First Time Founders: How Partiful Is Fixing the Loneliness Crisis

Ed Elson speaks with Shreya Murthy, CEO and co-founder of Partiful. They discuss how the company survived the pandemic, why pushing boundaries has been important for its growth, and what the path to monetization looks like. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 1:30Ed Elson?

  Welcome to First Time Founders. I'm Ed Elson. Young people are spending far less time together in real life. In fact, face-to-face socializing among teens has dropped 50% since 2003. That trend sparked an idea for my next guest, who set out to build a product to change that. And by many metrics, it is succeeding. Back in 2020, she launched a startup with a simple goal. Make it easier for people to gather offline, just as a global pandemic forced everyone apart. But against the odds, the company survived and has since become a go-to event platform for young people. Now, with millions of users across more than 100 countries,

• 2:13Ed Elson?

  it is redefining how a generation makes plans and shows up in person. This is my conversation with Shreya Murthy, CEO and co-founder of Partiful. Shreya Murthy, thank you for joining me on First Time Founders.

• 2:26Speaker 04

  Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

• 2:28Ed Elson?

  I think every young person listening to this podcast probably knows what Partiful is. I use it all the time. All of my friends use it all the time. Anytime we are getting people together for a dinner party or any kind of event, we are using Partiful. But I'm sure there are a lot of other people who maybe don't know what Partiful is. What is it?

• 2:50Speaker 04

  Partiful is the easiest way to get together in real life. It is a platform available on app and web where you can plan any kind of event, invite friends, figure out who's going and communicate seamlessly with guests. And so at its core, it's a social utility. But what it's become is a cultural phenomenon, which is just so cool for our very small team.

• 3:13Ed Elson?

  Say more about how it's become a cultural phenomenon. I agree with you. I didn't know what it was until maybe two or three years ago. And now I feel like young people are using it pretty much every weekend. How did it explode into this cultural phenomenon?

• 3:28Speaker 04

  Do you watch The Pit?

• 3:30Ed Elson?

  I don't.

• 3:31Speaker 04

  Okay. In the episode last night, they name dropped Partiful.

• 3:35Ed Elson?

  Really?

• 3:35Speaker 04

  Yeah. And when they're-

• 3:37Ed Elson?

  What is The Pit?

• 3:38Speaker 04

  It's a TV show on HBO about like people in an ER and it follows them over the course of-

• 3:44Ed Elson?

  I have heard of this. Done it. Okay.

• 3:46Speaker 04

  Yes. And one of the nurses says, "I'll wait to get the Partiful." And so I think that to me is one, just crazy, where name dropped on an HBO show.

• 3:58Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 3:58Speaker 04

  But also the fact that everyone's using Partiful as a noun. You don't send an invite, you send a particle. And there's very few consumer products that get to that point of being a noun or a verb. If I'm going somewhere, I'm Ubering. If I get a cut on my finger, I use a Band-Aid. And I think for us to see Particle reach that stage, even though in many ways, we're still early on our journey, is a testament to the fact that it's possible to build a product that doesn't just provide real value to people's lives, but is tapped into how people feel and how people want to feel.

• 4:40Speaker 04

  And that was very intentional when we were building Particle is to think about the environment, the vibes that the product is creating and how we can elevate those.

• 4:54Ed Elson?

  Talk more about those vibes, because when you think about what this app is, it's not that much different from, say, a group chat. I mean, that's how we would get together before. You just send a message to your friends on iMessage or Facebook Messenger, or maybe you do it, you know, start a DM group chat on Instagram. I mean, technically speaking, functionally speaking, it's not doing all that much, and yet it has become this worldwide phenomenon. So what is the reason for that? Is that the vibes, as you say?

• 5:29Speaker 04

  I would actually disagree that it's not doing that much. Back when we were texting everyone to plan a party, like, that was terrible.

• 5:38Ed Elson?

  Right.

• 5:39Speaker 04

  You were in a noisy group chat. I think group chats max out at like 30 people. It's different on each messaging platform, but there's a limit to how many people you can even have in a group chat. So if you're planning a big event, throwing a big party, you literally can't use that. When you invite people in a group chat, everyone's dropped into a group chat with a bunch of strangers. It's noisy, there's information that's not relevant to you, and it's really hard to parse the most important details for both the host and the guest, which is like, when is it? Who's going to be there and what are all the logistical pieces of information I need to know? And so when we were building Partiful, we were in the dark ages of group chats for planning parties.

• 6:20Speaker 04

  And the, the distribution of parties is almost, is often broader than what's in a group chat. What happens if you want to invite someone that you're in touch with on Instagram or X or wherever it is? Like, all of a sudden, you have these fragmented social connections. And with something as important as figuring out your headcount for a party, you need everyone on the same page. And so what we did is literally build a page for everyone to be on. And so there, there's real utility for hosts to always know who's coming, be able to send a message to all their guests and not worry about annoying people because those messages are going out individually to each person instead of on a noisy group chat.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  And for guests to have one place to go to easily get all the information they need. And so I really think it is the combination of both real utility as well as vibes that has made Partiful what it is today.

