A16Z funds voice-only social media app with 5000 users at $100M valuation(forbes.com)
forbes.com
A16Z funds voice-only social media app with 5000 users at $100M valuation
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2020/05/15/andreessen-horowitz-wins-vc-sweepstakes-to-back-clubhouse-voice-app/
11 comments
Didn't we have call in party phone numbers like this in the 90s?
How is this worth 100m?
How is this worth 100m?
I don't really see how your first sentence is related to the second!
I'd suggest the reason for the valuation is exactly because we had this in the 90s (and earlier really) and it never made the transition to digital until now. So the market has somewhat been proven.
They might not be related but the second one is a relevant question I think.
This looks like a good example of investing in the founders, not in the business. The business is very WTF, but the article makes the founder sound like a known quantity.
This was basically my reaction, but the enabling tech is definitely not the same thing as the product. It seems like they're betting on the founders to find the right approach to make it an Instagram for voice (Instaphon?)
Maybe they have super high engagements per day - like twitter's early days?
Maybe they plan to ‘learn’ every voice submitted?
$20K per user is only 20x worse than Quibi with 1.3 million active users and $1.75 billion spend making it ~$1.3K per user, or even legendary Broadcast.com acquisition by Yahoo that made Mark Cuban a billionaire. Yahoo CEO Tim Koogle made a !brilliant! decision to pay $10K per user! $5.7 billion dollars written off in less than two years.
The opportunities generated from that is worth 10 million at least. It is just a better mouse trap in an economy bracing for the impact of a recession.
VC do not deploy marketing resources to normal channels they signal value through deal channels that do not make sense to other people. It is effective because even on the channel of a competing VC we are talking about A16Z.