Meet Partiful, the Gen Z party-planning staple that’s taking over Apple

When Shreya Murthy and Pleasure Tao made up our minds to foundation a party-planning startup in 2020, they settled on a trade function of “bringing people together in person.”

The Covid-19 pandemic demanded the complete opposite.

In spite of the problem of the pandemic, Partiful survived, and 5 years next, the Brandnew York startup is now worn through thousands and thousands of family to plot occasions similar to birthday events, housewarmings and weddings.

The app’s a favourite of the ones ages 20 to 30, and it’s added 2 million untouched customers since January, Partiful CEO Murthy advised CNBC. The corporate hasn’t ever observable its actual bottom of per thirty days customers.

Partiful drew consideration on social media nearest Apple, identified for replicating options from fashionable apps at the iPhone, introduced its personal event-planning carrier in February, and the startup posted a shaggy dog story about “copycats” on its X account.

In fact, Partiful isn’t the primary party-planning app. It competes in opposition to now not simplest Apple Invitations, but in addition Eventbrite, Evite, Punchbowl and others.

Every carrier differs fairly in its goal markets and lines. Evite, as an example, makes use of a “freemium” fashion, the place sure invitation designs and alternative options are paywalled. Eventbrite is incessantly worn to advertise and promote admission to massive society occasions.

What units Partiful excluding its competition — and appeals to its Gen Z person bottom — is its incessantly funny, aimless designs, a few of which might be created through Partiful’s in-house designers.

“Friend invited me to a gathering that doesn’t have a Partiful….feeling lost, confused, unprepared…much like when I (Gen Z) receive a phone call out of the blue,” X user Athena Kan posted in August.

For the primary quarter of 2025, Partiful averaged 500,000 per thirty days energetic customers, up 400% era over era, with 9 out of 10 customers at the app primarily based within the U.S., in line with estimates supplied to CNBC through Sensor Tower, a marketplace analysis company. That compares with Eventbrite’s 4.4 million per thirty days energetic customers, which is up 2% era over era, and Punchbowl with roughly 85,000 per thirty days customers, which is ill about 2% in comparison to a era in the past. A spokesperson for Evite advised CNBC that the carrier noticed greater than 20 million per thirty days energetic customers for the primary quarter of 2025.

It’s dense what number of family nonetheless usefulness Fb’s once-popular event-planning property Fb Occasions. Fb’s guardian corporate, Meta, close ill the standalone app.

Murthy and Tao each going to Princeton College and labored at Palantir Technologies at the same time, but they didn’t meet until they were introduced later by a mutual friend. Both were looking to move to the consumer-facing side of tech. 

Tao, then a software engineer at Meta, wanted to leave the company to focus on products that were more relatable to daily life, and said that the social media company’s goal of keeping users engaged on their apps sometimes can create “perverse incentives.”

“For me, driving more people to spend more time staring at their phone, staring at this endless feed of content, wasn’t super motivating, wasn’t super meaningful to me personally,” said Tao, Partiful’s tech chief and a self-described “avid party planner.”

Meta declined to comment.

Tao and Murthy went through a sort of “dating period” where they asked each other what they thought leading a startup together could look like. Among the voids they identified was how intimate social events, such as birthday parties where a host would be likely to see the attendees again, were still planned on text chains that made it difficult to track, communicate or plan an ideal event time with guests.

“If you’re not sure when people are free, that’s a really annoying problem,” Murthy said.

She and Tao took the leap.

With few in-person events happening during the 2020 lockdowns, Partiful’s engineering team focused on building the platform’s text message-based infrastructure so that the service could be used by both iPhone and Android users. 

Partiful’s team, which has now grown to 25, operates out of downtown Brooklyn. The service is no longer limited to text messages and its website. The company launched apps for the iPhone and Android devices in 2023 and 2024, respectively, and Partiful now serves as a one-stop destination for organizing the different phases of planning and hosting a party. The company has reportedly raised $20 million in a investment spherical led through Andreessen Horowitz.

What makes Partiful amusing for customers is how customizable an invitation can also be.

Hosts can develop a distant birthday ask over with a lime-green parody defend of Charli XCX’s “brat” booklet, as an example, or plan a women’ night time out with a defend picture of Shrek in sun shades. They may be able to observe “yes,” “no” or “maybe” RSVPs beneath a portrait of Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg, and invited visitors can usefulness a “boop” property to ship random emojis in lieu than an instantaneous message to every alternative.

Birthday party planners too can ship out uniform textual content blasts to the crowd sooner than and nearest the development and top an in-app picture booklet for importing reminiscences.

Partiful is to be had for someone to usefulness, however Murthy stated the corporate sees essentially the most want for the carrier amongst younger customers within the “postgrad” length of pace. That’s a level the place family could be transferring to untouched towns and clear of their established faculty good friend teams.

“You’re starting your adult life and have to not only figure out, ‘How do I rent an apartment? How do I work a new job? How do I exist in this new version of myself?'” Murthy stated. “On top of that, you’re also having to rebuild your entire social circle.”

For the hosts and partiers in its person bottom, Partiful has develop into a part of their social regimen, and it has persevered to realize traction on-line. The corporate advised CNBC that over 60% of its energetic app customers take a look at Partiful each era.

As for Apple, Partiful isn’t sweating its untouched rival simply but.

Apple Invitations calls for that customers have an iCloud+ subscription to develop occasions, even though it’s distant to RSVP if a visitor doesn’t have an Apple account. That carrier begins at 99 cents a generation in america. Apple didn’t reply to a request for remark.

Partiful is distant, no less than for now.

Like many alternative tech corporations that depend on distribution services and products similar to Apple’s App Bind, Partiful has a nuanced courting with its much-larger counterpart. Partiful may lose some customers to Apple, however it could additionally get pleasure from promotion through the app distributor.

That’s what came about in 2024, when Partiful was once named a finalist for Apple’s App Bind Awards for Cultural Have an effect on, and gained Google Play games’s “Best App of 2024.” The app remained an “editor’s choice” pick out at the App Bind as of e-newsletter.

For now, Partiful left-overs assured.

“We haven’t really seen any users that have been leaving Partiful for Apple Invites,” Murthy stated.

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