First Time Founders: How Partiful Is Fixing the Loneliness Crisis

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**Ed Elson** (1:57)
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, 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.

**Shreya Murthy** (2:54)
Thank you so much. It's great to be here.

**Ed Elson** (2:56)
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. Any time 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?

**Shreya Murthy** (3:17)
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.

**Ed Elson** (3:41)
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?

**Shreya Murthy** (3:56)
Do you watch The Pit?

**Ed Elson** (3:58)
I don't.

**Shreya Murthy** (3:58)
Okay. In the episode last night, they named it Partiful. Really? Yeah.

**Ed Elson** (4:04)
What is The Pit?

**Shreya Murthy** (4:06)
It's a TV show on HBO about people in an ER, and it follows them over the course of time.

**Ed Elson** (4:12)
I have heard of this. Got it.

**Shreya Murthy** (4:13)
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 word named dropped on an HBO show.

**Ed Elson** (4:25)
Yeah.

**Shreya Murthy** (4:26)
But also the fact that everyone's using Partiful as a noun. You don't send an invite, you send a Partiful. 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 Partiful 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. And that was very intentional when we were building Partiful is to think about the environment, the vibe, that the product is creating and how we can elevate those.