Not every startup collapse is an FTX or Theranos. They don’t all burn so brightly and explode so spectacularly. More often than not, there won’t be some high-profile court case and prison time. Am
The founders of IRL, Abraham Shafi and Genrikh Khachatryan, are suing their investors, claiming that they intentionally sabotaged the company. At its peak, IRL was poised to become an event organizing
SoftBank once invested in social app IRL at a $1.1 billion valuation. Now, the Japanese investment firm is suing the defunct company for fraud, alleging $150 million in damages. IRL was supposedly poi
Ironically, the social app IRL‘s users do not exist in real life. An internal investigation by IRL’s board of directors found that 95% of the app’s reported 20 million users were 
Hello and welcome back to Equity, the podcast about the business of startups, where we unpack the numbers and nuance behind the headlines. All the cool kids are filling out the Equity listener surve
“We have all seen the state of the market,” IRL CEO and co-founder Abraham Shafi wrote in a company-wide memo where the social app announced it would be dramatically cutting staff. Similar to doze
IRL, the SoftBank-backed social app and recent unicorn, is today announcing its first acquisition. The company is purchasing, for an undisclosed sum, the “digital nutrition” company AeBeZe
Social calendar app IRL has been busy building a messaging-based social network, or what founder and CEO Abraham Shafi calls a “WeChat of the West.” Following its pandemic-fueled growth an
Following its $16 million Series B last fall, event discovery network IRL is launching a new website that adds more social features around events, including profiles, chats and the ability to join gro
The COVID-19 pandemic impacted the way a number of companies have had to do business. For the event discovery startup, IRL, it meant pivoting into the virtual events space. This April, the startup qui
IRL, the recently pivoted calendar app that aggregates live virtual events, has today launched a web version of the platform. The company, which has $11 million in funding from Goodwater Capital, Foun
What do you do if you’re an event discovery startup and suddenly it’s illegal to attend events? You lean into the cultural shift and pivot. Today, $11 million-funded calendar app IRL is mo
It’s very likely that you don’t know MSCHF. It’s also likely that you’ve come across one of their wild-ass projects. From “Jesus Shoes” filled with holy water to a collar that lets your do
Update 5:02 PM PT: Developer beta containing Deep Fusion will not ship today after all. No date announced; just “coming.” Apple is launching an early look at its new Deep Fusion feature on
Why is there no app where you can follow party animals, concert snobs or conference butterflies for their curated suggestions of events? That’s the next phase of social calendar app IRL that’s
Social planning apps are a dime a dozen, but none have risen to become a mainstay in our digital lives. IRL, founded by Abe Shafi and Scott Banister, is looking to break the pattern, focusing on posit