• 7:17Ed Elson?

  Take us back to when you were just coming up with the idea. Why did you decide to do this? Was it because maybe you didn't enjoy the experience dealing with these group chats, trying to figure out logistics? Why did you start this company?

• 7:32Speaker 04

  I was going through a quarter life crisis. I'll be honest with you. I think like many people in my early, mid twenties, I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life and wanted to build something that felt really aligned with my values and what I really cared about doing in the world. And the biggest problem that I was seeing, both on a societal level and on a personal level, was that there was this trend towards social isolation. Or even back then, it had become so easy to get addicted to your phone, which is fundamentally a solitary experience. You're just like sitting there on your couch in your bed, scrolling endlessly for hours. And I was doing that, everyone I knew was doing that.

• 8:16Speaker 04

  And so it had gotten so much harder to step into the real world and find real connection. And then on a personal level, As I got older, I found it a lot harder to meet new people and make new friends. I took it for granted in college that I was just surrounded by like-minded people who I had ample opportunities to hit it off with. But when I started working, I was way busier, there were fewer people around me, and I just didn't have that many avenues to build my social circle. And so, part of it was really trying to solve that problem first for myself and then for everyone else. Because what I did know was that the easiest way to meet people was through parties. I have always been a party girl.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  That was a big part of college for me. I was in a sorority. I paid probably as much attention to my social life as I did to academics. And what I learned from that was, yes, obviously, parties are fun. They are fundamentally about entertainment and having a good time. But they also provide this really important engine of building community. They're an authentic way to meet new people and meet people who aren't technically strangers, but are actually friends of friends, or you have some pre-existing social connection. And then, they're also a way to grow closer to weak connections that you do have. So, moving beyond just having a couple really close friends

• 9:44Speaker 04

  to having a much wider circle of people that you're somewhat close to, parties are a great engine for making that happen. And so, I thought, if we can just make it way easier to plan parties, then we can unlock this really important engine of real-world social connection in people's lives. And it's been so cool to see that that's absolutely how it's played out.

• 10:10Ed Elson?

  Do you think that this loneliness crisis is a function of screens? Is that what is causing it?

• 10:16Speaker 04

  I think absolutely. It's so, if you think about the history of socializing and entertainment, they've always kind of been entwined. Before we had screens, the way that we would connect with, the way that we would entertain ourselves is by connecting with other people. We used to have social clubs. We used to go out to ballrooms and go dancing together. We would go to the opera. And what we started losing was that social aspect of entertainment. So we got movies and then we got TVs and all of a sudden we're just kind of silently all watching a screen together. At least with a TV, we're all kind of together watching TV in the living room. And then what happens is when, when phones came around,

• 11:01Speaker 04

  that entertainment shifted to becoming an individual experience. I can watch TV on my phone in my bedroom and not even hang out with my family in the living room. And so when we, we've always craved entertainment and there's nothing wrong with that. I love TV. I love being on my phone. But when there's no alternative way to find connection, that's when it becomes really problematic. And so what, what we thought about it part of all is we're not trying to fight however much people want to be on their phones. That's for them to decide. But what we are trying to do is make it so that if you want to open up your phone and access the real world and find really fun things to do and people to do them with,

• 11:46Speaker 04

  that it's almost as easy to do that as it is to open your phone and start scrolling.

• 11:52Ed Elson?

  It's a really great point, the fact that entertainment is inherently tied to socialization and being around other people. And it seems like we kind of lost sight of that over the past, I don't know, 20, 30 years, maybe because of Hollywood, because movies were so entertaining. But it's almost like we forgot that actually the real reason that it's entertaining is because you're in the presence of other people. You're talking about it. And it makes me think of, I remember when Um, gaming videos became a huge deal. Not, I mean, people would be playing video games, but there were actually more people who were watching other people play video games and then talking about the person playing the video game. And everyone's like, how, why is this interesting to people?

• 12:35Ed Elson?

  Like, why would you want to watch someone gaming on YouTube and talking? And it's like, because there's a social element to that that we've kind of missed. I think what's interesting as well about the timeline here, you were pretty early to the loneliness trend. This is something that has exploded as a, as a topic of conversation culturally, probably in the past year or two. You were starting this back in 2020, is that correct?

• 13:06Speaker 04

  Yes, the company started in March 2020.

• 13:08Ed Elson?

  March 2020, so presumably you're working months before that on the idea. You're pretty tuned in to this loneliness thing.

• 13:16Ed Elson?

  What brought you, what brought this to your attention? Like, why were you investigating this? Was this just based on your own experience from being out of college? Were you looking into the data? What got you interested?

