Festa

@hrishimunugala @thekevinqi Thank you @hrishimunugala for being the better co-founder of the pair 🫡

@thekevinqi Our biggest achievements to date, def the CPM on our UGC campaign and our CPL on paid ads. Plus we have a passionate wedding community behind us.

We've burned $75K of our money building this. 🔥 For a long time, it looked like a terrible idea. Now we’re finally close to an inflection point. My name is Kevin Qi, and this is the story of Festa: In early 2024, my cofounder asked me what I wanted to do with the rest of my 20s. I had a great career at Amazon, but deep down I knew I had always wanted to build something of my own. I started coding as a kid just to build things, launched websites that got real users, and even tried starting a company at 17. It failed. But that was the point. So we started meeting weekly, throwing around ideas. Factory Automation. ERP AI. Hardware. Eventually we landed on something crazy: What if AI could coordinate live events in real time? I built the first version during nights and weekends. We tested it at our own event in SF. It worked. More importantly, people instantly “got it.” That was enough conviction for me. I quit Amazon. Then reality hit: • YC rejection • failed marketing • $2K in ads → 0 customers • first wedding sale: $130 We even fumbled a $1K+ deal after messing up pricing. But we kept going. We rebuilt the product and shifted entirely to content + UGC. Over the last 6 months: • hundreds of videos tested • figured out what actually converts • acquisition cost now down to ~$7 • and finally approaching potential repeatable profitability Which brings us to today. We just launched the biggest redesign of Festa yet and for the first time, anyone can try it instantly as a guest to a "fake investor and startup conference event”.

Happy YC rejection day! Guess the 4th time wasn't in the cards for @usefesta.

Festa team in LA this week. You can start conversations online. But real business relationships are still built in person. Do you agree?

OMG!! 🥳 I just crossed 1,000 followers on X. After 6 painful months of grinding and 8.5K+ (posts and replies), we are finally here. Lessons that I learned. 1. Post daily 2. 5 posts + 50 replies a day 3. Share real numbers + valuable knowledge 4. Share posts that bait engagement. (ex. what are you building this week?) Growth was painfully linear.

Everyone’s building AI agents for coders. Meanwhile, one bride used AI to handle 285 live guest texts at her wedding. ~9.5 hours saved in a single day. Be honest: Is your AI actually making a difference in the real world?

A year ago @usefesta didn’t exist. Today: - $889 revenue (some other revenue not from stripe is not captured) - 10 customers - Thousands of guest messages handled And it's only just beginning.

We just rebranded our entire company for $3,000. $1,200 → UX designer $1,800 → 2D motion designer $0 → dev (built it myself) Most startups don’t need more capital. They need access to better talent.

YC application submitted! Perhaps the 4th time is the charm. Wish us luck!

We sponsored and co-hosted a 32-person speed dating event with NYC Bae Match (instagram.com/nycbaematch/), alongside founders Anita and Cecilia. My co-founder Hrishi (@hrishimunugala ) and I used Festa (@usefesta) to run guest communications end-to-end: • A live AI concierge was available for two weeks leading up to the event, answering guest questions via text • Hosts sent broadcast text updates and reminders to attendees • Festa handled the logistics layer quietly in the background while people focused on meeting each other What we got out of it: • Real-world validation in a live environment • Great social media content • A dozen+ new Instagram followers • Clear learnings and feedback on how Festa performs IRL Building alongside other founders, in front of real users, beats any demo.

Just wrapped a podcast appearance on Built to Ship - big thanks to @PostleTyler. We went deep on: • How Festa started • Building AI agents that work in high-pressure, real-world environments (like weddings) • Why “production-ready” AI is very different from demos • Insider lessons from Alexa’s shift to LLM-driven systems at Amazon Fun conversation. Lots of hard-earned lessons. x.com/i/broadcasts/1…

6 months ago I left big tech to build Festa. 2 years ago I didn’t even have an idea. Here’s the unfiltered story of how it all started 👇

@gurunandinisays @joinsitch Hey Sitch. We love your mission here at Festa (AI Event Coordination). We were wondering if you would be interested in hosting an in-person event together in NYC or SF? - We can provide part of the budget for venue, and provide the alchohol. Please let me know if this is something you would wanna entertain and we can be in touch.

You know you’ve hit a nerve when competitors start copy-pasting your value prop.

Festa’s going all in on UGC. We’re hiring multiple creators to help us show the world what AI-coordinated weddings look like. Real creators. Real stories. Real reach. linkedin.com/jobs/view/4319…

Two years in the making. In 2024 I started building Festa with a simple idea: what if an AI could coordinate an entire event from start to finish, answering every question, managing every guest, just like a real person? Today, that idea became reality. The world’s first AI-coordinated wedding took place in Colorado. 40 guests. Nearly 400 messages. Zero issues. Some guests didn’t even realize they were texting an AI. I spent the entire day watching the dashboards. No errors, no downtime, just smooth execution. It’s surreal. For almost two years this vision lived in code, in tests, in late-night brainstorms. Now it’s out there, running autonomously in the real world, on one of the most emotionally charged days a couple can have. We even had the wedding photographer capture the moment. Festa quietly coordinating behind the scenes while humans celebrated. This is more than a feature launch. It’s proof that AI can handle real-world coordination, not just digital workflows. From an idea in 2024 → a working system in 2025 → a wedding that went flawlessly. Historic day for us, and maybe a small glimpse into the future of how humans and AI will work together.

Giving away free money is surprisingly hard.

Everyone talks about AI scams. Nobody talks about how Google Ads is quietly scamming small startups daily. 132 fake conversions. $1.7K burned. 0 real humans. Here’s what we found: open.substack.com/pub/usefesta/p…

Day 29 of building in public 🚀 Wrapped up nearly 7.5K words of the Story of Festa — the tweetstorm is only halfway through 👀 Started our next on-the-ground initiative: handing out flyers + freebies to prospective brides at NYC bridal shops 💍 → Cold called one today, and they’re interested! Sending a proposal via email soon 📧 Posted new project collab on socials (instagram.com/p/DQFpklhCCDX/) — a wedding planner in our network vouched for Festa 🙌 (huge credibility boost) Stayed consistent on Twitter (posting daily is a habit now) Big things brewing. The next few weeks are all about brand presence + momentum.

We spent $1.7K on Google Ads for Festa. Got 132 ‘wedding leads.’ 0 were real. Here’s everything we learned: substack.com/home/post/p-17…