Shreya Murthy on Partiful: building the social layer for Gen Z events and the future of offline connection

combines technology out of home expertise and data to enable efficient seamless ad buying across the globe. Our next guest is a living legending the founder [laughter] of part of hole. I'm sure she's dressed totally normal. Let's bring her. Welcome to the show.

[laughter] Uh how many uh how many Halloween parties did you get invited to? Okay. Is this AI? Yes. Is this AI? Hi. I I wish cuz it would have been a lot easier to put on. Did you do this yourself or did you have a team? I did do it myself which is why I missed a few spots. Oh, it looks great.

It looks This is incredible. I mean, I feel like Halloween is probably high pressure like on part of on the part of team. You guys are facilitating a lot of Halloween events. Like you kind of have to really show up and do it right. So, uh, congratulations. Did any This is your Black Friday. This is our Black Friday.

This is our Super Bowl. This is our D-Day. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you for taking some time to talk to us on your Black Friday.

Uh, is it actually Black Friday in the sense that like the the servers will be melting or is it just like it's the best opportunity to capitalize on the the value prop that Participle can deliver? Yeah, I would actually be curious what are the what are the biggest holidays for or just days celebrations?

Halloween is by far the biggest people celebrate Halloween like 10 times, right? M like everyone can go to multiple Halloween parties and it's very valid. You're only going to go to one New Year's Eve party.

Maybe during the holidays you're like traveling, so who knows if you'll be around, but like everyone's here, everyone's locked in, everyone knows what the job is. Uh and so usually it's like you'll have six Halloween parties.

Uh and I don't because like the entire Particle team, I'm like kind of on call uh today, this weekend. But that's why I'm dressed up right now. Yeah. I love the idea of you being on call and then there's some serious thing happening in the business and you're like, "Let's hop on Zoom together.

" And then [laughter] you you dressed up. It's very serious. Yeah. Great. It seems like a good melting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The servers are not melting because our engineers prepped heavily for this, but it is like a triple on call situation. How How has the business been growing?

I know that uh a couple months ago there was like, "Oh, Apple's coming after you. " And that felt like maybe it was just always going to be focus on yourself, Apple. Focus on yourself.

Uh, but was that even like an OSHI moment or was it just kind of like a okay, we didn't really see any blip in the numbers whatsoever and we've just been on a growth trajectory growth trajectory the entire time. When it happened, it was definitely a Are you not allowed to curse on this show?

We don't curse on this show, but you're welcome to. But kids do watch. Our kids watch. So if you whatever you say, our kids will repeat to us later. [laughter] Be like, what did Treya mean by that? Yeah, it was an oh darn moment. Oh shucks. Oh shucks.

Uh uh but then we're like let's wait to see how this plays out because I think so many startups go through the thing where some big player comes in and they they try to reheat your nachos and it either works or it doesn't. And I don't know, have you guys gotten an Apple invite? No. No. There you go. There you go. Yeah.

I mean it it seems like an obvious I mean the other thing is Apple is not good at fun. like they they did the Genmoji thing and and they were laughed at for it. Uh it was like kind kind of a cool Yeah. product, but again, it doesn't even get real usage.

And I just think Apple was always known for magical software because it was just like so polished and good. And I think they're becoming less known for that. Yeah. I I have another take here. I'd like to know if you if this resonates with you.

you're obviously on the inside of this, but I feel like the the invite product has like there are technical features that someone can clone and and and check the box, but the brand is so important. And I feel like when I get a particle, it says something about what I'm going to expect walking in there.

When I get a paperless post, that's a different vibe. That's a different thing. When I get a physical piece of mail that invites me to something, that's also a different a different brand, a different vibe. It sets me up. It's the welcome moment to the actual event. It's part of the event experience.

And so, I feel like there's a world where you could clone all the features, but it's not going to bring the same energy, which is actually what your customers are buying in some way. Part of the product. I I think it's part of the product, but what how do you think about brand and how you stand out from the competition?

I think it's brand and there's something about you have to want to break the rules because a party is not like a corporate meeting, right? A a party is a party. And so we from the very beginning have always been like the party page should feel as much fun as the party itself.

