Partiful launches ticketing as its first monetization move, targeting supper clubs, concerts, and community events

you about console. Console builds AI agents that automate 70% of their IT, HR, and finance support, giving employees instant resolution for access requests and password resets. And our next guest is in the waiting room Murphy from Partn. Welcome back. How you doing?

Hey guys, it's great to see you. How's it going?

Good to see you too. Thanks so much for you were what what were you dressed as last time? Was it Halloween?

The wicked witch of the west.

That was a wild appearance. That was really really fun.

Uh you said you said you weren't going to you said you weren't going to dress up this time.

Yeah.

But I still am kind of disappointed that you didn't dress up.

I'm disappointed myself.

Yeah. Uh well, I'm not disappointed in particles world. Tell us.

Yeah. And uh you guys going to finally make some money? What's going on?

Oh yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, I know. We literally promised to the world an ironbound agreement that Particle would never make money with a very literal tweet that was clearly meant entirely seriously and could not possibly be a joke. Um, and here we are violating our promises to the community. It's kind of a sad day.

Wow.

No, I think it's a great day.

I think it's a great day.

We love monetization here.

We love monetization.

You love money. Uh, I wanted I wanted I wanted hyperargeted ads based on

Partle, right in the app.

Like, you know, I wanted I want I want it to feel like Particle is listening to me.

Yeah. I don't think that's what you're I don't think that's what you're going to do.

It should let you stand up a B2B MLM on demand. So, this person was at this party with this potential customer. Enlist that person to sell them ramp. Something like that.

Yeah. Yeah. Buy some Tupperware.

Yeah. Yeah. Tupperware party for enterprise SAS. This

that is what that that would have been a good play. It's like, hey, we're we're we said we weren't going to make money. Turns out we are

part of full Tupperware parties. Host a host a party. Host a party in your area.

Be good. But actually take us through the realization plans because we've rifted enough and I want to hear the real story.

Uh so yeah, I mean today Particle launches ticketing. It's available on app on web. You can now buy and sell tickets directly on protocol.

Fantastic.

So it's not just us making money, it's host making money, too. And that's the most important thing.

Very very cool. Who

I want to know. Yeah. Is it like walk crawl run? Like do you imagine that you're going to bring in like a new like like you know like a you know like a band that's performing at a concert and that's going to be a new user that that has been on the fence and not jumped in or do you think that there will be a sort of more gradual uh evolution from people that are throwing events on part it's an easy add-on so the next one in their series of events they will just uh have paid ticketing for because they already have a lot of traction. and they're a power user.

Yeah. Little bit of column A, a little bit of column B. So, the impetus for building it was something that had been building for quite a while, which is that people were already trying to host paid events on Purple. Yeah.

Uh you know, supper clubs, run clubs, uh you know, community events, concerts, album release parties, fundraisers. And because we didn't have ticketing, it was not a great user experience. like hosts were linking out to other platforms. Guests weren't sure like does my RSVP count or does my ticket count? Hosts were cross referencing. So

that wasn't really upholding our standard of what we want particle to be and what Particle is known for, which is having a super seamless experience no matter what kind of event you're hosting.

And so first and foremost, we saw this as a feature gap.

And it was always a question of well, when do we close this feature gap? And I think the tipping point for us was starting last year uh we launched our explore feed which is a tab on the app that you can go to and you can browse events that are happening around you. They're highly curated. You can see what your part mutuals are going to and increasingly people are using that as a place to discover things to do. And so with the launch of Explore, we started to see a proliferation of these events that really needed ticketing because they're marketed to the public because they're often higher production value. Like it it takes real money to put on a lot of great events and that funding for hosts has to come from somewhere and it typically comes from selling tickets. And so all of that really culminated where we were like, first and foremost, we want to create a much better experience for the hosts on Particle today and the guests on Partle today to do what they're already doing, but in a seamless way. And then two, we absolutely know that there are types of events that you can't have on Partle because we don't have ticketing. And so we're hoping with this that we can grow and actually get even more of those events onto Particle that weren't on the platform previously. Yeah, I can imagine like a lot of even emerging artists that aren't on like some insane, you know, tour master, etc. Like the the experience of like an artist being able to like send a easy text blast and feel like they're communicating and and then have like social features built in. I feel like that'll be a much uh much cooler

