AP Photo/Evan Vucci
- Mark Cuban will launch a competitor app to the buzzy startup Clubhouse, The Verge reported.
- “All I can tell you is that I’m involved and love the project,” Cuban told Insider.
- Clubhouse is an invite-only audio chatting platform worth $1 billion.
- Visit the Business section of Insider for more stories.
Mark Cuban is involved in an upcoming competitor to the hot invite-only audio startup Clubhouse.
Cuban and co-founder Falon Fatemi will launch Fireside, a live-conversation app that allows users to record conversations, The Verge reported Monday.
Cuban confirmed to Insider he was involved with Fireside, but declined to answered when the company would launch.
“All I can tell you is that I’m involved and love the project,” he said in an email.
Fatemi, once the youngest-ever Google employee, previously got Cuban to invest in her startup Node, a AI-as-a-service platform. The co-founder said Fireside would allow for better conversations and prevent social-media echo chambers, she said in an email to creators obtained by The Verge.
Fireside will "level the playing field by empowering creators based on what they have to say (not how loud they yell) and we give their ideas the reach to turn a single conversation into the seed of the next media empire," Fatemi wrote, according to The Verge.
Conversation-based apps are having a moment
Clubhouse attracted attention recently after high-profile users Elon Musk and Marc Andreessen hosted talks. The 11-month old startup allows users to enter "rooms" to discuss topics like sports, entertainment, and business with like-minded people.
Clubhouse, founded by social entrepreneurs Paul Davison and Rohan Seth, already has 2 million users and a $1 billion valuation, and its popularity may have inspired a black market selling invitations to the app on Twitter, Ebay, and Craigslist.
Cuban has been on Clubhouse since last year, per The Wall Street Journal. He has invested in other social-media apps like Mercury Protocol, a messaging app built on blockchain, and Dust, a messaging app where conversations self-destruct after 30 seconds.
The "Shark Tank" star and Dallas Mavericks owner frequently shares his opinions on politics and business on Twitter, and has said individualism and having a social conscious make for good business.