Partiful’s CEO, Shreya Murthy, and CTO, Pleasure Tao
Courtesy: Partiful
When Shreya Murthy and Pleasure Tao determined to launch a party-planning startup in 2020, they settled on a enterprise purpose of “bringing folks collectively in particular person.”
The Covid-19 pandemic demanded the precise reverse.
Regardless of the problem of the pandemic, Partiful survived, and 5 years later, the New York startup is now utilized by hundreds of thousands of individuals to plan occasions resembling birthday events, housewarmings and weddings.
The app’s a favourite of these ages 20 to 30, and it is added 2 million new customers since January, Partiful CEO Murthy informed CNBC. The corporate has by no means revealed its precise base of month-to-month customers.
Partiful drew consideration on social media after Apple, recognized for replicating options from fashionable apps on the iPhone, launched its personal event-planning service in February, and the startup posted a joke about “copycats” on its X account.
In fact, Partiful is not the primary party-planning app. It competes in opposition to not solely Apple Invitations, but additionally Eventbrite, Evite, Punchbowl and others.
Every service differs barely in its goal markets and options. Evite, for instance, makes use of a “freemium” mannequin, the place sure invitation designs and different options are paywalled. Eventbrite is commonly used to advertise and promote admission to massive public occasions.
What units Partiful aside from its opponents — and appeals to its Gen Z consumer base — is its typically humorous, informal designs, a few of that are created by Partiful’s in-house designers.
“Buddy invited me to a gathering that does not have a Partiful….feeling misplaced, confused, unprepared…very like after I (Gen Z) obtain a cellphone name out of the blue,” X consumer Athena Kan posted in August.
For the primary quarter of 2025, Partiful averaged 500,000 month-to-month lively customers, up 400% yr over yr, with 9 out of 10 customers on the app based mostly within the U.S., in response to estimates supplied to CNBC by Sensor Tower, a market analysis agency. That compares with Eventbrite’s 4.4 million month-to-month lively customers, which is up 2% yr over yr, and Punchbowl with roughly 85,000 month-to-month customers, which is down about 2% in comparison with a yr in the past. A spokesperson for Evite informed CNBC that the service noticed greater than 20 million month-to-month lively customers for the primary quarter of 2025.
It is unclear how many individuals nonetheless use Fb’s once-popular event-planning characteristic Fb Occasions. Fb’s father or mother firm, Meta, shut down the standalone app.
Pattern invites from the Partiful app
Supply: Partiful
Bringing folks collectively in actual life
Murthy and Tao each went to Princeton College and labored at Palantir Applied sciences on the identical time, however they did not meet till they have been launched later by a mutual good friend. Each have been trying to transfer to the consumer-facing facet of tech.
Tao, then a software program engineer at Meta, needed to go away the corporate to give attention to merchandise that have been extra relatable to each day life, and stated that the social media firm’s purpose of conserving customers engaged on their apps typically can create “perverse incentives.”
“For me, driving extra folks to spend extra time gazing their cellphone, gazing this limitless feed of content material, wasn’t tremendous motivating, wasn’t tremendous significant to me personally,” stated Tao, Partiful’s tech chief and a self-described “avid celebration planner.”
Meta declined to remark.
Tao and Murthy went by way of a type of “courting interval” the place they requested one another what they thought main a startup collectively might appear to be. Among the many voids they recognized was how intimate social occasions, resembling birthday events the place a bunch could be more likely to see the attendees once more, have been nonetheless deliberate on textual content chains that made it troublesome to trace, talk or plan a super occasion time with company.
“Should you’re unsure when persons are free, that is a extremely annoying downside,” Murthy stated.
She and Tao took the leap.
With few in-person occasions taking place in the course of the 2020 lockdowns, Partiful’s engineering group centered on constructing the platform’s textual content message-based infrastructure in order that the service might be utilized by each iPhone and Android customers.
Partiful’s group, which has now grown to 25, operates out of downtown Brooklyn. The service is now not restricted to textual content messages and its web site. The corporate launched apps for the iPhone and Android gadgets in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and Partiful now serves as a one-stop vacation spot for organizing the completely different phases of planning and internet hosting a celebration. The corporate has reportedly raised $20 million in a funding spherical led by Andreessen Horowitz.
Talking Gen Z’s language
What makes Partiful enjoyable for customers is how customizable an invitation might be.
Hosts can create a free birthday invite with a lime-green parody cowl of Charli XCX’s “brat” album, for instance, or plan a ladies’ night time out with a canopy picture of Shrek in sun shades. They’ll observe “sure,” “no” or “perhaps” RSVPs underneath a portrait of Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, and invited company can use a “boop” characteristic to ship random emojis quite than a direct message to one another.
Get together planners can even ship out uniform textual content blasts to the group earlier than and after the occasion and handle an in-app picture album for importing recollections.
Partiful is out there for anybody to make use of, however Murthy stated the corporate sees probably the most want for the service amongst younger customers within the “postgrad” interval of life. That is a stage the place folks may be shifting to new cities and away from their established school good friend teams.
“You are beginning your grownup life and must not solely determine, ‘How do I lease an house? How do I work a brand new job? How do I exist on this new model of myself?'” Murthy stated. “On high of that, you are additionally having to rebuild your total social circle.”
For the hosts and partiers in its consumer base, Partiful has grow to be a part of their social routine, and it has continued to realize traction on-line. The corporate informed CNBC that over 60% of its lively app customers verify Partiful each week.
As for Apple, Partiful is not sweating its new rival simply but.
Apple Invitations requires that customers have an iCloud+ subscription to create occasions, although it is free to RSVP if a visitor does not have an Apple account. That service begins at 99 cents a month in the US. Apple didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Partiful is free, a minimum of for now.
Like many different tech firms that depend on distribution companies resembling Apple’s App Retailer, Partiful has a nuanced relationship with its much-larger counterpart. Partiful might lose some customers to Apple, however it will possibly additionally profit from promotion by the app distributor.
That is what occurred in 2024, when Partiful was named a finalist for Apple’s App Retailer Awards for Cultural Influence, and received Google Play’s “Greatest App of 2024.” The app remained an “editor’s alternative” choose on the App Retailer as of publication.
For now, Partiful stays assured.
“We have not actually seen any customers which were leaving Partiful for Apple Invitations,” Murthy stated.
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