RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Thought leaders from the Triangle, AOL founder Steve Case amd other investors are going to the increasingly popular Clubhouse to spread the message about investing in the region.
Less than a month ago, Andrew Chen penned an article on the Andreessen Horowitz blog post announcing that the famous venture capital firm invested in the Series B of the audio-first social app Clubhouse. And, at the same time, during a weekly town hall event, co-founder Paul Davidson announced that the app’s weekly active user base had doubled to two million within the first few weeks of 2021.
Among those users: Adam Klein, chief strategist of the American Underground and director of strategy at Capitol Broadcasting Company (which owns WRAL TechWire) and Jes Averhart, the former director of partnerships at American Underground and former executive director of Leadership Triangle who recently launched the business Reinvention Roadmap.
Together, the two will participate in a conversation at 4 p.m. Friday titled “Why you should invest in Raleigh-Durham startups.” The conversation will be held in the “Startup Club” on the mobile application, which for now still requires an invitation to join and is only available on an iPhone.
Among the other participants: Chairman and CEO of Revolution, Steve Case, and a dozen other startup founders and leaders from the Triangle and members of the Rise of the Rest Seed Fund: Jamie Rodota, Anna Mason, David Hall, Max Tuchman, Jessica Mitsch, Igor Jablokov, Jamie Jones, Anil Chawla, Yasin Abbak.
In an opinion piece written for Bloomberg last month, Tae Kim, also known by the Twitter handle @firstadopter, argues that the application is poised to disrupt the current social media landscape, at precisely the exactly right time, by focusing on the power of voice and storytelling.
No stranger to the art of storytelling, Klein and Averhart will make the case for why investors ought to consider participating in seed funding and leading Series A, B, and C rounds for companies starting and growing in the Research Triangle and greater surrounding area.
The app allows users to listen to conversations across topics, which may be intimate with a few participants, or thousands of people listening to a live talk by a notable speaker. For example, Tesla CEO Elon Musk joined a conversation on January 31 to discuss his mission to get to Mars via SpaceX, the future of cryptocurrency, and the ongoing pandemic, then four days later, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg appeared on Clubhouse. The company is still operating in a public beta stage, meaning you must have an invitation to participate.
“I’m going to be on Clubhouse Friday at 4p talking with various #Triangle founders and the Rise of the Rest venture team (including Steve Case!) about why investing in this region is smart,” wrote Klein in a LinkedIn post.
Looking to join? A few folks commented on Klein’s post they had invitations to share.
