Over the past year, COVID has redefined the 24 hour day. We no longer have to commute or spend time waiting in lines. And, in many cases, COVID has enabled fully asynchronous interactions in the workplace allowing anyone to work from anywhere at any time. By moving from “live” to “time-shifted” work, we as a society have turned time into a more flexible and nonrival commodity. And given the many advantages of asynchronous work, I believe it’s unlikely we’ll return to the same world we lived in pre-COVID.
Many have yet to contemplate the second-order effects of this new paradigm. For decades, our lives have revolved around work. Apart from sleep, work anchored our day in terms of time spent. Other activities were typically relegated to the afternoons and evenings.
By moving to asynchronous work, we have flattened the curve of when people are able to work. No longer is work something that must be done between 9am and 5pm. This has allowed us to reorder our hierarchy of needs and enable new experiences during parts of the day that were previously unimaginable. We can now prioritize our health, social interactions, and commerce and fill in the rest of our day with work.
As a result, I am not surprised to see new synchronous products gaining such tremendous adoption, despite many failing just a few years ago. We can all remember the examples — Meerkat, Houseparty, Periscope, etc. — that promised to bring live experiences to the masses. These past companies failed in creating long-lasting stickiness with consumers, which itself stemmed from the challenges of generating sufficient concurrent usage between content creators and consumers throughout many parts of the day. Ironically, the only synchronous platforms that really succeeded in the West — Discord*, Roblox*, and Twitch — all addressed a userbase that didn’t spend the majority of their day at work.
This is no longer a problem in the New 24 Hour Day and many companies are taking advantage including Backyard*, BallerTV*, Clubhouse, Popshop, and Virtualtrips. Right time, right products, right place.
This is Year One for platforms focused on live interactions. If you are working on companies in this space, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
*Indicates an Index Ventures portfolio company