Latest news with #Partiful
Time Magazine
2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Time Magazine
TIME100 Most Influential Companies 2025: Partiful
Partiful's app brings event planning into the social media age. Hosts can poll guests to choose an ideal time, collect RSVPs, and attendees can DM each other, share party pics and more. It's reached success with party planners in their 20s and 30s setting up everything from weddings to casual events like birthdays. Partiful's user activity rose by 600% in 2024, boosted in part by the buzz around powering a Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest in New York in October that the Oscar-nominated actor himself showed up for. It added over 2 million new users in the first quarter of 2025, and grew globally as well, reaching users in over 100 countries. In February, Apple launched its own version of an event app in an apparent bid to compete. Partiful CEO and co-founder Shreya Murthy thinks the simple evite app's success shows that young people care about keeping the dying art of human contact alive. 'It's easier than ever these days to be fully entertained and even feel a sense of social connection through your phone. But we've realized that so much of that is empty calories,' she says. 'What Partiful does is try to make it as frictionless as possible to gather people in the real world.'
Business Insider
3 days ago
- Entertainment
- Business Insider
RSVP SOS
Julia Landon is moving out of Jersey City this summer, and she's enlisting her friends to schlep boxes. Instead of texting or calling them to beg for help, she's inviting them on Partiful. The 27-year-old made three events on the popular event planning app: one for packing ("Pizza, Packing and Party — oh my!"), one for loading the truck (marked with a cartoon of a vintage U-Haul truck that reads "U help me haul" in the company's logo), and a final going away party at a bar ("One Last Time," which, because no Gen Z party is complete without one, is decked with a Shrek meme). Founded in 2020, the venture-backed Partiful has become the talk of the town in online invites and is trying to grow beyond the casual hang to take on save the dates and wedding invites. But it's competing in a crowded marketplace of companies looking to get ROI from your RSVP. There's the new Apple Invites and Shine Parties (from former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer's AI company Sunshine) and also Luma, all of which echo Partiful's playful vibe. There are early adopters like Evite and Paperless Post, which are known for email invitations more than texts. And then there's a chaotic flurry of other ways to ask people to come to your hang: group chats, email threads, Instagram close friends stories, Snapchats, Canva cards, and the dying art of a phone call. When our phones endlessly ping with invites, it's harder to understand what we're attending and what's expected of us. Landon says using Partiful "really does help set the tone" of whatever event she's hosting, whether it's a New Year's Eve party or a Seder. The app's cute aesthetic leans more fun than formal, with the ability to make bubbles and confetti move across the screen and add personalized GIFs. But that also can be cringe to older invitees, and the option to have guests Venmo funds toward your party upon RSVP'ing could send most over 40 into an etiquette tailspin. Tech should have made invites seamless. But there's no consensus on a straightforward, non-cringe, anxiety-quelling way to earnestly ask people to show up for you. There are too many ways to send invites running into too many ways to receive them — and ultimately, some people will still ignore an invite or choose not to show up. RSVP etiquette seems to have died off just as flaking has risen to a social norm. Welcome to the age of invitation overload. "It's exhausting," Fernanda Read tells me of the state of invitations. The founder of the luxury travel company At The Top But Not Alone says she prefers "whatever doesn't require me to make a new account." Read, 43, recently received a wedding invite in a group text and on WhatsApp and was thrown into a sea of dozens of unknown phone numbers. That wasn't any better, she says: "It's just a hot mess." Emily Post would drop an f-bomb if she were alive today to see the chaotic state of invitation etiquette. In the past year, I've received invites for: an adult's birthday party in a vacant lot, replete with live reptiles, sent via Partiful; a wedding via Paperless Post; a 30th birthday marked with a Canva-made card sent in a chatty group text (cute, but I made the mistake of not saving the image and struggled to remember what time dinner started); and a barbecue using Facebook that I had no idea about until the friend texted me a few days before wondering whether I was coming. People take to Reddit to ask repeatedly what invite platforms are best for communicating across groups, what they should use for a toddler's birthday, or whether digital invites for a wedding are tacky. Emily Post would drop an f-bomb if she were alive today to see the chaotic state of invitation etiquette. I spoke with experts on manners and invitations as well as the self-appointed event coordinators of their friend groups about how they navigate the stress and anxiety of modern party planning and why they're brave enough to keep inviting people to get together. However they're sent, all invites should receive replies, no matter how formal or informal, says Myka Meier, founder of the etiquette school Beaumont Etiquette. But those that are personalized and actually address the invitee, whether on Evite or in a call or text, are likely to influence the receiver to feel their presence at an event is more important. "If they feel like there was little effort put into the invitation, you'll see probably little effort for the reply," Meier says. The way an invite goes out may seem like a small detail, but it can make or break a gathering. "How you communicate things is very important, and it influences what the person understands about the event," says Alexa Hirschfeld, a cofounder of Paperless Post, which has sent nearly a billion invites since 2009 and focuses on more formal events, like