Like you're already asking guests to do a lot by RSVPing. Like you might as well make it fun for them and give them a reward uh where they get to see the guest list after they RSVP.

like you you got to make it something where people can actually feel bought into the experience and you don't do that by you know building something that just looks like an online form or gets buried in someone's email.

Uh but I also think there's an interesting like crossplatform aspect of this too when you think about Apple like I if I want to invite people to my party I want to invite my friends who have an iPhone. I want to invite my friends who have Android. Like I don't care what phone my friends have, they're still my friends.

And so I think it's really important and it's just it's hard for certain companies to actually does the Apple app only work if you have an iPhone. It it does work for Android say that's just like that's just mean. Okay. Not even being able to invite Android people to parties. That's just mean.

I mean well they're already green friends. They're already like look like this. [laughter] That's funny. What uh so so we often times, you know, if we're talking to an enterprise software founder, we don't typically ask the question like what's the 10-year vision? Like where does this go?

Because usually it's like more seats, you know, [laughter] more contracts, more products, margin expansion products. How do how do you like you know and I'm sure you've just been learning about what particle is as you as you've built it but like has the vision like what what was kind of the founding vision?

What is it today? How is it changed? And kind of where where are you going? Cuz I I've always I've like I've seen like your posts or like different press hits throughout the years and uh there was some really funny post about like have not having any uh not making any money that that uh that stuck with me.

But um uh and obviously just like you know joking about it or whatever but like yeah where where where did you start from and where are you going? Yeah it's funny how many people took that post like very seriously. It's like you can't joke on the internet anymore. What was the exact What was the exact line? I I forget.

It was just like partful won't make money. VCs gave us funding to help you party. Enjoy it babes. Something like that.

There all these like very theorist news articles of like participle said that VCs gave the party like isn't true that's kind of a if you guys aren't making money if you guys aren't making money it's kind of a systemic risk to the party to big party you know yeah yeah [laughter] no we we will definitely we will definitely make money uh just not right now the the long-term vision is if you look at where most social apps have gone they've kind of turned into entertainment platforms right like when when I open Instagram I'm being fed a bunch of realels.

I'm seeing less and less of my friends content. Uh Tik Tok is obviously huge and it's also an entertainment platform.

And so when you really think about it, the content that we're consuming is more and more just like it can be Netflix, it can be YouTube, it can be reals, it can be shorts, it can be Tik Tok, but it's all just you're watching entertainment from people who you don't actually know.

And so what's gotten lost in that is like where do you go if you want to actually connect with your friends? Where do you go if you want to meet more of the people who could be your friends? Because less and less you you're discovering them online.

And so what we want to do is create the home for you to hang out with your friends, see them more easily, discover new things to do and new people to do them with. And we think that as big social actually stops becoming social and starts becoming big new media, that big social deserves to exist.

And right now it's small social. It's part of but the goal is be become big social. That's Yeah, I love it. Yeah. I mean, we were talking to Brian Chesky, you know, somewhat somewhat similar thesis and I' it's grown on me so much the barbell idea. You're going to be there's going to be the internet slop feed.

There's going to be a lot of content and stuff, but then you're also going to want to touch grass and both can be true and you can kind of toggle back and forth. Uh, what's the most underrated part that you've ever seen? Okay. So, I they're they're somewhat rated.

It's not fully underrated, but I'm obsessed with the the performative contest. So, there's like performative mail contest that's happening right now. I saw in San Francisco there was like a performative reading contest. [laughter] Okay. I think performative reading. Yeah. Yeah.

It's just like there's something really funny that's happening where online meme culture people are using particle to take that offline. Sure.

So they're taking like I know by the way I know I used to go to the same gym as a kid who like initially went viral for the performative reading in New York where he was reading like uh like like some infinite jast or something. It wasn't that.

It was like it was like a feminist feminist feminist text or something like that and he's like you know reading and people are like he's been reading the same page for like yeah [laughter] 30 minutes like what's going on and that [snorts] I'm sure that was part of what kicked off this this kind of thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Or like group seven on TikTok like there's now like a group seven meet up I think this weekend in New York. So, it's like the speed at which every single internet meme now has a real offline particle event that people are actually going to that's actually happening. That's been pretty cool to watch.

