👉 Last Week - Clubhouse now worth $100M, FB's $500M trojan horse, Musk could do jail time, Kalanik's secret Uber-killer

What happened on Tech Twitter the week of May 10th, 2020

Yo! After Elon Musk sank TSLA stock with a tweet and announced he named his child X Æ A-12 last week and illegally restarted the Tesla factory at risk of arrest this week, I’m thinking we’re reaching peak Elon Twitter. Either way, I’m thankful for people like him. He reminds us of the radical ideas that were the norm in the tech industry when it was a small group of Computer Clubbers, whaling financiers, and hippie counter-culturalistas. He also makes my job finding interesting tweets 1000x easier 😜

Elon aside, it was quite a juicy week on Tech Twitter:

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💰 Clubhouse raised at $100M valuation

Our favorite ultra exclusive social audio app that you have to try but you can’t because there’s a long waitlist to get in, Clubhouse, raised a mega Series A from a16z at a $100M valuation.

Of course, there were copious hot takes - even more than we covered before in The Hottest Takes on Clubhouse.

A lot of people were upset:

Gemma Milne @gemmamilne

This is an absolute joke. In the middle of a fucking pandemic, a bunch of VCs thought it appropriate to funnel $10million into an app that is literally a place for VCs to voice memo each other in private. When I talk about opportunity cost of hype this is what I’m referring to. https://t.co/6QsMkBFE8j

Forbes @Forbes

Clubhouse, a voice-based social media app, has raised a Series A funding round from Andreessen Horowitz and is valued at $100 million https://t.co/nwr1A3coAH by @alexrkonrad https://t.co/NJGbOl2viS

But others defended the valuation:

Josh Elman @joshelman

Seeing so much confusion about Clubhouse and consumer valuations. Here’s the thing. Companies that connect people, and have people generate content can become incredibly valuable. Like 20-30B (twitter snapchat whatsapp) and way beyond (FB, Instagram, Youtube)

What seems clear either way is that social audio is a huge opportunity.

Rishi Garg @rishigarg

Social Audio: Winner: NONE. Spotify isn’t really social. Precursors: Spotify (Not social), Podcasts (no real winners), Soundcloud (still subscale) Enabling technologies: Airpods Cultural moment: COVID-19! And whenever it became ok to walk around and never take your airpods out

And there will be plenty of competitors coming out of the woodwork. As they say, for every Lyft, there’s an Uber.

Brian Wagner @bhwags

Clubhouse, Spotify and Turntable had a love child. Letting people into the new Roadtrip beta. Subscribe for early access 👇🏼 producthunt.com/upcoming/roadt…

As if Rohan’s, co-founder of Clubhouse, life wasn’t crazy enough. He also shared some sad news about his child’s genetic disorder - click in and support him!

Rohan Seth @rohanseth

7/We are fortunate to be part of an incredible tech community. Help us save our little girl and pave the path for others devastated by genetic typos. Please DM me to chat about how you can help, retweet this, or donate directly on savelydia.com.

savelydia.comLydian Accelerator — Save LydiaLydia was born with a genetic disease that will cause severe disabilities. Our mission is to accelerate customized genetic treatments for her and millions of others like her.

💸 FB buys Giphy

My guess is that Giphy will wind down deals with other companies like Twitter, it’s fun to think about what FB gets strategically if that doesn’t happen - see graphic.

Ramp X Æ A-12 @RampCapitalLLC

Facebook to buy Giphy for $400M in meme format, colorized (2020)

👾 Crypto Twitter: “something is happening!”

Crypto Twitter had a pretty exciting week and Vitalik explaining bitcoin to JK Rowling wasn’t even the biggest thing to happen.

Linda Xie @ljxie

Really exciting how much positive news there's been in crypto recently incl: - JPMorgan banking Coinbase & Gemini - Paul Tudor Jones' public support of Bitcoin - Square Cash App's major growth in bitcoin revenue - Reddit's beta testing of Eth tokens There's a lot of momentum 🔥

Brian Armstrong @brian_armstrong

For all the people who asked me "where are the use cases?" over the years, this is what it looks like. Lots of hard work by individuals, integrating crypto into real products. Slow incremental improvement, moving the ball one yard every day - there is no big bang moment.

Pomp 🌪 @APompliano

Bang bang! @JoeSquawk now owns Bitcoin 🔥

😎 VR Twitter: “something is happening!”