experience. What trends are you seeing on Partifle? Like I I would I feel like you guys should should maybe you do and I and I haven't seen them but like I want to know like have have run clubs peaked? Have people stopped running from whatever they're running from? Uh like what what what what's kind of maybe

what's the health of the lookalike meetup ecosystem? Are have we reached peak lookalike meetup or are we continuing to boom? Well, it was funny you you mentioned that because on our very serious Twitter that should be taken literally at all times, we did tweet like I think a year ago that lookalike contests are dead and that future lookalike contests will be banned on the platform. And actually a a news publication picked it up and said Particle has canceled lookalike events, but they're still happening. And and and and you know, honestly, in 2026, many of them are still great. Like there was a big heated rivalry lookalike contest that was still happening. There was a JFK Junior lookalike contest. And so I I think I' I've come around and I can never say no to a good lookalike contest. There's also these just like mass meetups in Central Park and, you know, Dolores Park to do whatever. And so I I think that's the trend that we're seeing is the rise of these viral events of someone, you know, taking a funny meme and actually bringing it to life in the real world. And it's so much better when that happens. Like people yearn to touch grass and they yearn for these types of events that feel like easy, lowkey, and something that where they can participate in a collective cultural moment uh and say that they were there. Like I I don't I think anyone

it has a crazy feedback loop too because the Meetup itself produces so much viral content that then feeds the meme because it's like well that person doesn't look exactly like so and so you know sometimes sometimes they do sometimes they don't.

Yeah public events are social. Another reason ticketing is on Parallel now.

So uh have you discovered any like lessons from like particularly seamless payment processing? I feel like so much of the beauty of Partle is like how like the text man message integration, the seamlessness and I feel like there's demand for Apple Pay or or Venmo. There's like a whole bunch of different ways you could solve that. Maybe you just do the hard work to get everyone to put their credit card information in and then it's all saved nicely. But like what was the what were the trade-offs? What was like the best practice that you wound up landing on? Yeah. So, first and foremost, it was like this should feel ridiculously easy because RSVPing on purple is really easy. It shouldn't feel quite as easy as RSVPing because like you do have to pay money. Um, but if if you go through the flow, it still feels like buttery smooth like you tap by tickets, you add, you know, you add the number of tickets you want. Um, if you have a promo code, you use that. Like we we have an event for tech week tomorrow where tickets are $10,000. But if you have the secret promo code,

how much is it then?

We have the secret promo code

20,000.

Oh,

the secret promo code.

It's $9,999. Uh, very fun.

What What like what's your motivation at this point? Like what's your what's your ambition? I feel like, you know, I I imagine you guys have had a bunch of acquisition interests this entire time to date while you're not making any money and uh you you know, somebody makes an offer and you're looking at it and you're like, "Wow, this is, you know, a big number." It's I feel like the hardest time to turn down an acquisition would is when you're not making money. once you're making money and you're growing and things like that, like it can there's more of like a line of sight to, hey, this is like a really big real business. But, uh, how how did you how did you process like building a company for this long that's so in the public eye, that's so popular, uh, and not making money and and stay focused on the long term.

Yeah, it's a great question. It It's a bad day for everyone who wanted to acquire us when we weren't making money. Yeah, exactly.

For sure.

Brutal. Brutal. They hate they all the acquirers probably love that. Uh oh, yeah. Part of it's cute. Like they're not really monetizing yet, so they'll they'll take our offer eventually. Nightmare. Nightmare for them.

