Parties — breakdown
“Fuck off!”. This is what I’d say if my friend hosts a party at their house — and send me an Eventbrite link to buy a ticket. I’ll pay for a ticket to a concert or a nightclub, but to a house party? Of course not.
It’s counterintuitive; they are our friends, the first ones we’d support if they started a new initiative or needed support in an emergency, yet we won’t support them for hosting at their house, for curating an awesome experience with cool people that we make friends with, for building a community and including us.
The business of producing and curating IRL experiences is a $1.8 trillion dollar business. They vary from private to public. Public ones include networking events, escape rooms, museums, nightclubs, concerts, comedy shows, cinemas, and sports events. Private ones include corporate events, celebrations such as weddings, private parties, as well as the untapped market of house parties — estimated at an additional $300 billion dollars annually. Publics are ticketed, and privates are free.
Therefore, an important distinction should be made — the status quo allows for three types of experiences to exist: ticketed uncurated experiences, free curated ones, and a hybrid (such as VIP areas) [curation is an important factor that makes a party successful — you can check out my article about Vybes]. While the status quo benefits entertainment venues and mass events through ticket sales, it does not allow for community leaders and influencers IRL to bring their communities together in real life systematically.
This is where a new form of parties emerges — parties that are centered around these leaders. We can see buds of that at nightclubs — where successful promoters “take nights” and curate parties with their own crowd and creative direction (this has been existing for decades, with a minority of promoters growing to own nightclubs and entertainment venues — see Noah Tepperberg, Richie Akiva, and others). But unfortunately, it never caught fire. And the reason is that this is an extremely hard job, and the incentives structure has never favored the influencers IRL.
Noah Tepperberg, past promoter and founder of Tao Group
Take Instagram and Youtube as examples; when these platforms emerged, with them the online influencers became a thing. Why? Because these platforms allow content creators to make a living from their work. This potential motivates creative people to consistently produce content, grow their community (in the form of a follower base), and at some point make money. How? By getting paid by the platforms which generate revenue from ads, and by partnering with brands to promote it to their community (influencer marketing). The latter is the bigger chunk of the paycheck. But going back to influencers IRL who bring people together through real-life experiences — they’ve never had these kinds of opportunities.
For that reason, nightlife promoters usually switch careers by their late 20s, and house party hosts never turn hosting into a profession. This is where the future unveils.
Promoters are going to grow their community, and from hosting 10 people at a promoter table, they’ll be able to “take the night” and host 100 people, and as the club turns too small for them — they’ll run private parties and down the road — build an entire music festival curated for their community. House party hosts will produce more parties at their house, and as the house turns too small for their growing crowd, they’ll move to rent cool spaces, and as they expand the sky will be their limit (or not if they host on the moon😛).
Vybe is the platform; these hosts grow a follower base of people who WANT to go out and party with them IRL (their community). They also grow their track record of successful real-life experiences they hosted. Nightclubs and entertainment venues hire the best promoters on Vybe to run their nights; brands sponsor the best house party hosts on Vybe to host better experiences and turn their passion into a business; musicians have direct-to-consumer opportunities to reach their communities. Vybe is the future.
Vybe Together is an invite-only marketplace for private parties.
