Apps Become Infrastructure Become Apps
Dani Grant and Nick Grossman at Union Square Ventures made an interesting observation a few years ago: Nowadays things tend to start their life as an app. Be it on the web or natively on your mobile — new ideas manifest themselves as an app, which sometimes becomes viral. Take Clubhouse, an app on your phone, initially (and somewhat to this day) highly exclusive by being invite-only and taking a public broadcast approach to audio, allowing everyone to become their own radio show host, complete with listener participation.
After Clubhouse exploded in publicity and usage, we see two adjacent things happening: (1) An ecosystem of providers around Clubhouse emerges, providing anything from tools for Clubhouse hosts to “Clubhouse Bio Generators” (check out all the Clubhouse related stuff on ProductHunt). And (2) the ideas and concepts behind Clubhouse are turning into infrastructure. Heretic reader Thomas Schranz for example turned Clubhouse into an open source platform, allowing everyone to build their own Clubhouse with Jam Systems.
Once an app has turned into infrastructure, entrepreneurs then take this infrastructure and build new apps on top of it. I am sure we will see many, many variations of the core Clubhouse idea, tailored to specific niches and use cases, mashed and mixed with other ideas (Clubhouse meets Tic Toc, operating like it is Dispo anyone?) all running on infrastructure such as Jam Systems.
Once you see this pattern, you can see it everywhere. Which begs an interesting question: Where in the cycle do you want to play and where are the real opportunities?
This post is part of the “The Heretic”, Pascal Finette’s insights into leadership in exponential times. For entrepreneurs, corporate irritants and change makers. Raw, unfiltered and opinionated — delivered straight to your inbox. You will like it. ⇢ https://theheretic.org