Yeah. Bet. They're they're down bad today. Uh but but I think this is like uh this is exactly the next step we wanted to take for our long-term ambitions. Like we intend for Particle to be a massive company and we've already proven in so many ways that we're there from like a growth perspective and we're continuing to grow. Uh but this just felt like such a natural addition to our ecosystem where it's a win-win. We're closing a feature gap. We're making an experience buttery smooth, which is what we always want to do for everything we're building. We're solving a problem for hosts. We're solving a problem for guests. And yes, this feature happens to be book one where we can make money. It it's not the only feature that we'll ever build to make money. There's a lot more to come, but it is the right next step in our journey. And I think what's cool is that it's coming at a time where there's this real cultural moment around gathering in the real world for these fundamentally social experiences. And that's where Participle plays really well. Uh, one thing that's pretty different about us is we're not a ticketing company where social is an afterthought or non-existent. We're a social product that now has a ticketing component on top of it. And so, what does that get us? Like you mentioned concerts earlier, Jordy, like Weezer, for example, threw a ton of popups uh on Partle that were just free events that they were doing for their community as part of their tour. Um, and before Partle didn't have ticketing. Uh, and so like all Weezer could do with Partle was host their their free events. But I think they're one of so many like artists, uh, cultural institutions, performers, creatives who are really harnessing to connect with their community and create social experiences with their community. And so that's the ball that our eyes are on is how do we supercharge this thing that we're seeing in the culture and what are the features we can build to help accelerate and expand that and make that accessible to more people.

Uh do you expect there to be an entire class of artifle entrepreneurs basically small business owners where the vast majority of their revenue or almost all their revenue is flowing through. Does it feel like there's like a line of sight to that? Uh, I think that's going to be a huge and very important subset of our ticketed hosts, but I also think it's equally important for us to be serving the more casual host who needs ticketing for their event for whatever reason. Whether that's a frat, whether that's someone putting together like a party bus for their birthday, um, whether it's like just someone who wants to charge $10 to make sure that people don't flake from their event. Like there's so many ways that you can use ticketing to get what you need out of your event. And there's so many people where they have a day job, but building community is their passion project. Like we hear from so many people like that. Um, and so I really see ticketing as something that very much unlocks what they're able to do as much as it is something for the person where their lifeblood and and their business and their, you know, what what they're building for themselves and their lives financially is powered by particle.

What's a country that uses participle a lot that people wouldn't expect? Oh. Um, Italy has a a very strong

I would expect that. I would expect that. I have a bunch of Italian friends. They like to get together and do things.

Yeah. Yeah. The the Italians love Portfol. Um I mean the UK is really big, but like so depends on how you feel about the UK. I've been to some phenomenal parties in London, so it doesn't surprise me, but some people are like, "What?" Uh, no. I would say like the most unexpected thing is the random most of our users are in the US. Like the random contingents of people that I didn't expect like my mom's friend texted her that Participle has gone viral in a South Florida over 55 senior living community and I love that.

That's amazing.

Partle retirement. Uh what what a wonderful way uh to to to retire. Uh what's the work culture like at Partle these days? Do you guys like work more on the weekend than like the nor a normal company because there's a lot of action

stuff going on?

Uh or or is the product robust enough that that uh you guys can, you know, take a couple days off?

Well, it it's always the product's really robust, but it is always stressful to be on call on the weekend because like if something breaks, that is when it's going to be like a bad time for everyone. So I would say like the culture is work hard, party hard, which probably doesn't surprise anyone. Like we can't be 996 because in order for us to do our jobs right, everyone on the team physically needs time to party. Like it doesn't work without that. Um but yeah, I would I would say events that are otherwise totally fun and stressfree for other people like Halloween. Like that's my I'm in the situation room Super Bowl all Halloween, right? New Year's. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I'm not partying. Um but yeah, we

the the party product research is a very important part of our culture.

Fantastic. Well, thank you so much for coming. Congratulations on the progress and I'm glad to see you guys.

Yeah, great great launch. Excited to uh attend my first ticketed Partle event whenever that is.

Fantastic.

$10,000 tomorrow. Pay me.

There we go. We'll see you later.

Great to see you rest. Goodbye.

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