- Many social-media users are looking to make friends and spend time together in person.
- A new wave of startups is capitalizing on this demand with tools to help people make plans.
- The “IRL Social” trend grew in 2024 and could carry into the new year.
Making new friends, it turns out, is pretty hard.
While the dominant social networks like Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have proclaimed that they connect us with our friends, many users feel less connected and more alone than ever.
A new wave of apps is trying to fill that void by replacing content algorithms with features designed to help users get together in real life. This year, several of these apps hit new peaks in popular culture and adoption.
One of the biggest stars in the space is Partiful, an events app that has replaced Facebook Events for many. Google named it the 2024 “app of the year,” and it was even used for the viral Timothée Chalamet lookalike contest.
Then there’s Timeleft, a European startup that gets groups of people together over dinner every Wednesday night in over 60 counties. It was also recognized by Google this year as a “hidden gem.” Timeleft, which launched in 2020, expanded to the US in March.
“This year, we found product-market fit,” Lais De Oliveira, head of North America for Timeleft, told Business Insider. “We’ve had over 20,000 people dining with us this year in the US and we’ve been handling weekly about 6,000 people dining with us across the US.”
IRL social startups are not just getting users to download their apps. Some are also getting investors on board.
Posh, another events app that offers a feed of nearby happenings, closed a $22 million Series A round this year led by Goodwater Capital. Other firms, like FirstMark, Forerunner, and Best Nights VC, have also participated in IRL-focused tech.
For Zehra Naqvi, an angel investor and VC focused on consumer startups, IRL has been a core concept in her investing thesis this year.
“There is this overwhelming desire for people to just connect with one another,” Naqvi said.
She sees IRL social apps right now falling into two camps. One is advanced event tech that makes things easier on hosts and attendees (like Partiful, Posh, or Luma), and the second is apps that foster a sense of “whimsical” in-person connection (like Timeleft and 222, another app that connects strangers over dinner or activities).
Some IRL apps are tackling monetization, though others are not in that stage yet. Posh, for example, takes a percentage of ticket sales, and 222 has a subscription model for access to curated events.
Read more of BI’s coverage of emerging IRL social companies.
These IRL social startups have raised millions of dollars:
Meet the founders behind the apps trying to help people make friends:
