The early adopters of Instagram were not VCs.
The early adopters of WhatsApp were not VCs.
The early adopters of Gmail were not VCs.
However, the early adopters of ClubHouse were VCs.
The jury is still out but it is already questionable whether ClubHouse will succeed or not.
Hard to think of a precedent for this pic.twitter.com/f2R1hRitqk
— Benedict Evans (@benedictevans) April 6, 2023
One can say with the benefit of hindsight though that the initial hype was probably less organic adoption and more VC chatter.
The VC industry is small, ~5000 as per chatGPT, to 80,000 if you believe in Google’s Bard.
The adoption of a business-to-consumer (B2C) product among highly ambitious, high-IQ, affluent users should be seen as a symbol of niche product-market fit and not success.