Despite the global pandemic seemingly stacking the cards for an explosion in VR adoption, nothing seems to have been happening.

Matt Mazzeo @Mazzeo

We’re in a pandemic and people still don’t give a shit about VR. Oof.

Until this past week when Unreal released UE5. Good god it’s beautiful.

Unreal Engine 5 #UE5 @UnrealEngine

It's time to see what's next. Watch the reveal of Unreal Engine 5—available now in 4K. #UE5 📺 vimeo.com/417882964

vimeo.comUnreal Engine 5 Revealed! | Next-Gen Real-Time Demo Running on PlayStation 5Unreal Engine 5 empowers artists to achieve unprecedented levels of detail and interactivity, and brings these capabilities within practical reach of teams of all…

Cue the early internet metaphors.

Alex Bowles @alexqgb

I suspect early VR developers who were overwhelming focused on hitting perf to keep refresh rates at a dead stable 90 hz are approaching a similar inflection point.

👌 Other Great Tweets

Jack Appleby @JuiceboxCA

Facebook: work-from-home til 2021 Google: work-from-home til 2021 Twitter: some work-from-home forever Bet these to become precedent-setting decisions that shape how digital companies handle the year. We're all looking for playbooks, & 3 majors just made the first move.

Amir Efrati @amir

New: Travis Kalanick has said his kitchen-rental startup, CloudKitchens, could be worth $2.5b *now*, up from $450m in early 2018, and will be bigger than Uber. $uber

theinformation.comInside Travis Kalanick’s ‘Bigger Than Uber’ Next ActUber co-founder Travis Kalanick’s newest startup is known as CloudKitchens. But a better name might be WeWork for Food.Operating through a small startup he bought last year, and supported by hundreds of millions of dollars in loan facilities arranged with Goldman Sachs and other banks, Kalanick ...

Lenny Rachitsky @lennysan

1/ Top 7 strategies to acquire your first 1,000 users: 1. Go where your target users are, offline 2. Go where your target users are, online 3. Invite your friends 4. Create FOMO in order to drive word-of-mouth 5. Leverage influencers 6. Get press 7. Build a community pre-launch

Ian from SeatGeek @ianrborthwick

No one is doing it like Cash App. 🏆 #1 Finance App 💰 $176M Q1 Gross Profit 📱 35M Monthly Users 🚀 240% YoY User growth 📈 1M Twitter Followers 📸 1.3M Instagram Followers 💪 Surpassed Venmo Users A case study on social + influencer marketing. (a thread 👇)

Sean Byrnes @sbyrnes

If you're curious about why the Google Meet button in Google Calendar so large now, it's because the Zoom extension inserts a button itself and they wanted to be a slight bigger:

ᴅᴀᴠɪᴅ ᴘᴇʀᴇʟʟ ✌ @david_perell

15. Law of Shitty Click-Through Rates Most marketing strategies have a short window of success, as click-through rates decrease as tactics mature. For example, the first banner-ad has a click-through rate of more than 70%. Now we avoid them with ad-blockers.

August Noble @AugustNoble

Someone with 627 followers on TikTok reviewed our product and the video got 1.5 million views. That’s just not happening on any other platform right now.

Yoni Rechtman @yrechtman

A week ago, OnlyFans posted that they had paid out $700M to creators lifetime to date. Now the headline image says $725M. At a 20% take rate and with the approx timeline, thats ≈$800m-1.5B GMV run rate and $150-300M revenue run rate. This is a billion dollar media company.

Noah Ruderman @devilscompiler

I wish there were a museum or repository for moral panic over emerging technology. It's happened for: landline phones, trains, cars, internet, TV, social media, cell phones, electricity, 5G, vaccines, smart phones, video games, comic books, newspapers, books, coffee, etc.

Pessimists Archive @PessimistsArc

In 1999 https://t.co/izcVbOQmRT was protest against online phone calls: "Only those who have the luxury of owning a computer will be able to use the Internet to make a telephone call. Why should the rich be allowed to make telephone calls at lower rates?" https://t.co/4GPBgQbPk7 https://t.co/alxShhk92r

2PM @2PMinc

10 years vs. 8 weeks

The Naked Poet ✍️ 📙 @Thenakedpoet2

#5 & the final one: @naval life lessons gathered from various tweets

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✌️ Thanks

Have a great week y’all!

Shelby Wolstein @ShelbyWolstein

Your boss answering a simple yes or no question:

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