<p class="ingestion featured-caption">The team behind Pie, an IRL-social startup founded by Andy Dunn, is based in Chicago.Courtesy of Pie</p><ul class="summary-list"><li>Pie, an IRL social startup, raised $11.5 million in Series A funding led by Forerunner Ventures.</li><li>Founded by Bonobos' Andy Dunn, Pie focuses on in-person connections and events.</li></ul><p>Social-networking <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/founders-disrupting-social-media-networking-landscape-new-apps-2024-1">startups</a> are ditching online friends and followers for in-person, real-life connections.</p><p>Pie, a Chicago-based startup founded by menswear brand Bonobos' <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/author/andy-dunn">Andy Dunn</a>, is joining the race to help people make friends.</p><p>One of many emerging "<a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/irl-social-startups-combat-loneliness-among-millennials-gen-z-2024-5">IRL social</a>" apps, Pie lets users plan and join in on IRL hangouts. The app is already equipped with an AI assistant and is piloting an enterprise product offering.</p><p>"The battle for offline attention is the next big thing in consumer," Dunn told Business Insider.</p><p>Amid a loneliness epidemic declared by US Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, and social-media users growing jaded with online life, startups like <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/posh-raises-series-a-help-make-plans-friends-pitch-deck-2024-7">Posh</a> (a sort of TikTok feed for events) and <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/startup-shifting-social-to-real-life-funding-raise-app-launch-2024-2">222</a> (a way to meet strangers via dinners or events) have also raised venture capital this year with apps aiming to help people find friends.</p><p>Pie recently announced that it raised a $11.5 million Series A led by Forerunner Ventures' Kirsten Green. The round also included participation from Chicago-based fund Origin Ventures and Twitter cofounder Ev Williams. Its latest round puts Pie's total capital raised at $24 million, per the company.</p>Building and growing an app for making friends<p>Like many startups, Pie has had to pivot. It launched in 2020 as a friend matchmaking app, akin to a Bumble Friends experience.</p><p>"We got a lot of matching, a lot of profile browse, but no one would reach out to the other person," Dunn said.</p><p>After reading Dr. Marisa Fanco's book "Platonic," Dunn said he went back to the drawing board. Scrolling through potential friends wasn't going to cut it — it had to be recurring group hangouts to help people meet and stay connected.</p><p>With a team of 10 Chicago-based staffers, Pie doubled down on building an IRL app and using the city as a testing ground.</p><p>"Chicago doesn't have the saturation of consumer apps you have in New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco," Dunn said.</p><p>In February and March, the startup began testing local, curated events, dubbed "Pie Originals," in Chicago, such as a monthly silent book club or a bi-monthly "Dudes Getting Pancakes" hangout. Dunn credits the app's growth to this strategy. It hit 20,000 monthly active users in six months of testing the Pie Originals.</p><p>Local <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/influencers-in-person-events-build-communities-make-money-2024-9">event creators</a>, like <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.instagram.com/tellmewhyitscool_show/">Mary Doctor</a>, who hosts a show-and-tell event for adults, have used Pie to gather people and make money.</p><p>"There's this whole creator economy of people who want to bring people together in person," Dunn added.</p><p>With its Series A capital, Pie is rolling out a creator fund for event hosts, which pays $5 to the creator for every RSVP to an event (all of which are free for attendees).</p><p>The startup plans to experiment with different monetization models, eyeing a potential freemium model that apps like Bumble and Hinge have opted for.</p><p>"This is venture-backed startups," Dunn said, adding that by the time of Pie's Series B, it will have a monetization engine locked down. "You have costs, and then you figure out revenues later."</p><p>In the meantime, Dunn is betting on Pie's Gen-Z staff and the app's user growth, which stands at 40% month-over-month.</p><p><strong>Read the 31-page pitch deck that Andy Dunn used to raise Pie's Series A:</strong></p><p><em>Note: Pie has redacted details and amended some pages so that the document could be shared externally.</em></p>