If you’ve joined a conversation on Clubhouse , attended a virtual event on RunTheWorld, or binged livestreams on Bilibili you’ve experienced Agora. It’s been sitting there, in the background, making sure the audio and video come through clearly.

-It wants its customers to get very big, but not so big that they build in-house

Agora is an API-first business, which means it grows in two ways:

-It wants to expand to the west, but hasn’t made the proactive PR push that Zoom has to appease westerners security concerns.

The same room in standard video would cost $1,723 per hour, for standard quality. Premium would run you $3,883 per hour. It’s no wonder Clubhouse’s founders have said they want to keep the product-audio-only. Video is expensive!

-Acquires new customers

Zoom was praised for raising so little -- $146 million -- before going public. Agora raised even less. Zoom took eight years to go public, Agora took less than seven. But while Zoom is a household name, chances are you haven’t heard much about Agora. That’s because of what it builds, and who it builds for.

Lilian's bear case:

-All of this is to say, livestreaming the technology is here, but livestreaming as a medium is not... Fundamentally what I’m pushing back on is saying that a technology will get adoption because it is big in China, when really we should be asking what made it catch on there in the first place.