In April, Matthew Parkhurst, co-founder and CEO of New York-based tech startup Antimetal, spent $15,000 (about Rs 2.5 lakh) to buy pizzas for potential clients such as venture capital firms and even tech influencers to let them know about the company's existence since it was in its beta phase.
Two months later, Antimetal earned more than $1 million (about Rs 8.3 crore) in revenue after about 75 companies that received the pizza turned into their clients.
Speaking to CNBC Make It, 26-year-old Parkhurst said, “Obviously, the ROI (return on investment) is insane on the revenue side, compared to what we spent. And, it was really great all around, I think, because we got to support small businesses.”
But pizza wasn’t the only option Parkhurst considered, he told the publication. He wanted to create a viral moment that got people talking about his company. Branded swag was ruled out because it was "too easily forgettable". Champagne too wouldn't work because it was "too expensive".
Even the money that Parkhurst spent on buying 1,000 pizzas represented “pretty much the entire marketing budget” for its launch, Parkhurst said, adding that the results easily exceeded his expectations.
One of the companies that signed up with Antimetal was San Francisco-based data analysis startup Julius AI. Its CEO Rahul Sonwalkar told CNBC Make It he vaguely remembered seeing the name “Antimetal” in a cold pitch he’d received, and promptly ignored it.
But when the pizza showed up at his office, he looked the company up on social media and learned that Antimetal was “the talk of the town,” he said.
Reacting to this Parkhurst said, “There’s literally no bad press out of this [to my knowledge], which is extremely rare. I think whenever you do anything on that scale, someone finds something to be pissed off about... Nobody was mad they got the pizza.”
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