I've been wondering about longevity of social apps after seeing what happened with Clubhouse, BeReal, etc. They seem to burn so bright, so quickly, and fade into the background (as a side note, TikTok really has a remarkable achievement here, having stuck around and joining the giants). Unbundling of social also creates a big opportunity field for those "quick" apps, e.g. Real (@realapp_) does this really well.
OTOH I wonder if it's realistic for founders to experiment with several ideas at a time. Maybe a succession of ideas, but then isn't it discouraging that even reaching millions of users doesn't guarantee long term success? Would social apps come out of "social studios" only in the future? Maybe
Very interesting! Definitely crypto supercharges this venture studio model thanks to interoperability and composability, where it makes sense to build a sigle protocol layer and then plug into it a variety of different apps and experiences, even by different teams (like Lens).
More generally, it seems that consumer apps are following the same trend of art, music, literature, etc, where there is increasingly more local/niche content and artists and less 'big' global phenomenon. Very curious to see where how this will evolve in the future, even considering the ubiquity of ai generated content.
I've been wondering about longevity of social apps after seeing what happened with Clubhouse, BeReal, etc. They seem to burn so bright, so quickly, and fade into the background (as a side note, TikTok really has a remarkable achievement here, having stuck around and joining the giants). Unbundling of social also creates a big opportunity field for those "quick" apps, e.g. Real (@realapp_) does this really well.
OTOH I wonder if it's realistic for founders to experiment with several ideas at a time. Maybe a succession of ideas, but then isn't it discouraging that even reaching millions of users doesn't guarantee long term success? Would social apps come out of "social studios" only in the future? Maybe
Hi Li Jin,
Thank you for the post. It's an interesting theory. A new VC thesis in the making?
It reminds me of Brian Arthur's theory of clustering, often associated with the broader concept of increasing returns.
We are using a similar strategy for product development. Let me know if you want to learn more.
Founders: ignore this advice unless you want to be a lottery ticket. Instead, just build something real.
Very interesting! Definitely crypto supercharges this venture studio model thanks to interoperability and composability, where it makes sense to build a sigle protocol layer and then plug into it a variety of different apps and experiences, even by different teams (like Lens).
More generally, it seems that consumer apps are following the same trend of art, music, literature, etc, where there is increasingly more local/niche content and artists and less 'big' global phenomenon. Very curious to see where how this will evolve in the future, even considering the ubiquity of ai generated content.