• 13:27Speaker 04

  I didn't look at any data. This was straight from the heart. It was just how I was feeling. I was feeling lonely and so many people around me were feeling lonely. And I, I don't think I could have started this company or any company by looking at the data or doing any kind of top-down analysis. It was fully from the heart of just what do I care about solving? And at the early stages of building a company, you have nothing to lose, right? You, you've built nothing. And so if it doesn't go well, you've lost nothing. And so I just kind of put it all out there. I was like, I want to solve this for myself.

• 14:11Speaker 04

  And even if I just build a better way for me and my friends to hang out, I think I will have done something great for my own life. And if that works and other people feel the same way, maybe we could actually do this for millions or even billions of other people. And that was the hope.

• 14:31Ed Elson?

  How did you get started? Did you have any engineering background? What was the first few weeks and months of starting this company?

• 14:38Speaker 04

  I have an incredible technical co-founder named Joy. She is the engineering brains behind the company and the brains behind so much more. So I met Joy through a mutual friend in 2019 and I told her about what I wanted to build and I was very lucky that she got super excited by the idea because she also plans parties. She plans very elaborate parties and felt so many of the same stresses and struggles around, you know, the logistics and figuring out who's going and making sure that you have enough food for everyone and managing the timing. And so she, as an engineer, was really passionate about building a solution

• 15:22Speaker 04

  to this. And so we spent a few months just mind melding about what kind of products we wanted to build, what kind of company we wanted to build, what our goals were, what our values were. And we got really lucky that all of those things aligned. We did a bunch of those like co-founder quizzes where you each answer a bunch of questions and then you compare your answers to see if you're aligned. And once we decided we were aligned, we're like, okay, let's just do this.

• 15:51Ed Elson?

  So you decided you're going to do it and then a gigantic global pandemic hits, then what happens?

• 15:58Speaker 04

  Yeah, that was, that was terrible. I'm not going to lie. So we decided to start the company together in January of 2020. And I was very naive. It was my first time starting a company. And I was just like, okay, well, I think the next thing you do is like you go and try to raise some venture funding. So let me go try to do that. So

• 16:20Ed Elson?

  I assume you've quit your job at this point?

• 16:21Speaker 04

  Yes, I quit my job. I was working at an AI startup that I quit in the beginning of 2019.

• 16:28Ed Elson?

  Okay.

• 16:28Speaker 04

  So I had been almost a year without a job, without any money. So it was already like tough on a personal level. So we went out to raise funding, went to the Bay Area. It was a really Tough fundraising process because nobody really wanted to fund two young women with a party startup. It just sounded totally frivolous, but we got very lucky and managed to raise a bit of pre seed funding. And then we were like, okay, we're ready to start the company. It's the second week of March 2020, Monday morning, let's go. And then the world shut down and our first ever official meeting to work on Partiful, the company,

• 17:09Speaker 04

  was just Joy and I rolling out of bed in our pajamas and turning on Zoom and being like, what do we do? So at the time, if you remember, nobody knew how long the pandemic was going to last. We thought it was going to be like a three week thing.

• 17:24Ed Elson?

  I thought it was going to be a couple of weeks.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  Yeah. And so we were like, okay, yeah, this is annoying, stay indoors, you know, get groceries, cook a lot. So at the time, we weren't really worried, like there was so much just initial setup. It takes a while to to build a product from the ground up, setting up all the infrastructure. And so we were waiting it out and then all of a sudden it's like May and the pandemic shows no signs of slowing. And then by June, we were like, we can't just wait for this thing to go away because it's clearly not going away. And it seems like it's getting worse. And so then we were at a real juncture because the number one rule of building great products

• 18:04Speaker 04

  is be constantly talking to users and really understanding what they want and actually get the product into users' hands and have them test it. We couldn't test an app to help you plan parties during a global pandemic. We were not going to do that. And so with this limitation of we can't test the product, we had to get really creative to figure out what aspects of it we could start to make progress on. So we built kind of our coordination layer of Partiful and started testing that for virtual parties. To be honest, we hated virtual parties, but it was it was something.

• 18:43Speaker 04

  And then in the fall, we found this very small cohort of people who were testing three times a week. And we're gathering outdoors masked in groups of no more than 20 people. And we built a bunch of safety features into Partiful at that time. The ability to mandate a temperature check, the ability to mandate testing, the ability to mandate that people quarantine before an event that people are masked. And so we kind of layered on those safety features early to get to the point where we felt comfortable giving Partiful to small groups of people.

• 19:22Speaker 04

  And so those early betas allowed us to get a little more conviction in what we were building. It was still an absolute slog for the next like eight months. And then finally, once vaccines were widely available, that was around the time that the product had matured a little bit. And we still had no idea if it was going to actually work, but we were finally able to actually try to actually test it. And so in the summer of 2021, we started just sharing Partiful with our friends. And over the course of the next few months, we both just kept getting these texts being like, hey, I just got a Partiful invite. Like, how did you get a Partiful invite? Like, I didn't tell you about it.

