IRL began as a tool for discovering real-world events and pivoted during COVID to prioritize online event discovery, pulling events from Live Nation, Twitch, YouTube, TikTok and others. The app has expanded into a messaging-forward social network with user profiles, group chat, group events, personalized recommendations and cross-platform web and mobile support. IRL reports 20 million total users and 12 million monthly active users, and claims roughly 400% growth over the past 15 months. The company says it is pursuing monetization beyond ads via paid events, paid group chats, and tools for groups to collect dues and fees. IRL plans to use the new funding for product growth, international expansion, a Creator and Culture Fund, and to allocate money per city to help restart in-person events. The team is currently 25 people and plans to grow to about 100 by year-end; the company is based in San Francisco. IRL is an events-focused social network and calendar app that helps users discover, follow and RSVP to both physical and virtual events. During the COVID-19 pandemic the company refocused on virtual events—live-streamed concerts, Twitch streams, Zoom parties and other online happenings—and redesigned its app with a Discover tab to surface remote events. IRL aggregates events from partners including TikTok, Meetup, Twitch, Spotify, SoundCloud, HBO, Ticketmaster and Eventbrite and offers an in-app calendar and curated Top Picks. The app reports 5.5 million monthly active users, 10x growth in daily active users since the pivot, over 1 million hours per day of “Time Together” and 300 million total “Time Together” hours since last June; Sensor Tower estimates 7.7 million installs. With new funding IRL is launching a college network across 100 colleges including Harvard, Columbia and NYU to help students find academic and social events both physical and virtual. The company intends to continue connecting users to online and offline events post-pandemic and to monetize by driving users to high-intent, off-platform activities—earning when users attend or derive value from events. IRL was started by technology veterans Abe Shafi and Scott Banister and operates a social calendar app that lets users send and receive invites to hang out with friends in real life. The app also helps users track events that matter to them while managing social calendaring. Over the past year the app has garnered over 2 million users. Since launch, users have invited each other out to events, concerts, gatherings, games and more over 200 million times. The product emphasis is on real-world meetups and simplified event coordination through a mobile experience. The company is based in San Francisco, CA.

Total raised

$197M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series C

Latest activity

Jun 2021