An app described by a liberal-leaning London newspaper as “part talkback radio, part conference call, part house party”, might seem an odd place to find two analysts and an economist discussing the future of electric vehicles (EVs).
But that was the state of affairs on Friday at noon local time, when Singapore’s DBS Bank pressed ‘play’ on its first foray into the online world of Clubhouse.
First, a few words on the app itself. Clubhouse offers users a chance to engage in relatively civilized discourse – something sorely lacking in the social media world – on an audio-only platform.
It is invitation-only, meaning new users need to be invited by existing members. That keeps headcount low and size keeps discourse manageable.
Clubhouse is simple … It takes more effort to fall off a log
Anyone can start a ‘room’ and any member can join in. Formats range from lectures to group chats about, say, music or cryptocurrencies, to silent meditation sessions.
The San Francisco firm raised $100 million from investors in January, including existing shareholder Andreessen Horowitz, valuing the world’s newest unicorn at upward of $1 billion.
Founders Rohan Seth and Paul Davison have kept Clubhouse cool and clubbable but not cliquey. That won’t be easy as it grows, as it surely will: it had 10 million users at the end of February, against 600,000 at the start of the year.
Much of its success is due to it being – for now at least – a brand-free zone. Firms cannot just barge in and flog their carbonated beverages or hand cream.
In effect, it is really little more than a long, advertisement-free forum, punctuated by breaks as rooms pop up or disappear, and users nip off for a bathroom break. Think of it as BBC Radio 4 meets 2020s Silicon Valley.
But if a company is canny, and it is adding to the conversation rather than seeking to overwhelm and bend it to its will, there are ways in.
Pumping up
Take DBS’s room, which opened its doors to Clubhouse members for an hour on Friday lunchtime.
It had the lender’s name in its heading: Lunch w DBS – Pumping up for the EV ride.
The session was good value. Chief economist Taimur Baig kick-started the debate, joined by analysts Eun Young Lee, head of regional commodities research, and Rachel Miu, an expert on China’s automotive sector.
Each had their say on Asia’s EV future. Rather too much time was devoted to clean energy-powered cars, buses and trucks in tiny Singapore, and far less to its far greater disruptive potential in Indonesia or India.
Anyone barging in with an uncouth uttering tends to get thrown out
Miu offered a view from the People’s Republic, running the rule over China’s 15-year plan, unveiled in November, to become a world leader in the sector. She pointed to structural problems such as the lack of charging stations.
Lee chimed in to discuss glitches in supply chains, the paucity of rare earth metals critical to battery manufacture, and the soaring price of cobalt and lithium.
Asia is full of firms making EVs for long- and short-haul use, but as Baig noted: “There’s no one here with Elon Musk’s dreams.”
Incidentally, it was Musk who projected the app into the public consciousness in February, when he hosted an open chat on Clubhouse with Robinhood CEO Vlad Tenev.
If EVs, whether manned or driver-less, are to become mainstream in a region lacking – beyond Singapore and coastal China – much in the way of good infrastructure, entrepreneurs will need to think outside the box. The capital is there, but is the will?
Correct forum?
But in this instance, the debate was less about the future of EVs and more of a question of whether Clubhouse was the correct forum for the event.
DBS runs plenty of online debates. Some are live-streamed to all and sundry. Others are the preserve of its wealthy clientele, from mass-affluents to the super-rich.
It runs regular media sessions, which can at times be a bit of a procedural bore, requiring back-and-forth emails with the communications team, forms to complete, passwords to fill out, and so on.
Clubhouse is simple. So long as you’re a member, you just tap on a room and you’re in. It takes more effort to fall off a log.
Will it take off? Who knows? The room had, at its zenith, 36 participants. In some, the headcount can number in the hundreds of thousands. This correspondent was the only person to ask a question – and he asked two.
But that is not the point. The conversation was peppy – unlike some analyst-led debates – and informative, and covered a lot of ground.
If it didn’t wallow in a toxic stew of grievance and virtue-signalling, it is because its population is still small and Clubhouse doesn’t allow you to comment on what was said. Anyone barging in with an uncouth uttering tends to get thrown out.
The room concluded with Baig discussing his “dream of an electric car-driven future” and those who stayed to the end were probably, without being aware of it, listening to the future.
Most big financial institutions, from commercial banks to multilaterals, have a wealth of data and knowledge held on their books and stored in the minds of analysts.
What better way to share that information with investors, customers and the general public, than via the online confines of the world’s coolest new app.
