in the past a few years, community has been a buzzword for tech startups looking to sell a product or service based on their definition of a useful network. The pandemic has put a strain on these business models, with some companies seeing consumers unwilling to pay fees in exchange for advice they could find on Twitter, while others realizing that focusing on a target user was more important than finding the target user. largest total addressable market possible.

It’s one of the reasons I had so much fun interviewing the founders of Clubhouse and Chief at australiabusinessblog.com Disrupt last week. I spoke to the founders of these companies to understand how they’ve evolved to deal with a bewildering new normal, and while a social audio app and a private membership community for women in leadership are quite different in strategy, they shared the same thing. Atmosphere: Less is more.

Product-market fit of clubhouse

Paul Davison, co-founder and CEO of Clubhouse, was quick to address what others described as Clubhouse’s falling out of favor. He said the early hype of the app caused its user base to grow 10x month over month, a boom that broke much of the app’s underlying infrastructure. For months, he said, people had a bad experience with the app due to technical difficulties and the inability to find a room that suited their interests.