weddings, showers, and milestone birthdays. Since the dawn of online invitations some 30 years ago, we've made the invite process messier. Various invite companies may encourage people to download apps; Partiful prompts guests to RSVP before revealing the event's location or other attendees (which can leave hosts with handfuls of maybes, a Type A planner's nightmare). New York Tech Week caused drama earlier this month by requiring all official events to use Partiful — Andreessen Horowitz, which ran the latest iteration of Tech Week, is also an investor in Partiful, leading the app's $20 million Series A in 2022. The move left Tech Week attendees confused about whether they should look to Luma or Partiful for events. We've "strayed from the light," when it comes to planning, says Tyler Bainbridge, a former software engineer at Meta who's the 29-year-old founder of the new social network Since many have abandoned their Facebook accounts, there's been nothing like the site's events feature to help people discover events as seamlessly — Bainbridge says he'll often see a post on Instagram for an event and think, "That looks amazing," but it's easily lost. "You can't actually see which of your friends are going," he says. "They may have 2,000 likes, but who's actually going to the thing? And, it's easy to forget about them." He says is working on its own events feature, which would draw people more to community events they have an interest in, much like Facebook has done. Invites matter, but maybe the platforms they're sent on don't. For many younger hosts, Partiful is the standout replacement. Kirsten Meyer, a 25-year-old in Portland, Oregon who works in public relations, swears by the app to send out invites even when a gathering includes just a handful of people. (On TikTok, people make videos about asking someone on a date via Partiful or setting up time for crash-out convos with a bestie.) She's hosted a murder-mystery-themed party, a "Love Island" watch party, and a Beer Olympics. Customizing the invites instead of just sending a text, she says, helps "to get the vibe and theme across" and conveys that people better come prepared to play their part. Partiful declined to share specific numbers on invites with me, but Jess Eames, head of the company's business and product operations, tells me in an email that Partiful has hosted tens of millions of invites. Birthdays are popular, but so is "throwing parties without any particular reason — just for the sake of partying," Eames says, and weddings are becoming more common on the app, too. Invites matter, but maybe the platforms they're sent on don't. Sukhi Sahni takes party planning so seriously that her friends have jokingly dubbed her the chief administrative officer of her WhatsApp chat, the NOVA gang (short for Northern Virginia, where she and a few other longtime friends live). She has hosted big events like Christmas and Diwali celebrations, but she also helps make personalized invites for different members of the group's birthdays, sometimes sending out videos that feature photos of the honoree and include a voice memo at the end with the pertinent details. "When you see yourself in something, you are more likely to connect," Sahni, a public relations marketing executive, tells me. Right now, the group is in the middle of a big milestone: Several members are turning 50. But it's not just the lead up to the event — Sahni tells me she will also often take the photos from the event and turn them into a picture book as a gift. Part of what makes these events so successful is that people trust that when Sahni is behind the planning, it's going to turn out well. That meant building trust over multiple gatherings and sending people nudges and reminders to set expectations about RSVP'ing. Hosting for big groups in 2025 means fighting against the norm of ghosting and cancelling plans. Some have given up on nailing down the head count. Tom O'Malley, a 40-year-old in Springfield, New Jersey, is in 159 group chats — some with friends, but many with parents from his kids' school or soccer club. His family hosts two large get-togethers a year (for back to school and St. Patrick's Day) and smaller ones monthly. O'Malley tells me his wife will make an invite card on Canva and then email it to some people and text blast it to others. There's no good way to track who is coming with that method, but O'Malley has found that it doesn't matter. Yes, some people who RSVP don't turn up anyway, leaving his family with too much leftover food and beer. But now, O'Malley takes more of a "throw it out there and see what happens" approach. Despite people being flaky, he says, those who have shown up have a new look on gathering and may be more likely to come back. "I forgot that this was super nice," he says some people have told him. By letting go of anxiety around hosting and high expectations of others, he's been liberated, and it makes him a more relaxed host and the parties more enjoyable. "To be the kind of social beacon to some degree," he says, "you kind of just have to be willing to do that." I've been planning a birthday party for the end of this month, a task I find increasingly embarrassing as a person fully in my 30s still desperately awaiting RSVPs. I defaulted to Partiful, as it seemed the method my different groups of friends would all be most likely to use, and I was happy it took on the task of sending nudges to invited guests to commit and reminders to show up. Despite sending out the invite weeks in advance for a Sunday afternoon hang, I'm dealing with an accordion effect when it comes to attendees; the numbers rise and fall as people change their plans, and a handful of "maybe" replies taunt me, sparking an internal debate as to whether I should splurge for a bigger reservation (logically, I know that "maybe" probably means "no," and I may end up with fewer guests and extra money on the tab that leaves me bitter on a day that's meant to be fun specifically for me). In my nightmares, everyone flakes, and I'm left at the roller rink alone. But I'm trying to take some advice and optimism from the star hosts I spoke with for this story: plan the day, let go, and hope people remember that it's nice to gather together.