• 20:05Speaker 04

  Like, how could you know about it if I didn't tell you about it? And what we realized was that it was starting to spread organically within our social circles. And we looked at the data and we just saw that it was growing and growing and growing. And the volumes were so small at that time, but the growth was undeniable. And to make a very long and difficult journey short, the rest is kind of history. We've been growing ever since then.

• 20:33Ed Elson?

  We'll be right back.

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• 23:30Ed Elson?

  We're back with first-time founders. So it's really interesting because I remember during COVID, there was this assumption among a lot of people that this was going to change the world forever. And in a lot of ways, it did. I would say remote work was kind of a permanent change, or at least there is a lot more remote work today. But something else that a lot of people were saying was that this is going to change the way people socialize. We're going to start having virtual experiences. Facebook decided to change its entire name to Meta because they thought we were all going to be living in the metaverse, and that's how we were going to be interacting. We saw billions of dollars funneling into this idea that we're never really going to get together in person anymore. That was just the vibe that everyone was sort of going with.

• 24:13Ed Elson?

  I can imagine, as a founder, being in that environment and your whole product, your whole idea is getting people together in person. Meanwhile, the whole world is kind of in agreement. This is not the future. Did that not kind of take the wind out of your sails? And was that not kind of a problem when you're trying to pitch to VCs who are probably pretty into this whole metaverse thing?

• 24:37Speaker 04

  It was really hard. It was, first and foremost, very psychologically difficult. I think when you're a founder and you're early on your journey, one thing people don't talk about a lot is how insecure you feel.

• 24:50Speaker 01

  Right.

• 24:50Speaker 04

  Even if you are building the product that the market is most excited about, you feel insecure. You're learning something that you've never done before. You have no idea if it's going to work. And you're balancing this deep confidence and conviction and passion that you have with this very real fear of the entire thing flopping. And for us, that was compounded by exactly what you were talking about, which is that it felt like the whole world was moving in a different direction than us. There were these virtual event startups that were raising hundreds of millions of dollars at insane valuations. And we felt very gaslit. We were like, are we crazy?

• 25:33Speaker 04

  The thing that kept us going was two things. One was just the feedback that we were hearing from our users, who were telling us that this product was very important to them, that it was making a difference in their lives, that it was making it easier for them to connect, that people were making friends because of Partiful. And so just staying close to our community and hearing that feedback from them was a huge source of what kept us going. And then the other was our own understanding of human behavior. So one of my favorite things about Joy, my co-founder, is she's not only the best engineer

• 26:14Speaker 04

  I've ever worked with, but she's also one of the most insightful people about human beings. She's actually an anthropology major in college and got a CS minor. And so she has this very shrewd understanding of what people care about, what they want. And so the discussions that we were always having is... The human brain is hardwired for real world's connection. You can look at brain scans, you know, there's like heat maps of the brain. And when they do brain scans of people looking at their phone, it's just, it's all kind of blue. It's not registering deeply. But when you look someone in the eye, the heat map just turns bright red.

• 26:55Speaker 04

  It is on, on a neurological level, something that we are hardwired to do. And so knowing that, knowing that there is nothing, that there is nothing that can replace in-person connection, that gave us a lot of conviction that that fundamental human need would outlast any trend.

• 27:14Ed Elson?

  Summer of 2021, I have it in my head, and I've talked about this with my friends. That was probably the best summer of my life. We had been, it was just when things were starting to, like, beginning to open back up again. I had been, I had just wrapped up my senior year of college. And we had been, we had rules and masking rules, and we basically weren't allowed to interact with each other. In fact, if you did, you would get in trouble, you'd get investigated by the university. So everyone had been inside for such a long time. And then it felt like the summer, it was, it was a summer in New York, it just exploded,

• 27:55Ed Elson?

  where everyone was just ravenous to interact with each other. I was going out, I was, I mean, we were partying pretty much every night. I was just starting my job, but like, I didn't really care about that. All I wanted was to socialize with people. And I believe that that is when I started to see that Pulseful kept on being on my radar, because people wanted to just get together constantly. Which makes me think that perhaps COVID was kind of a silver lining for you guys, where it was a reminder of just how much we want this stuff.

• 28:30Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 28:31Ed Elson?

  And I would, based on my own experience, assume that usage just exploded in the summer of 2021, is that right?

• 28:38Speaker 04

  It was more gradual than that, just because the, there's, there's only so fast it can grow when it's only through word of mouth, because we weren't doing any marketing at the time. And so I would say it was more just like, It went from certainly not growing at all to a very steady noticeable climb that started that summer and then has never stopped since then. But I agree with you. I think in retrospect, like the the time was so challenging for us, but I think, and and I still wish, you know, the pandemic had never happened, like most people. But what ended up happening was I think

• 29:17Speaker 04

  we all began to appreciate the importance of real world connection in our own lives personally. And I think that was a big catalyst catalyst for people reevaluating their priorities and thinking about what they wanted to invest in for themselves. And Partiful just gives people who want to invest in their social life such an amazing tool to do that.

