This week, Natasha is bringing one of her favorite panels from Disrupt to your ears. She sat down with Clubhouse co-founder and CEO, Paul Davison, to talk about the core of Clubhouse, competition, and the impact of hype.The conversation touches on the company's hyper growth, celebrity power, and navigating social platforms and social patterns, with a round of questions from the audience at the end. If you love the conversation, share it with a friend. And if you want more on Clubhouse, Natasha dove deeper into the conversation here.Equity drops every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday at 7 a.m. PT, so subscribe to us onApple Podcasts, Overcast, Spotify and all the casts. TechCrunch also has agreat show on crypto, ashow that interviews founders, ashow that details how our stories come togetherand more! Credits: Equity is produced by Theresa Loconsolo with editing by Kell. Bryce Durbin is our Illustrator. We'd also like to thank the audience development team and Henry Pickavet, who manages TechCrunch audio products.

Paul Davison is the Co-Founder and CEO @ Clubhouse, the startup that believes people are at the centre of every moment, providing a platform to talk with friends and meet new friends. To date, Paul has raised over $310M with Clubhouse from a16z, DST, Elad Gil, Naval Ravikant, and many more. Prior to co-founding Clubhouse, Paul was the Founder of Highlight, a location-based consumer social service backed by Benchmark. Before Highlight, Paul actually spent time at Benchmark as an EiR. In Today's Episode with Paul Davison We Discuss: 1.) Entry into Startups: How Paul came to found Highlight in the early days of consumer social? What elements worked with Highlight that he took with him to Clubhouse? Which elements did not work that he learned from? 2.) Clubhouse: What Worked: What does Paul believe are the primary reasons that Clubhouse grew so fast? What metrics does Paul use to determine true product-market-fit and stickiness? What is good retention on Day 1, Day 7 and Day 30? How important is 12-month retention? 3.) Clubhouse: What Did Not Work: COVID: Does Paul believe that Clubhouse was the COVID antidote we all needed? How sustainable is that if so? What trends make it more sustainable? Live Does Not Work: How does Paul respond to Mike Mignano's comments that "live does not work"? Why does Paul believe that Clubhouse is not a content platform? Quality: Does Paul agree that the quality of live is not as good as the quality of produced content? Is that a problem? If the quality is worse, what is significantly better about live? 4.) The Future of Social: Does Paul agree that we are seeing the disregard of the once hailed social graph in favour of a new era of recommendation media? What does this mean for Clubhouse? With the rise of the likes of BeReal, how does Paul think about the importance of authenticity in the next wave of consumer social? How does Paul forsee Web3 and the next generation of consumer social being interlinked? What will it take for Web3 to break through? What are the core barriers today? Does Paul agree that the best consumer social tools empower creators with Superhuman powers? 5.) Lessons on CEOship: What are Paul's biggest lessons on successful company building? How does Paul manage the criticism and negativity of the press personally? How does Paul maintain the morale internally when the press cycle is so negative? How has Paul adapted himself to gain a thicker skin and not pay as much attention? Items Mentioned in Today's Episode: Paul's Favourite Book: Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood

After selling both of their social app companies and rethinking their day jobs, Paul Davison and Rohan Seth knew they should not get into the volatile business of social media again. Despite exploring more practical ideas in other industries, they were found themselves drawn to the potential of live social audio, and decided they had to build another social app. What they didn't know was that, as they launched Clubhouse in March 2020, a global pandemic would create a new market of people looking for virtual spaces to connect. Today, despite issues with chat moderation, an invitation-only launch and increasing competition from established media companies, Clubhouse has continued to grow and now has over 10 million users. This interview was recorded live as part of a virtual event in April 2021.How I Built This Summit - information and tickets at:http://summit.npr.orgSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.