The 27-year-old cofounder of Museum of Ice Cream turned a viral trend into a $200 million experience-first company. Here's how, and why she's not afraid of copycats.
- Maryellis Bunn, age 27, is the cofounder and CEO of Museum of Ice Cream - founded in 2016 - and its parent company Figure8, an experience-first development business.
- The amount of time that passed between when Bunn decided to make Museum of Ice Cream a reality to when it opened its doors in New York was only about 90 days.
- It's since welcomed over 1.5 million guests in locations from LA to NY.
- Soon after launching Museum of Ice Cream, blatant copycats came out in droves - but Bunn wasn't deterred by them. In fact, she even promotes imitators of her business.
- She shared with Business Insider how she's able to stay ahead of the curve and built a $200 million business from a viral trend, which included hiring a passionate team and knowing when to step back.
- "Competition tests our resilience, so I welcome it. It pushes us to stay clear about our purpose and what makes us unique as an experience and brand," she explained.
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Museum of Ice Cream (MOIC) - which, according to its website, provides "fun, multi-sensorial expressions of ice cream that cater to the appetites of our generation" - has in total welcomed over 1.5 million guests to date across all its locations from Los Angeles to New York. Its parent company, Figure8 - an experience-first development company - launched this summer and recently completed its first series A round of $40 million at a $200 million valuation.
It's an enviable position for Maryellis Bunn, the company's 27-year-old cofounder and CEO, who after launching MOIC in 2016 found herself positioned at the forefront of a movement and viral trend that caused dozens of copycats to try to mimic the company's success.
The cofounder shared with Business Insider exactly how she and her team came up with the idea for "experiums" - a combination of "experience" and "museum" - and continue to stand out in an increasingly crowded field.
After attending Parsons School of Design in New York and receiving a joint degree in business and design, Bunn landed a position at Time Inc. in 2015. She began in creative services and then moved into a role created for her as head of forecasting and innovation, where she was charged with identifying new partnerships, products, and innovations that could establish new revenue streams.
However, she left Time after just one year, set on finding herself a new challenge, and spent the next several months couch surfing and Airbnbing her apartment to save money - and it was during this period of career ambivalence when the concept for Museum of Ice Cream came to her.
"When I first moved to New York City, I struggled to find communities that I could connect with," she said. "I felt there were no true experiences left in the city where people could meet and interact face to face and in a meaningful way."
The amount of time that passed between when Bunn "realized that [she] was crazy enough to put everything [she] had into the idea" to when Museum of Ice Cream opened its doors in New York was only about 90 days. For the first few years, she and her cofounder Manish Vora - whom Bunn had met through a mutual contact - completely self-funded the business. Her team started as a skeleton crew of five, with everyone (including herself) holding other jobs at the time.
"We all worked 20-hour days, painted the walls, cleaned the floors, helped tile the pool, you name it," she said.
Soon after launching Museum of Ice Cream, blatant copycats came out in droves, skinning the company's websites and substituting different colors, candies, and foods into their own knockoffs. "Actual direct and indirect conceptual copies emerged - we helped build an industry," Bunn said.
Initially, Bunn said that she and her team were upset by the imitations, but later came to see their value.
"The reality is that we are just one player in a group of amazing creators who are going to continue to push the boundaries of what entertainment looks like," she said. "However, I see a much bigger opportunity. Museum of Ice Cream built an industry and we need to continue to lead it."
Bunn shared that MOIC begins their creation process from an emotional standpoint. "Our teams ask themselves, 'How do we want people to feel in our experium and a specific installation?' From there we ideate and build our experience both from physical and interactive standpoints around the feeling and the person."
Learning to take calculated steps back to push forwardWhen launching MOIC in Los Angeles, one of their several pop-up locations, the company had enough demand to sell out for another six months of tickets on their final sale. But they decided not to extend the pop-up in that location because they felt they wouldn't be able to continue to deliver a top-notch experience in the existing space.
"Museum of Ice Cream Los Angeles was built as a pop-up and we never lost sight of this intention," Bunn said. "Knowing that we will be coming back to Los Angeles in the future, we wanted to capture the learnings from our pop-up and use them to iterate even better experiences. When we come back, it will be a new Museum of Ice Cream."
She added that her team will use the "thousand data points" collected from that build and the subsequent three builds in SF, Miami, and NYC to continue to provide their fans with the ultimate experience. Last month, MOIC opened its flagship in New York City.
"It's over 25,000 square feet with the most incredible ice-cream-inspired experiences over three floors," she said. "It is a permanent fixture in New York's Soho district. If we stayed focused on pop-ups, we wouldn't have realized this bigger dream."
The power of a passionate teamIn total, the company has now hired over 1,000 millennials across the US to help the company fulfill its mission.
"Our secret to finding and growing great talent is uncovering people who have big dreams and imaginations," Bunn said. "As a company, our mantra is 'Anything is Possible,' and we find people across all disciplines who believe the same and have an open mind."
She added that the startup environment allows people to explore many dimensions of the business. "We encourage them to step up and find and refine their skills and talents in unexpected ways," Bunn explained. "For example, our star employee in construction actually started in production and didn't have a construction background. Kudos to her for running with the opportunity and creating her current role."
Museum of Ice Cream escalates its competitive edge by having founders who "work literally every hat in the museums."
"We know what we want - or at least can talk from our own personal experience - on most facets of our business, from visitor support to the guide positions to the finishes of our floors to the layouts of our back of house," she said.
The best form of flattery"I think every business that finds success in this digitally connected world is going to find folks mimicking it," Bunn said.
In a surprising twist of events, Bunn and her team today actively support - and even promote - what she considers to be the best of their imitators to her own audience, confident in the enduring power of her company's unique product.
"Competition tests our resilience, so I welcome it," Bunn explained. "It pushes us to stay clear about our purpose and what makes us unique as an experience and brand. These elements keep inspiring guests to visit and return to our experiums."
The success of Museum of Ice Cream's mission is reflected in the fact that its parent company Figure8 already has plans for international expansion. Bunn shared that her teams will be rolling out a new MOIC location roughly each quarter while also launching new Figure8 brands and working on commissioned special projects.
"Museum of Ice Cream receives an overwhelming amount of requests from companies asking us to design branded experiums for them, and we have already developed probably a half dozen new experiums of our own," explained Bunn. "Now we can answer this need and more, and you will see at least one new experium launched in 2020."