• 29:39Ed Elson?

  So let's talk about the product itself a little bit. So one thing that people should be aware of is the fact that Apple very recently launched basically a copycat of Partiful.

• 29:52Speaker 04

  Yeah, a year ago.

• 29:53Ed Elson?

  A year ago.

• 29:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 29:55Ed Elson?

  Apple invites. And as soon as that happened, I was thinking, OK, you know, I really like Partiful, but I'm going to assume that Partiful is done now. I mean, Apple is a huge company. They got all these incredible product managers. Like, they're probably going to just beat Partiful. I haven't received a single Apple invite, which to me is a testament, I think, to product quality. There's something about this product that is fun.

• 30:21Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:21Ed Elson?

  I'm not sure how else to describe it, even the the way that it communicates to you. It'll say, you know, every time that you open it up, it has a new message.

• 30:33Ed Elson?

  Talk a little bit about how you how you created such a good product, which I think is probably your moat.

• 30:41Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 30:41Ed Elson?

  At this point, in a world where anyone could build a very similar similar platform.

• 30:47Speaker 04

  It's interesting because we do hear a lot from, you know, evidenced by both the largest companies in the world and, you know, other startups or people out there just being like, oh yeah, I could build Partiful, right? It's just like a page and you let people RSVP, like that doesn't seem that hard. And the truth is that what makes Partiful so incredible is that our team is obsessive about every little detail and making that detail frictionless and delightful. And all of that adds up to something that feels so effortless and fun. And you can't achieve that unless you do obsess over the details the way we do.

• 31:30Speaker 04

  And so our engineers and designers will spend so much time thinking about an individual flow, an individual screen, you know? Where are we placing the buttons? What does this mean? How easy is it for the user to understand what to do next? How can we limit the number of steps it takes to get what you want out of the product? And I think that workflow of just being so obsessive, which is coming from how we want to feel. So when I say we pour our heart and soul into building Partiful, it's not just a platitude. What it means in practice is that when we're building something, we think about how we would want to feel, how we would want to be treated.

• 32:15Speaker 04

  So, you know, if you see an app with like a bunch of pop-ups and it's like really annoying and you have to tap out of everything, it's like, that sucks. Like, I hate it when apps do that to me, so why would I do that to our users? And instead, you know, I pay attention when I do encounter a product that feels very effortless and delightful and makes me smile. And I do think about, why is that? Why did that just feel so good and easy? And so we take our own user experience as people in the world feeling the same problems that I think all of our users feel. And we try to pour that into every product decision we make so that we're always aligned with what we think is in the best interest of our users

• 33:00Speaker 04

  because it's what we would want for ourselves.

• 33:03Ed Elson?

  Organizationally, how do you accomplish that? Because- I think that most CEOs of software companies would agree with everything that you just said. And I think they most would make the argument that they do the same thing as well. We pay attention to the details, we're dialed into what people want, et cetera. But there is something different about the product feel of this. And again, I return to that word fun. It has a non corporate feel to it that a lot of products that you interact with on your phone or on your computer don't really have. And I assume that the reason that happens is because companies get kind of set in their ways in some capacity and they don't seem to take risks. They don't want to be funny.

• 33:48Ed Elson?

  They don't want to be interesting, creative, delightful. These are words that I feel like are not showing up in most product management conversations. So how do you accomplish that from sort of an organizational perspective? How do you, I mean, what are the values that you instill in the team such that you have a product that is beating Apple when they try to come up with a competitor?

• 34:11Speaker 04

  So the big thing is we hire incredibly creative people and we let them loose on the product. We have some defining principles for how we build, but we're very careful to not have too many rules. I think one of the most common things I find myself saying, especially to our design team, is go crazy with it. Just go into a room and just cook and like, tell me what you come back with in a few days. And when you hire incredibly creative people and you give them that kind of freedom, you're allowing great things to happen and things that you wouldn't otherwise see.

• 34:53Speaker 04

  And where I think it gets constricted is when there are a lot of either explicit or implicit rules that constrain a product. These can be more technical rules. These can be design system rules like, oh, you can't build anything that falls out of our design system. You have to use existing components. And obviously, design systems are great, components are great. We have a lot of them. But if we want to build something really cool and there isn't an existing component for it, we'll just go build that and we'll figure out the systemization of it later. Or, you know, if we want to, you know, we don't have a set of copy rules that we follow for what copy can go in the product. We just tell people.

