The Chomp #032
Hey Everyone,
Welcome back to The Chomp—your weekly dose of the best content from the internet and beyond, designed to expand your mind and get you thinking. Let’s dive into it.
Quick Bite
Keep Running: “If you take 1,000 marbles and remove 2% of them each year, some marbles will remain in the jar after 20 years. But the odds of being picked out are the same every year (2%). Marbles don’t get better at staying in the jar.” (6 Min)
In the field of evolution, there was for a long time a misconception that the longer a species had been around the more likely it would be to keep surviving. Conventional wisdom concluded that longevity was closely linked with the capacity to endure. However, evolutionary biologist Leigh Van Valen proved that conventional wisdom to be incorrect. In his 1973 paper titled A New Evolutionary Law, Van Valen showed that correlation doesn’t always imply causation and that the probability of extinction for a species is effectively independent of its age.
In this excellent piece, Morgan Housel shows that Van Valen’s views on nature are closely related to success in business and as an individual. The world changes and those that don’t change with it are likely to be snuffed out by the competition. Lasting success is a never-ending chase—what worked yesterday might not work today or tomorrow. You need to keep running to stay in place.
The idea of running just to stay in place is a difficult one to accept. Intuitively, it seems as though you’re just running in a hamster wheel and never going anywhere. But this isn’t the case. Running in place keeps you from falling behind. It keeps you from being surpassed by your competitors, who are also running in place. With your foot on the gas, you’ll be forced to stay focused and alert.
Every now and then, with hard work, you’ll accrue advantages that allow you to run a few paces ahead. It’s at these times that it’s most important to keep running. No advantage is permanent. If you don’t keep running, you’ll lose your advantage and will likely go extinct.
Deeper Dive
Social Audio: Connection Over Community: “There’s something to be said about inventing a new category — sure, if you’re the first one there you get the initial attention - but I don’t think that will matter in the long run with social audio. Clubhouse was the first, it’s not the last and I’m not sure it will be the ultimate winner. Clubhouse proved that social audio works on at least a small scale, but there’s a lot more to be proven. Comparing Roadtrip and Clubhouse isn’t even that fair. Clubhouse didn’t build in an anchor. Roadtrip did.” (13 Min)
Social audio has seen an explosion in the past few months. While I think social audio would have blossomed regardless of COVID, the current circumstances have accelerated its adoption and thrust it into the spotlight much quicker than anticipated. The most notable company in the space to date has been Clubhouse. Despite only having 1,500 users and no public website at the time, they were able to raise a $10M round led by Andreeson Horowitz at a $100M valuation
While many folks in the tech world were surprised by the valuation, Clubhouse’s fundraise signaled that social audio is ready for its moment. Along with Clubhouse, there are a few other interesting companies that are seeing rapid growth. In this essay, Jack Gecawich chronicles Roadtrip.fm and offers a compelling bull case for their success. Another recent entrant in the space is Lunchclub, which I’ve personally been using over the past month and have found to be quite interesting.*
Along with a bull case for Roadtrip.fm, Jack explores audio networks as a service, which is a space primed for a big winner. There is a huge opportunity for someone to build a company that layers social audio onto existing apps through an API. Rather than each app having to engineer and build their own social audio component, they could leverage a Plaid like plugin for audio. For context, Plaid was recently acquired by Visa for $5.3 billion. I agree with Jack’s view that there will be a very successful player to emerge in this space.
On the whole, social audio is an emerging trend that I think is here to stay. Keep an eye on this space as it continues to bloom.
Tweet of the Week
Song of the Week
Apple Music Link
Books
Currently Reading
Recently Read
Wool has received fantastic reviews and I was excited to dive into this as my next sci-fi series. My excitement quickly faded after I made the mistake of listening to it as an audiobook. This was the worst narrated audiobook that I’ve ever listened to. The voices used by the narrator for the male characters are beyond painful to listen to. Nonetheless, I persevered through as the story itself is fantastic. Wool is an excellent tale of survival set in a dystopian future that one can easily draw parallels with our current world. I’ll definitely continue the series and recommend this to all sci-fi fans—just make sure you avoid the audiobook version. (4/5)
Parting Thoughts
This Week in History
Tesla was founded on July 1st, 2003. In just 17 years Tesla has become the most valuable automaker by market value, at $206.5 billion. (Source)
“You will always have some excuse not to live your life”
— Chuck Palahniuk
If you found something that piqued your interest this week, please help me out in expanding the reach of The Chomp by forwarding it along to a friend or sharing it with others in your network. Until next week.
-CM