Clubhouse lays off some employees amid strategic shift

Clubhouse has laid off some of its employees, Bloomberg reported on Thursday. It’s unclear exactly how many staff the company let go, but at least some now-former workers left voluntarily to pursue opportunities outside of Clubhouse. Among one of the more high-profile departures was Nina Gregory, a former National Public Radio editor who joined the company to head up its news partnerships initiative. Clubhouse also lost its community and international leads.

“A handful of roles were eliminated as part of streamlining our team, and a few individuals decided to pursue new opportunities,” a Clubhouse spokesperson told Bloomberg. “We are continuing to recruit for many roles across engineering, product and design.”

According to the outlet, the layoffs are part of a broader restructuring at Clubhouse as the company looks to rethink its growth strategy. Clubhouse found early success in the first year of the pandemic, thanks in part to the fact you needed an invite to start using the app. Unfortunately, it also quickly drew the attention of a handful of well-funded competitors, including Meta, Twitter and Spotify, all of which replicated the app’s core functionality within their own platforms. Clubhouse has done its best to offer the best live audio experience it can, adding features like real-time captioning and high-quality audio streaming to match and surpass its competitors, but it faces an uphill battle against tech giants.