Paul Davison
Co-Founder & CEO, Clubhouse. On 2 shows, 2 appearances. The Shows tab opens the full record on each.
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.
2shows
2appearances
30statements
9resolved
6supported
1contradicted
67%fully supported
6said about them ↓ Everything Paul Davison said on any show that made the record, most notable first. Each card names its show and opens the statement there.
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…”
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.”
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 claims Clubhouse has years of cash runway remaining
“We have years of runway right now.”
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…”
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.”
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 argues fully in-person companies are no longer practical
“I don't think it's practical to build a fully in-person company anymore.”
Davison: Future generations will expect ambient data on nearby people
“I do think that our grandchildren will think it's crazy that that's the way the world used to work. Just like we can't imagine a world without the internet and without instant access to information and phones.”
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.”
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.”
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 refuses to make Clubhouse a fully distributed company
“I don't want to be fully distributed.”
Paul Davison names Bubba Murarka as Clubhouse's most helpful angel investor
“I think Bubba Maraca has probably been the most helpful.”
Davison: Social and communication products are not rational to build
“I think the potential of social products and communication products is so, it's so large, right? It's, 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 timin…”
Davison: Creating audio content is easy, but RSS distribution is broken
“You know, 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 the RSS based ecosystem, like for most people, it's really, really hard…”
Davison: Podcasts lose the live interactivity that makes radio successful
“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 call-in shows, mornin…”
Davison: Podcasts optimize for insight density; Clubhouse optimizes for human connection
“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 where I'm learning a lot and If I miss …”
Davison: Audio provides conversational fidelity without the anxiety of video
“Like with audio, you have all of the intonation and inflection and fidelity 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.”
Davison: Fundraising is not an important milestone worth discussing publicly
“We don't talk about funding because we don't think that's An important milestone.”
Davison: Clubhouse's breakout success is driven primarily by luck and timing
“I think there's a whole lot of luck and a huge amount of luck and a huge amount of timing and a huge amount of I mean, just those two things, I guess.”
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…”
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.”
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 across the shows. 1 statement on the record names them. every mention, with the transcript →
Who brings them up most Sahil Lavingia 4
Statements about Paul Davison, by other people (1)
Seth: Davison and I initially resolved to avoid building social apps
“And I think initially we said, let's not do anything in social. We're just too old. We have families and it's hard and unpredictable. And so we just said like, let's work on something more boring and just a little bit more predictable. I think we were thinking…”
Every mention by year
tap a year for its mentions
20VC 5
2021 1 mention in 1 episode
One line per show, most statements first. The link opens Paul's full record on that show: the calibration, argument clarity, speaking style and every statement made there.
| Show | Role there | Eps | Statements | Record | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 20VCLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Clubhouse | 1 | 18 | 71% 5/7 | full record on 20VC → |
 HOW I BUILT THISLEDGER | Co-Founder & CEO, Clubhouse | 1 | 12 | 50% 1/2 | full record on How I Built This → |