Business Insider
06-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
VC giant Andreessen Horowitz's power move has spurred some niche drama at New York Tech Week
Venture capital juggernaut Andreessen Horowitz (A16z) pulled a power move at this year's Tech Week — and it's become the conference's most compelling niche drama. Tech Week, whose current iteration was started by A16z in 2022, returned to New York City this month with a full calendar of events just as the city started heating up for summer. The conference's "decentralized" nature means anyone can throw an event and apply to have it added to the official calendar, provided they follow a set of rules. However, one of this year's new rules has drawn criticism from some organizers and attendees: Official tech week events must use Partiful. "The only official events platform this year is Partiful," the 2025 Tech Week guide says. That's left Luma, a competing events platform popular at previous iterations of Tech Week, out in the cold. Versions of Tech Week's events FAQ document from 2023 and 2024 said events could use either Luma or Partiful. And here's what's gotten tongues wagging: A16z is invested in Partiful, but not in Luma. "I get the Partiful push this year. It's a portfolio company. Of course they're gonna try to make it the default," Olivia O'Sullivan, a partner and COO at Forum VC, wrote in a LinkedIn post critiquing the platform that led to a barrage of comments. "Hot take: next year, the people should take back NY Tech Week and bring back Luma as the default platform," she wrote. The change has been a headache for some organizers. Daniel Oberhaus, the founder of PR firm Haus, told Business Insider he couldn't get his defense tech rooftop party listed on the formal Tech Week schedule because he had used Luma to invite guests. "Most conferences we attend tend to be run through Luma," he said. When Oberhaus asked Tech Week organizers to add his event to the official calendar, they requested that he delete the Luma invite and remake it only on Partiful, he said. Oberhaus decided to keep the initial Luma invite since "hundreds of people" had already signed up. "Perhaps it's egg on our face in the sense that we should have just made a Partiful to begin with, but we were just using the platform we were familiar with," he said. "We had plenty of people in attendance, and we're just not on the official page now, which is, I think, a bit of a bummer for a distributed conference." Other event organizers and attendees also groused about the changes to what they said was once a free-wheeling gathering for the technorati with few rules on how events should or shouldn't be run. Luma cofounder Victor Pontis was measured in his response when asked for comment on the shift, but nodded to the power dynamics at play. "With successful initiatives like this, people naturally try to claim ownership since it's valuable and well-known," Pontis said. "Having control over what qualifies as a Tech Week event gives some power." Partiful vs. Luma Founded in 2020 by ex-Palantir staffers, Partiful has become a go-to app for young people hosting shindigs and offers a one-stop shop for hosts to customize their event pages and send text blasts and updates. Partiful has become especially popular in tech circles and among the under-30 crowd, and has been used by some Tech Week organizers in New York and LA in previous years. For some Tech Week attendees at this year's New York events, however, Partiful was a new — and not necessarily preferred — platform for RSVPs. Luma, also founded in 2020, has been a favorite event management platform for many in the tech world. Jacob Wallach, the creator behind the TikTok account Excel Daddy, told BI that when he attended Tech Week events last year, "it felt like everything was on Luma." Wallach also hosts events regularly in New York and typically uses Luma for managing RSVPs. On the other hand, Wallach said, Partiful is the app he and his peers often use for "birthdays, house parties, barbecues." Despite the drama, being the sole official platform could be a boon for Partiful. Natalie Neptune, founder of GenZtea, hosted multiple events this Tech Week. She used Partiful for these, which made it onto the official calendar, but said she typically uses Luma. "I started using Luma last year just because New York Tech Week used Luma," Neptune said. That same flywheel, if all goes well, could come to Partiful. The platform has also rolled out tools specifically for professional events, like collecting emails for RSVPs and syncing with calendars. Neptune said she thinks New York Tech Week and A16z's focus on Partiful this year "definitely will have more people" using the platform.
