Pitch Deck: Bonobos Cofounder’s IRL Social Startup Pie Raises $11.5M

• Pie, an IRL social startup, raised $11.5 million in Sequence A funding led by Forerunner Ventures.
• Based by Bonobos’ Andy Dunn, Pie focuses on in-person connections and occasions.
• Pie plans to make use of the funds to assist occasion creators and scale to different markets.

Social-networking startups are ditching on-line associates and followers for in-person, real-life connections.

Pie, a Chicago-based startup based by menswear model Bonobos’ Andy Dunn, is becoming a member of the race to assist individuals make associates.

One among many rising “IRL social” apps, Pie lets customers plan and take part on IRL hangouts. The app is already geared up with an AI assistant and is piloting an enterprise product providing.

“The battle for offline consideration is the subsequent massive factor in client,” Dunn instructed Enterprise Insider.

Amid a loneliness epidemic declared by US Surgeon Common Dr. Vivek Murthy, and social-media customers rising jaded with on-line life, startups like Posh (a kind of TikTok feed for occasions) and 222 (a strategy to meet strangers through dinners or occasions) have additionally raised enterprise capital this 12 months with apps aiming to assist individuals discover associates.

Pie just lately introduced that it raised a $11.5 million Sequence A led by Forerunner Ventures’ Kirsten Inexperienced. The spherical additionally included participation from Chicago-based fund Origin Ventures and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams. Its newest spherical places Pie’s whole capital raised at $24 million, per the corporate.

Constructing and rising an app for making associates

Like many startups, Pie has needed to pivot. It launched in 2020 as a buddy matchmaking app, akin to a Bumble Buddies expertise.

“We obtained numerous matching, numerous profile browse, however nobody would attain out to the opposite particular person,” Dunn stated.

After studying Dr. Marisa Fanco’s guide “Platonic,” Dunn stated he went again to the drafting board. Scrolling via potential associates wasn’t going to chop it — it needed to be recurring group hangouts to assist individuals meet and keep related.

With a staff of 10 Chicago-based staffers, Pie doubled down on constructing an IRL app and utilizing the town as a testing floor.

“Chicago does not have the saturation of client apps you could have in New York Metropolis, Los Angeles, or San Francisco,” Dunn stated.

In February and March, the startup started testing native, curated occasions, dubbed “Pie Originals,” in Chicago, reminiscent of a month-to-month silent guide membership or a bi-monthly “Dudes Getting Pancakes” hangout. Dunn credit the app’s development to this technique. It hit 20,000 month-to-month energetic customers in six months of testing the Pie Originals.

Native occasion creators, like Mary Physician, who hosts a show-and-tell occasion for adults, have used Pie to assemble individuals and earn a living.

“There’s this complete creator financial system of people that wish to deliver individuals collectively in particular person,” Dunn added.

With its Sequence A capital, Pie is rolling out a creator fund for occasion hosts, which pays $5 to the creator for each RSVP to an occasion (all of that are free for attendees).

The startup plans to experiment with totally different monetization fashions, eyeing a possible freemium mannequin that apps like Bumble and Hinge have opted for.

“That is venture-backed startups,” Dunn stated, including that by the point of Pie’s Sequence B, it’ll have a monetization engine locked down. “You’ve prices, after which you determine revenues later.”

Within the meantime, Dunn is betting on Pie’s Gen-Z employees and the app’s person development, which stands at 40% month-over-month.

Learn the 31-page pitch deck that Andy Dunn used to boost Pie’s Sequence A:

Be aware: Pie has redacted particulars and amended some pages in order that the doc might be shared externally.