• 35:37Speaker 04

  Talk as though you were talking to a friend. Like, what would you say if you were speaking to a friend? And speak that way to our users in the product. And then, you know, the people who write copy for the product just write very naturally. And, you know, the people on our team are funny and smart and clever. And so the copy ends up being really good. And so I think it's just about unleashing the creative potential of highly talented people that makes that possible. And then organizationally, limiting the amount of rules that you apply, which end up creating so many constraints.

• 36:15Ed Elson?

  Is there a downside to that? I agree. And I generally have the same message for my team, which is go crazy, take a lot of risks, see what happens. And if it doesn't work, whatever, we'll just try another thing. Because I think that it's important for things to be fresh and interesting and creative. But at the same time, rules exist for a reason. Systems exist for a reason. Things can go wrong. Is there, have you found that there is ever a downside to having a sort of no rules system where people can kind of try out whatever they want?

• 36:52Speaker 04

  I'll answer that in two ways. One, I think it's important to recognize that your brand and the space that you operate in defines the maximum bounds of the rules that you have to follow. So if you're Microsoft or if you're a B2B SaaS company, there's a set of things you can't do because it just doesn't make sense for your brand. And because we're a party company, there's just so much more we can do. So, you know, someone on our merch team right now, you know, is making company merch, not for us, but we're sending gifts to some of our VIPs and their thongs. And we can do that.

• 37:36Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 37:37Speaker 04

  But I don't think Microsoft can do that. And so we are fortunate to operate in a space where we can have a lot of fun because that feels natural for a brand like ours and a product like ours and a space like ours. And I actually think one of the biggest limitations of most companies that operate in an event space or an adjacent space is that they're too afraid to just have as much fun with it as users are having at these parties, right? So, so we, we are structurally in a different position than a lot of companies as well. And even something like Apple, you know, they have a very revered brand. And so that, that also limits the bounds of, of how much fun they can have just because

• 38:21Speaker 04

  they have such an established, uh, brand ethos that they've had for like, whatever, 30 years now. And then to answer your question about the downsides, of, of course there are downsides. You know, you can give people a lot of freedom, but then there are times when you have to say no. And saying no becomes so much more painful, both for you and for the person hearing it, when a really fun idea does get killed. Or there's a direction that people are going down and then you're like, wait, wait, wait, I don't actually think we should go in that direction and, and here's why.

• 38:54Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  And so I think every organizational decision comes with a cost, but we've just found that the benefits vastly outweigh the costs.

• 39:02Ed Elson?

  The ability to have fun is such an interesting competitive advantage and it, it's huge. And I, I, I think it is a really great point that like, you know, Apple, yeah, they might be able to create a product and they've gone and they've tried to create the product, but they are limited by the fact that they have to, yeah, operate within the bounds of their brand. They can't have as much fun. I wonder if there is a learning for companies, um, especially software companies that are delivering digital products in 2026, that maybe you do need to push the boundaries of fun a little bit more. I wonder if, uh, large enterprises have

• 39:43Ed Elson?

  Become too set in their ways. They're becoming too afraid of being interesting, funny, fun, dynamic, all of these things that corporations aren't supposed to be.

• 39:54Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:54Ed Elson?

  But ultimately, young people especially love that.

• 39:57Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 39:58Ed Elson?

  I mean, we love stuff that is irreverent, humorous, comedic, ironic. We love all of that. And you're starting to see it on social media where companies' social media accounts are starting to be a little bit more out there, a little bit more edgy. But I do wonder, I agree that because you are a party company, it allows you to be that way.

• 40:17Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 40:17Ed Elson?

  But I wonder if still Microsoft could learn something from this fun trend.

• 40:23Speaker 04

  I think they could. And I think that, I think it's just hard when you're printing boatloads of cash and you're one of the top performing stocks in the market to like, it's just like, why take the risk with, with what's working? And so that's why I think it's so much easier for startups to do because there's so much less to lose. And startups are also earlier in their journey of defining their brands. Like when you're an early stage startup, like, no one knows who you are. And so you have much more opportunity to redefine yourself versus like, I don't know, it would be weird if like ServiceNow started tweeting memes, right?

• 41:02Ed Elson?

  Hundred percent. We'll be right back.

• 41:13Speaker 08

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• 43:10Speaker 09

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• 43:20Ed Elson?

  We're back with first time founders. So the next big question for Paul, a question I have and lots of other people have, it's free.

• 43:29Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 43:30Ed Elson?

  How and when are you going to monetize this thing?

• 43:34Speaker 04

  So monetization is very top of mind for us right now. And the reason that we haven't monetized to date is twofold. One, we're just a very small team. Right now, we're only like a little over 30 people. And so there's a limit to physically how much we can do and how much of the company we can build out at any given point in time. And we've always had so much demand.

• 44:03Speaker 04

  From our users for more, more, more, more. When it comes to features and experiences and things they want to see out of the platform. That we have just been overwhelmed with things to build on our roadmap that don't happen to involve monetization. And so we had to kind of force ourselves last year to start thinking much more actively about it. Even well before we actually started to monetize. Cause for us, what's really important is ensuring that the way that we make money is fundamentally aligned with our users. And is not extractive from our users. So how can we win when our users win? And that became the defining principle for how we thought about monetization.

• 44:47Speaker 04

  So we're not ready to share the specifics of how we will monetize. But it's the philosophy is we now believe that we can build things that we know people will pay for. That they want to pay for, that they've in many cases told us that they will pay for because we're talking to our users all the time. And we've carved out space in our roadmap to go build these things that add value to users' lives. That allow them to pay us directly. And so the source of our revenue comes from the people we're trying to serve. And so those principles, I think, allow us to start investing in monetization and allow the product to grow in concert with that monetization.

• 45:32Speaker 04

  Rather than say, waiting a few more years and then being like, oh, we should probably start making money.

• 45:38Ed Elson?

  It sounds like you're not going to run ads.

• 45:40Speaker 04

  No, it also just doesn't. We will never sell user data. That is just a hard line in the sand for us. And when you think about most advertising models, they also work best when the model of the product is to keep eyeballs glued to the screen.

• 45:57Ed Elson?

  Yep.

• 45:57Speaker 04

  That's not the model of Partiful. The whole point of the product is to get you off of your phone and into the real world. The most important time spent metric for us is the time that you spend partying with your friends, going to a really cool. Event or talk or concert series and having a great time. But we aren't, you know, we couldn't monetize those eyeballs even if we wanted to because they're not happening on the product. And so from the beginning, you know, just running a bunch of display ads has never really made sense because it just wouldn't work with the way that our product works because we don't optimize on time spent. And so we've had to think about what are the other ways that that we can monetize.

• 46:41Speaker 04

  One company I really admire, which is I think gearing up for IPO soon is Strava, which is a beloved consumer product that has built this incredible fan base of people who are really, really passionate about their fitness and about how Strava supports them in their goals. And they've been able to scale up revenue remarkably into the hundreds of millions by building something that users pay for directly.

• 47:06Ed Elson?

  Yeah.

• 47:07Speaker 04

  When so much of the experience, you know, the running experience is actually happening outside of the platform. So that's, I think, one example of how it can be done really well.

• 47:15Ed Elson?

  What did you make of OpenAI's decision to start running ads on ChatGPT? I was assuming, I mean, I think they need to do something because I'm sort of pro monetization. Figure out your business, make some money, otherwise what are we doing here? But the pushback has been pretty enormous. There was obviously Anthropic's ad where they made fun of the fact that OpenAI is never going to run ads. Interestingly, Anthropic kinds of kind of puts themselves in a corner now. They can't run ads and that's we all forget about the the commercial they ran at the Super Bowl.

• 47:49Ed Elson?

  What did you make of that decision? Do you think that that was the right decision or the wrong decision? What do you think?

• 47:54Speaker 04

  We can never and will never have an ads model on Partiful, but that doesn't mean that I don't think it can make sense for other businesses.

• 48:05Speaker 04

  I, what I do agree with is that not all ads are bad. Like, I actually love the ads I get on Instagram. It's like how I find, how I found a new couch. And, you know, when I'm looking for a new sweater, I'll just like get an ad for a great sweater. And I think that's great. I think where it gets really scary for me and for a lot of people is how our data is being used to serve those ads. Which, you know, honestly is how Instagram serves me such great ads, right? Like, they know so much about me. And so that's, that ship has sailed. But with something like ChatGPT, it's so personal for people. People are pouring their heart and souls into these things.

• 48:49Speaker 04

  And I think when your soul is being bared to a product in that way, you have to take that with a much higher degree of responsibility than the data about just like what reels with like cat videos that my clicking on.

• 49:06Ed Elson?

  What is next for Partiful? It sounds like monetization is a big piece of it. What does the company look like five, 10 years down the line?

• 49:15Speaker 04

  Our vision is to power everything you do in the real world with your friends and make all of your real world moments as meaningful as possible. So today, we are most known for powering private social events, the parties that you're throwing, the parties that your friends are throwing. And that's a really big part of people's social lives, but it's not the only part. We go to live events and concerts and shows and pop-ups. We go shopping, we travel with our friends, we go to plays and movies. And so there's so much else that makes up how we spend time in the real world that we think Partiful has a huge opportunity to facilitate.

• 49:57Speaker 04

  And so last year, we launched a support for public events where events can be distributed much more widely. And we launched a Discover feed. So if you go into the app, you can tap our Discover tab and you can browse incredibly interesting, hand-curated

• 50:15Speaker 04

  Events that are happening around you. We actually have a human curator on staff who's actually taking an editorial lens to the content that's appearing on your Discover feed. And so what you're seeing there isn't just every event we have. It's not even something that an algorithm came up with. It's a human being saying, hey, I think you should go to this. So we have pop ups, we have readings. We have a lot of clubs now, so book clubs, run clubs, knitting clubs, volunteer groups, bird watching groups, pickup basketball groups. And so what we're thinking a lot about is we've started to see so much traction with just people engaging with these public events and with our Discover feed.