Business Insider
06-06-2025
- Business
- Business Insider
'SF, we're coming for you:' We went to NYC Tech Week, where everyone is saying the city is the land of opportunity
One of the clearest takeaways from New York's Andreessen Horowitz-sponsored Tech Week — a decentralized sprawl of happy hours with panoramic rooftop views, panels, and, this year, pickleball matches — was this: When it comes to building startups from AI to consumer to deep tech, New York is no longer playing catch up to attract startup interest. It might just be pulling ahead. "People don't come to New York to live in a group house and code all night and never see anyone else," said Julie Samuels, the president and CEO of Tech:NYC, an organization that promotes tech founders and entrepreneurship in the city, at a panel on Monday focused on AI startup innovation. Samules added that New York is the place to be for any founders eager to move fast on product and head count. "New Yorkers hire," she said. "People want to live here, have always wanted and will continue to want to live here." Getting into Tech Week wasn't exactly easy: Many events were full or required pre-approval on Partiful, the Andreessen-backed invite platform of choice. Still, Business Insider managed to drop in on a few of the week's activities, like a boozy happy hour on the rooftop of IBM's sleek Manhattan headquarters and Gen Z founders hobnobbing at a cosmetics store, to see what all the hype was about. NY is going all in on AI San Francisco has long reigned supreme as home to the industry's hottest AI startups: big-name LLM developers like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Claude are all headquartered there, along with numerous other young companies at the app and infrastructure layer. One of the biggest themes at New York's tech week events, however, is that the Big Apple isn't just ready to welcome an AI startup here and there. The city's tech community is pushing to become a destination for all things AI. "The entire AI stack is in New York — you have ecosystems, agents, apps," said Emily Fontaine, IBM's global head of venture capital, during a panel discussion at the company's Madison Avenue headquarters early in the week. "When you come to New York, you have the whole spectrum to invest in," she said. "These are all companies that are well developed, have a product, and are starting to get revenue." Fontaine added that in New York, "compared to SF, you have strong founders who are actually driving revenue who are excited to go to market with us." At a power walk to kick off the event, most founders couldn't stop talking about AI. They spanned industries and geographies, but one told BI he was determined to make New York City the country's startup capital. "It's the second best. I want to make it the biggest startup ecosystem in the world," Somya Gupta, who cofounded an AI education startup, said. "SF, we're coming for you!" Founder Ben Spray said his next venture is an AI-powered IT department, but that the AI component is a marketing strategy, given how hot the technology is. "It's a little bit of a branding move," he told BI. "I mean, take my AI IT department — it's really just an IT department built from the ground up to fit into the AI world." Even local and state politicians are getting in on the AI push. At an Axios panel on Tuesday, New York Governor Kathy Hochul said she's keen on using AI to train 100,000 state employees in offices like the DMV. "I'm not looking to eliminate their jobs," she said. "I see great potential here, and I leaned hard into this." Defense and hardware head East Science, defense, and hardware-oriented startups, known as deep tech companies, are a red-hot sector on the West Coast, though the New York scene is finally heating up. One standout was the rooftop party in SoHo hosted by Haus, a deep tech public relations and communications firm, and Stonegardens Advisory, a consultancy that advises startups breaking into defense. With swanky cocktails and cheese boards piled high, panelists dished out how to win key government contracts early. "The end goal was ultimately to help people who are building the space understand what it means to work with the Department of Defense, which is increasingly opening itself up to startups and learning how to work with these more early-stage companies," Daniel Oberhaus, who founded Haus, told BI in an interview. (Last week, the Pentagon launched a program to back college-founded startups that serve both commercial and government customers.) Deep tech may not be as big of a thing in New York as it is in El Segundo, Calif., a nucleus of aerospace, defense, and energy companies, Oberhaus admitted. But Newlab, a warehouse and startup space in the Brooklyn Navy Yard, thinks that New York's software chops and engineering talent will make the city's hardware companies rival the West Coast. Newlab is tricked out with offices and labs, which