Take us through the SF party culture. I'm hearing 996. It's getting crazier. Everyone's working non-stop. Uh, is that bare? Is that a bare signal for your business? No one's going to be partying, right? Are they just using it for like happy hour, come talk about SAS? Oh, that could be a bold case. Break it down.

Uh, 996 [clears throat] culture is very concerning to the party community. I'm here to declare a state of emergency in the SF party scene. We have to end it. The [music] drinks happy hours are coming back. It's okay to crack open a happy dad at 2 p. m. Pass me [clears throat] that happy dad.

I'm going to crack that open right now. Let's get the party started right now. Uh, yeah. We do tech companies need to bring back boozy brunches during weekdays. Was that ever a thing? Like what what's what's kind of the solution here?

How do we get Maybe that's what we should start using our VC dollars for the power lunch. Power lunch. Yeah. Yeah. Funding everyone's boozy boozy lunches and booy dinners. I mean that kind of that was kind of the joke in 2021.

And it was like there was like I you know people used to joke 30% of all dollar venture dollars go to Meta and then in 2021 it felt like 30% of VC dollars were going to like founder dinners like it was just a founder you could basically eat for free as a founder by just going to a different founder dinner every night with with a with a fintech.

Um okay but I I I want to keep going. I know we're way over time, but uh I want you to synthesize something you've been thinking about. Uh this this idea of like ragebait marketing being not effective long term.

Synthesize that with some I feel like particle has done a little bit of it, but you haven't like crossed any line. So it's always like worked out. Like even that even that example you gave of like, oh, we're spending all our VC's money.

That's kind of rage bait marketing, but it never it never bubbled up to the point where people were like, oh, you don't have a sense of humor. creates that creates goodwill. I've always loved the partful brand. The VCs are financing this party like and for the user that's cool. Yeah.

But but um there's that's that's quite that's quite different than like the memes that were going around earlier this year, people being like I used VC dollars to buy this Lambo. Oh yeah. And myself. Yeah. How how do you think about like rage bait where the line is on your brand?

Obviously you came on a show that's I don't know mostly a joke but somewhat serious dressed up like you have fun but then there is the line. How do you think about that?

We there's a little bit that I think you kind of have to acknowledge it like if a company's pre-revenue like you know there's clearly VC funding that's that's backing it. So you can't not talk about that, right? And I'm a beneficiary of VCs funding a lot of free Ubers in my peak partying era.

So, I have a responsibility to pay it forward to the next generation. Yeah. But I I think like we're here to make people happy. That's the entire purpose of the company. We're not here to make people angry.

And so there's only so much rage baiting that like we at Particle can do that's authentic because it's like no, the rest of the internet makes people angry and we're like the one thing that's trying to not do that. So I think that's part of why we tow the line.

It's just not as authentic to us if like you know the Twitter mobs are up in arms.

There's also John you were writing about the come for come for the tool stay for the network Dixon piece is like a perfect example but a stronger like I think a stronger example than come for the tool stay for the network John Kugan Chris Dixon [laughter] Chris uh last question uh I and we we have to have you back on and go way deeper but um I'm super interested it seems like part has complete and total domination over like tech culture in terms of like if there's a party that's happening in SF tech like you found your beach head, you've landed, you've dominated.

Uh how much time are you spending hunting around to find like these crazy adjacent markets for okay there's someone who collects some odd object in the Midwest and like you just dominate in Milwaukee now because like your vital dominant is partful because I don't Yeah, it's grown. It's grown a lot.

So, we've never had boots on the ground in a market like DC or Boston or Chicago. And those are all huge. Huge now. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Uh we're growing like crazy in London. We do have boots on the ground there. Uh but it's all just web flywheel stuff, right? Yeah. Yeah. Just, you know, network effects. Yeah.

Just good oldfashioned viral growth. Hit the gong for network effects. Let's hit the gong. Great hit. All right, this was super fun. Uh, thank you for taking uh 15 minutes out of your out of your uh Super Bowl to come on. Hopefully no uh crises later today cuz the people are depending on it.

And uh I'm excited for you to become a big social media. Yes, we're very excited for you. Thank you so much. We'll talk to you soon. Happy to see you. Talk soon. Our next guest has been in the reach waiting room for far too long. uh