section within Clubhouse called a house.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 39:06 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Paul Davison argues fully in-person companies are no longer practical
“I don't think it's practical to build a fully in-person company anymore.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 44:43 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
Founders cannot build great companies by nickel-and-diming employee equity
“You don't build a great company by nickel and diming and trying to like optimize how much equity you retain.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 6:21 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Partly supported
Clubhouse grew 10x month-over-month for two months during its viral spike
“And then we had a couple months where we just grew like 10 X every month.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 16:00 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Insight
For consumer social apps, Day 30 retention over 20% is good
“If you define D 30 as what percent of people who install the app on D zero physically open the app on the 30th day, not on the week that follows, but on that day, I think north of north of 20% is good, 50% is great.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 19:30 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Prediction Held up
Paul Davison refuses to make Clubhouse a fully distributed company
“I don't want to be fully distributed.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 44:49 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Opinion
Paul Davison names Bubba Murarka as Clubhouse's most helpful angel investor
“I think Bubba Maraca has probably been the most helpful.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 48:20 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clubhouse founders built and killed precursor app Talkshow in six weeks
“We had this app called Talkshow, which was like a more formal precursor to Clubhouse. It was a bit more broadcast-y and you know, we built it in a few weeks. There were hints of magic to it, but we didn't believe that it was going to be durable. It didn't seem…”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 3:04 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clubhouse raised its Series A with only two people on the team
“So when we did our series A, the company was two of us. Rohan was doing all the engineering. I was doing all the pixels and we would collaborate a lot on product. It was just us.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 8:03 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clubhouse launched as a single room where everyone was a speaker
“When we launched Clubhouse, it was quite simple. It was a single room. The whole app was a single room. There was no audience. Everyone was a speaker. There was no follow up. Everyone followed everyone and you couldn't change that.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 10:29 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Disclosure
Clubhouse had under eight employees six months after its Series A
“Six months after the series A, the company was still probably like seven of us, eight of us.”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 15:55 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings
Assertion Supported
Clubhouse scaled from 9 to 95 employees in a single year
“We went from nine people to 95 people over the course of a year”
Paul Davison Sep 26, 2022 ▶ 44:51 Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 · 20VC with Harry Stebbings

The other half of the tape: Paul Davison's own voice is left out of every number here. Other people bring the name up 5 times in 2 episodes on 20VC. every mention, with the transcript →

Who brings them up most Sahil Lavingia 4

Every mention by year

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Clubhouse CEO Paul Davison: What does Clubhouse do now to regain mindshare? | | 20VC #929 Sep 26, 2022 36m
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