have attracted early-stage deep tech startups. A hub for consumer apps and Gen Z founders Consumer startups — especially those built for or by Gen Z — are also having a moment in the city that never sleeps. At one happy hour on Wednesday, founders of consumer startups mingled over drinks to talk about the apps they're building. Naturally, the event (which was cohosted by Consumer Club, a Discord community for consumer founders, and Superwall, a paywall tool for apps) took place at coworking space and consumer startup hub Verci. Some startups in the crowd included BePresent, a screen time control app that works out of the Verci space. A16z's Speedrun startup school also had a presence there, with an investor and recent alumni, like Waveful, a social network that was part of the most recent Speedrun cohort. Lekondo, a visual search engine for fashion, told us they were recently accepted into Speedrun's upcoming cohort. That same night, we also stopped by another mixer for Gen Z founders and creators, put together by Natalie Neptune, founder of GenZtea, an IRL events business that aims to connect brands with Gen Z, at skincare brand Kiehl's. Nathaneo Johnson, a Yale student who cofounded the buzzy professional networking startup Series, was among the Gen Z founders in the crowd. "You're seeing an increase of these AI-powered social networks," said Neptune. The NY vs. SF debate rages on Wherever we went, the techies were ready to socialize — perhaps markedly different from the builder culture vibe in San Francisco. Loosened up by seemingly endless trays of spicy margaritas and champagne at yet another rooftop party, this one at IBM, the crowd was lively and relaxed. Attendees, wearing button-downs rumpled from a day's work, didn't just talk business: Conversations evolved into debates on everything from global politics to the misfortunes of dating in New York City. "Tech Week has proven NYC is a mainstay and a competitive market for tech," Molly O'Shea, founder of venture-focused newsletter Sourcery, told BI in a text. O'Shea moderated two panels at Tech Week. "I'm sure many visitors (like me) are contemplating moving here to get some of this energy."
Miami Herald
13-05-2025
- Business
- Miami Herald
Instacart hit with lawsuit over new Fizz app
Dive Brief: Instacart is facing a trademark infringement lawsuit over its new app, Fizz, from social media and event planning platform company Fizz Social complaint, filed Wednesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, alleges that the grocery technology company and Partiful, which has an integration of Instacart's Fizz app, are using "a mark identical to Plaintiff's" to compete against Fizz Social for the same Generation Z lawsuit came one day after Instacart unveiled the new standalone app, which has an integration with Partiful, that allows event hosts and guests to make group delivery orders. Dive Insight: Fizz Social claims that Instacart's new app not only bears a name that could confuse consumers, but also targets the same Gen Z cohort with a similar focus on social events. "Defendants' unauthorized use of the FIZZ Marks is not only likely to cause confusion … it also constitutes bad faith," Fizz Social said in its complaint, alleging that Instacart knew or should have known about Fizz Social but chose to use a similar name "in an effort to misleadingly divert consumers." The complaint also claims that trademarks submitted for Instacart's Fizz app "cover nearly identical subject matter" as Fizz Social's trademark applications for the "Fizz" marks. Fizz Social is requesting a jury trial for the case. Fizz Social and Instacart declined to comment on the lawsuit. Partiful did not respond to a request for comment by publication time. Unveiled last week, Instacart's Fizz app lets customers ages 21 and older place a consolidated order for one address. The launch boosts Instacart's presence in the party-planning space as the grocery technology company continues to find ways to reach digitally engaged shoppers. Fizz Social, which was founded at Stanford University and is now based in New York City, runs a platform that allows college students and young people across the U.S. to find parties, organize gatherings and coordinate social events. The company also has a marketplace for buying and selling items. The company has raised at least $41.5 million in funding, including a Series B round of $25 million in 2023, according to market research and data platform Tracxn. Fizz Social claims that it has been the owner of the "Fizz" name since at least early January 2022 and that the marks have become "a distinctive identifier" of its brand and services. However, the complaint also notes that Fizz filed for trademark registration in 2024 and that the application is still pending. In 2023, Fizz sued rival Sidechat over unfair competition practices, TechCrunch reported. Copyright 2025 Industry Dive. All rights reserved.
