tuparties

TuParties is the discovery and distribution layer for weekend events at Temple University.

Lived the problem and willed a fix into existence from kevin's couch.

2500+ weekly active users. 15 host partnerships. 55 parties hosted. All in one semester.

Try it here: tuparties.com/demo

The Problem

In fall 2025, a few friends and I moved into an off-campus row house. we decided to throw parties. to make some money and get some clout. We threw six parties that semester, five of them were bangers.

Hosting taught me the problem fast. To get people through the door, I had to market through YikYak, Fizz, private dms and snapchat stories. On the other hand, every time I went out, I had to use the same four apps, scrolling to figure out who was throwing.

I was getting burned by the same channels from both ends. Campus attention was completely fragmented, and there was no winner in the events space.

So that spring, I decided to build it.

The Lessons

Ship Fast

My roommate KP, who is a founder himself, instilled this lesson in me. I wanted to take my time and launch after the product looked pretty and had all the functionality and features I wanted. KP forced me to launch in 2 weeks.

I talked to a few of my fraternity brothers and sorority friends to understand the scope of v1. Designed a shitty version with the listing and map page and launched it. The site had 400 visits that weekend. That number proved to me that it could be a real product and worth my time.

Iterate Faster

Once v1 shipped, I talked to everyone in my network that had used the site on launch weekend. Running a closed feedback loop ensured I caught consumer roadblocks early and focused on things that moved the needle.

"The design is confusing, I feel overwhelmed" "I like the navigate feature but it opens directions for cars" "The five-star rating is too much, I would much rather say good or bad" "What if we could see how much they are charging"

Over the semester, I ran these closed feedback loops every weekend with 8 core users. Iterating based on their feedback, I almost always saw better engagement metrics at scale.

Make Distribution Repeatable

Organic marketing was my only option. After launch, I asked close friends for help promoting the site. kevin introduced me to Jibin, a freshman business major who went out every weekend, he loved the product and pitched me on how he could grow it.

The product reached over 4000 students in 3 weeks. Our weekly active users went from ~400 to 2500. The strategy was simple. We posted on YikYak, Fizz, snapchat stories, instagram stories on thursday, friday and saturday evenings. Every post that asked about parties, we commented our url. It was a targeted effort so users got value from clicking the link. It was repeatable and it worked every time.

Be Buddies With The Hosts

Locking in hosts — fraternities and independents alike — was the whole game. They were our supply side; without them, we had nothing to distribute. The pitch was simple: we were a better distribution layer than anything they were already using.

The trade was even. We put them in front of thousands of students every weekend, and in return they slapped our URL on every poster. Those posters worked twice over — free acquisition for us, and a signal to students that TuParties was the legit place to find the party.

And it compounded. Every poster put us in front of more students, every new student made our reach more valuable to the next host, and every new host meant more posters.

In spring 2026, we partnered with 15 hosts and 55 parties were listed on tuparties.

Sell Attention

We almost made the classic mistake: charging hosts to list their events. This would kill our supply side before the product had proper grounding. Then we pivoted to advertising based business model. Instead of selling listings, we sold the attention of 2500 impulsive students.

We ran embedded ads with a local fast-food shop. Instead of bringing a deck to the sales meeting, I created a live demo on a preview deployment. The owner was sold instantly.

I designed the ad placement to be non-intrusive to the core user experience. A little banner under the day switch tabs on the home page, a pin on the map page, and a pop-up that triggered after midnight prompting students to get food on their way home.

The advertising partner made $5,000 above their baseline revenue in four weeks.

The Impact

By week 4, we hit 2,500 weekly active users and held there till the end of the semester. Over the spring, 8,350 students visited the site ~36,000 times. They spent over 3 minutes a session, and 96% of them were on their phones.

Over 80% of our traffic was direct. People weren't clicking ads or links, they were typing tuparties in themselves every weekend, more than 3 times each. That's a habit.

By the end of the semester, tuparties wasn't something we promoted anymore. It was just how a big chunk of campus decided where to go on a friday night. We even got featured on Yak recap.

It's incredible that we got embedded into campus culture and changed how students move through their weekends.

The Future

In Development.