Anu Atluru is a startup builder, angel investor, and writer. She’s passionate about building consumer and social products and helping early-stage teams tackle community, product, and go-to-market challenges. Most recently, she spent two years at Clubhouse as its first head of community. Previously, she was a women's health startup founder and physician.
What I Learned at Clubhouse
25 lessons from an early employee on product, community, go-to-market, and more
Sep 1, 2022 · 19 min readUpdated Apr 10, 2026
Sponsored By: INDX
Tired of endless scrolling while looking for great long-form content? Download INDX and find your next great read today.
Anu Atluru is a startup builder, angel investor, and writer. She spent two years at Clubhouse as its first head of community, and in this article she shares everything she learned as the app grew from just 1,000 early users. We're extremely proud to have her share her learnings on Every, and we hope you like it!
As an early-stage operator, angel investor, and former founder, I’ve learned a lot about building startups and have become much more opinionated on how to do it well. I spent the last two years building at Clubhouse, where my learning was supercharged by the caliber of our team, the rate of growth, and the very nature of building in a new product category.
When I started at the company, the app had ~1,000 users. Rooms didn’t have titles and “clubs” didn’t exist yet. The team was just the two founders. Clubhouse has been built in public ever since, and as an early employee and its first head of community, I got to contribute to nearly every part of the company and developed a public persona in the process. During my tenure, the team grew from three to more than 100, and went from serving hundreds to millions of users daily around the world.
In recent months I craved time to explore new ideas again as a founder, and decided to leave Clubhouse while staying on as an advisor. I’ve taken away many personal lessons and refined perspectives on how to build and scale products, communities, and teams at startups—and how to do so in public.
What if you could see everything your curious friends are reading?
Introducing INDX— a social platform to share thought-provoking, long-form reads, and podcasts.
Ditch the doom scrolling and find your next great read today.
Product
Lesson #1: Earn the right to build the next thing
Commit to following through on what you’ve already planned or launched before you chase the next creative, experimental, or shiny idea. “Earn the right to build” and “have respect for sequencing” are principles I’ve internalized.
At the earliest stages, it can mean doing diligence on user needs and testing with no-code MVPs before coding anything. While scoping, it can mean being disciplined about what needs to be in a version 1.0 of a feature. Post-launch, it can mean rigorously ensuring feature quality and evaluating feature success before thinking about what’s next. And so on.
Create a free account, or log in.
Every members live and work at the edge of AI. Join now.
By continuing, you agree to the Terms of Sale, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policy.
Enjoy unlimited access to all of Every.
See subscription optionsThanks to our Sponsor: INDX
We finally have a focused place to share long-form content in crypto, tech, and productivity. Join INDX today and find your next great read, from a friend.