• 50:57Speaker 04

  Now we're thinking a lot about how do we, how do we support the communities that are forming around these events? Because sometimes it's not just a one off event. It's I'm part of a book club and we actually meet every single week and we want a place to talk about our, you know, the book, the chapter we're reading before we show up. We want something recurring, a recurring space where we can connect even outside of the larger events that we're having. Or, you know, if you're a volunteer group, you might throw a few big fundraisers a year for your, the cause that you're supporting, but your group might be hanging out way more frequently than that. And so how can we power not just your annual fundraiser, but also all of the smaller meetups that you're happening along the way?

• 51:42Speaker 04

  And so that's what's next for us this year is really facilitating so many more of the in-person experiences that people are already having and bringing to those experiences what we brought to parties and events, which is ease and delight.

• 51:57Ed Elson?

  It seems that what Polyphile is really doing, I mean, social media, most apps on your phone have made it extremely seamless and easy and enticing to just scroll and just be on your phone. And that's why we do it, because it's so easy and you're getting just immediate dopamine hits and that's why we're all addicted. It seems like the idea is to make in-person.

• 52:26Ed Elson?

  Socialization as seamless and easy as possible.

• 52:31Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 52:31Ed Elson?

  Such that it's literally like, oh yeah, I have no choice but to just go meet up with people. It's a really hard thing to do because the reality is going out, getting out of the house, coordinating with people, meeting up with people, like it simply is a hard thing.

• 52:48Speaker 04

  It is.

• 52:49Ed Elson?

  So making that an easy thing is a very bold and difficult task.

• 52:56Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 52:57Ed Elson?

  But I commend you for trying. It seems to be beginning to work.

• 53:02Speaker 04

  Thank you.

• 53:05Ed Elson?

  What have been some of the largest lessons? You started this about six years ago.

• 53:13Ed Elson?

  It's your first company. What have been some of your largest learnings from starting this company?

• 53:18Speaker 04

  Starting a company is the hardest thing that I've ever done. And when I talk to other founders, they all say the same thing. And when it's so hard, the rebuttable presumption is to not do it. Like doing literally anything else would be not just easier, but would probably make more money, like have a higher expected value calculation of just, you know, going to big tech and making a great salary there. And so my biggest piece of advice is to be incredibly passionate about whatever you're building. Don't build because a VC told you it was a great market. Don't build because you saw some list of requests for startups.

• 54:03Speaker 04

  Don't build because you looked at a bunch of data and saw that a market was promising. And I'm not saying that doesn't work for everyone. It may work for some people, but just what I know is that this journey is so emotionally taxing and psychologically taxing and comes with new unexpected challenges every single day. And just so, there's so much fragility in it that I think you have to have something deep and powerful that really grounds you and keeps you going, even when things seem impossible, even when you start your party startup and then a global pandemic happens that makes parties illegal for a really long time. Like you have to have some passion and true belief that keeps you going in your darkest moments.

• 54:48Ed Elson?

  Yeah, it's true. It's like if you're going to start your own thing. Loving it and enjoying it is a requirement because if you don't, then you'll fail. That's not true of a normal job.

• 54:59Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:00Ed Elson?

  You can hate your job and do pretty well in a normal job, but you can't really do that as a founder.

• 55:06Ed Elson?

  Final question.

• 55:09Ed Elson?

  For people who say, I really want to start something, but I don't have any ideas. All I know is I don't really like my job. It's not interesting to me and I like entrepreneurship. I just want to start something.

• 55:24Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 55:25Ed Elson?

  What do you say to those people?

• 55:27Speaker 04

  Solve a problem that you feel personally.

• 55:31Ed Elson?

  Okay.

• 55:31Speaker 04

  Build for yourself and then take the leap of faith that other people feel the same way that you do. Because that is the problem that you're going to be most intimately familiar with. And you will know in your bones when you've built the right solution to that problem. And that truth is much stronger data than any survey you could run or even any user interview that you could have. And so center in your own problems and your own truth. And if you solve those problems really well, there will be at least some other people out there who feel the same way. And now you've just solved their problem.

• 56:10Ed Elson?

  Great advice. Shreya Murthy is the CEO and co-founder of Partiful. Shreya, thank you very much.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  Thank you so much, Ed.

• 56:21Ed Elson?

  This episode was produced by Alison Weiss and engineered by Benjamin Spencer. Our research associates are Dan Shalan and Chris Donahue, and our senior producer is Claire Miller. Thank you for listening to First Time Founders from Prof G Media. We will see you next month with another founder story.

• 56:47Speaker 10

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