How We Make $800K/Year Throwing Corporate Events In The Metaverse
Note: This business is no longer running. It was started in 2020 and ended in 2024. Reason for closure: Shut down.
Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?
Hi! My name is Yurii Filipchuk, I am the CEO & founder of Party.Space. I was born in Kyiv, Ukraine, and currently live in San Francisco, USA.
Party.Space is a B2B metaverse platform that was created in Ukraine. We help remote teams from big/mid-sized tech companies, Fortune500s, universities, and Web3 DAO/guilds host engaging & immersive events in a browser. Our list of clients includes Google, Zapier, UC Berkeley, and FC Juventus.
We have recently sold the first subscription to the company from Fortune 500 and are working on product integrations with major platforms. With over $4m in the pipeline and revenue bookings growing x3 QoQ, we are heading to booking $1m this year.
What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?
I started my career in traditional banking and later moved to investments. I had been working in the financial sphere for a while but felt that entrepreneurship was something I would love to do more.
When the COVID-19 pandemic started, many corporate accounts began to rethink how they used their workplaces when conducting meetings. So, my friends and I, who are now co-founders of the Party.Space (Arthur Ostapenko and Dmitry Zvada), came up with the idea of making a video chat platform that is fun and easy to use. We began by identifying the pain points of traditional video conferencing platforms and understood that we needed to create something that solves these problems with an intuitive interface and simple setup.
After that, we found our first big client who believed in our vision – it was a breakthrough moment because we realized that we were on to something great. Our team delivered the product quickly and the client loved the result! That was just the beginning.
Attendees spent 132 minutes on the event, which was a 5x higher engagement level than traditional Zoom video meetings.
We already had 130 customers and more than 30K visitors from leading global companies who used Party.Space for meetings, conferences, and company-wide events. and other gatherings. But most importantly, we positively impacted many people's working lives by providing them with a new and interesting way to connect with their colleagues, making routine lonely experiences into more social ones.
Take us through the process of designing, prototyping, and manufacturing your first product.
When we were starting out, we focused on solving the pain point of video conferencing and getting the platform to a place where we could start showing it to people and getting feedback.
We did everything ourselves, which was challenging but also allowed us to get very hands-on with the product and make sure it was the way we wanted it to be. Once we developed it to the point where we thought it was good enough to show to other people, we started pitching it to clients.
Eventually, we closed our first deal with the customer I mentioned above. This company challenged us to create a custom 3D environment and host a huge event for its employees. It ended up being a huge success and our clients were blown away by how immersive and fun the experience was.
On average, attendees spent 132 minutes on the event, which was a 5x higher engagement level than traditional Zoom video meetings. We delivered a fantastic experience and one that we would not have had if it wasn't for this customer believing in us.
Describe the process of launching the business.
When we launched the company, a principle we stuck to was that clients would need to pay for every new product feature. So we were looking for a customer who had a problem and then we’d go about solving it by adapting our product to their particular request. But now, after two years, we’ve formed a vast pool of different product directions and made our platform scalable for self-service activities.
Our business developed fast as everyone loved the idea of virtual corporate events that improved employee engagement. We sell something that is fun and relatable – parties. And many companies with an international reputation want to try the metaverse for themselves and see how it will affect their corporate culture.
We worked with organizations such as the Juventus Shanghai Academy, Unstoppable Domains, Luxoft, and Grammarly. We’ve hosted a variety of different events: kick-off parties, end-of-year parties, product launch announcements, pitch nights, conferences, and so on. We have even built a custom virtual office for a leading Ukrainian law firm with the architectural bureau MONO Architects.
There's nothing we can't host in the metaverse and that's part of what makes it so exciting!
Since launching, what has worked to attract and retain customers?
Startups are a marathon, not a sprint. Find your own pace.
It all started with introductions on LinkedIn and transformed into the level of quality we deliver to our clients. The more events we host – the more people talk about our unique approach. Apart from this, we certainly have sales and marketing teams. Among the most effective tools and sources we use are G2, cold outreach on LinkedIn, and content marketing.
We also regularly attend networking events to meet new people and introduce our product to them. But most of our clients are the result of positive experiences that our previous clients had and went so far as to publicly recommend our service.
I must say that timing also helped us a lot when modifying Party.Space into a 3D format, especially per Mark Zuckerberg announcing the launch of Meta. This is when we became a metaverse platform as we belonged to this sphere. More and more companies came to us and asked how to enter the metaverse because it has become such a hot topic.
What are you up to today and what does the future look like?
Now we are being compared to Zoom in 3D and this is already a great honor for us. However, this is not our primary objective. We're building something bigger: the engine for businesses, organizations, communities, and anyone who wants to experience the metaverse. In 2000, everyone was creating websites because that was "the thing" to do. Now, without a website, a company doesn't exist.
In 2022, a metaverse will be THE thing to have, and we want to be the company that helps everyone experience it. In 2030, businesses that don’t have a metaverse presence won’t exist.
Our vision is that the internet is already a metaverse today; it's just transitioning from 2D to 3D and becoming more immersive and experiential. This transition is smooth and won’t happen overnight. And thanks to emerging technologies like VR, AR, Al, and Neuralink, we don’t have to wait for technology enablers – we're becoming one.
After starting the business, have you learned anything particularly helpful or advantageous?
Startups are a marathon, not a sprint. Find your own pace.
What platform/tools do you use for your business?
We are active users of Slack, Notion, Trello, Miro, Hubspot, Awesomic, Woodpecker, and the G2 platform. Slack is a great corporate messaging platform widely used all over the world, and we enjoy it as well. Notion, Trello, and Miro are our favorite project management tools used by our sales, marketing, and tech teams. Hubspot helps us to streamline and work with both potential customers and current ones. And G2 is a great tool for spreading information about Party.Space through customer reviews. We believe that the personal experiences of customers are the best form of advertising. Woodpecker helps us work effectively with large arrays of mailing lists. And if we need some help with design tasks, we use Awesomic.
What have been your most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?
Here's a list of books that broadened my horizons:
- "The Art of War" by Sun Tzu
- "The Hard Thing About Hard Things" by Ben Horowitz
- "The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business" by Erin Meyer
- "No Rules Rules: Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention" by Erin Meyer and Reed Hastings
- "12 Rules for Life" by Jordan Peterson
Any advice for other entrepreneurs who want to get started or are just starting out?
Don’t overthink things.
Are you looking to hire for certain positions right now?
No, we don't hire at the moment. But we’re going to open a sales office in the US soon, so we’ll definitely have many new positions! Stay tuned.
Where can we go to learn more?
If you have any questions or comments, drop a comment below!
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