Corporate retreats don't have sexy qualities. The startup studio Atomic launched in 2020 and is managing to inject some pizazz into the long-formulaic industry. BoomPop is evolving into more than just a way for companies to plan luxury meet-ups for their employees, which is how it is currently. Think weddings, family reunions and more.
At least the startup's pitch is convincing. This is based on an interview with the company's CEO Healey Cypher. During the Pandemic, the company was founded. Cypher, who is also the COO of Atomic, began to come up with innovative ways to keep his colleagues happy, such as through virtual wine-tastings, magic shows, and the like. Along the way, it became apparent that there could be a business in creating acurated marketplace of virtual experiences. He says that by the end of last year, 2,500 customers were letting BoomPop plan their virtual team-building exercises.
Today's viability of the business is more assured than it was in the past. Some of its customers have already paid BoomPop to organize mini meetups for them, both virtual and offline. There are many more choices to choose from. BoomPop now has thousands of hotel options, meeting spaces, activities, photographers who can create sizzle reels of these events and give to participants as they head back home.
The invitations, creation of event pages with agenda, tracks scheduling and budget changes are all handled by BoomPop. When an event ends, it creates an account for it. 4,000 companies have made arrangements for 150,000 of their employees at an average price of $65,000 per event and it has all been built from the ground up.
The majority of those customers have never hosted an off-site before.
All of them pay a flat fee that BoomPop guarantees is 10% to 20% off the best rates you can buy.
There is a lot of new, shiny, found money that is being spent in different ways. Some percentage will be used to adapt to a world where employees who work from home would benefit from greater social cohesion. It's not an act of kindness. Most jobs are sticky when it comes to coworkers.
The trend lines are being spied on by BoomPop and others. Flok, an end-to-end retreat planning startup with a founder who was once an Apple engineer, is one of the companies that BoomPop is competing against.
BoomPop seems to have some advantages over some of its competitors. The best known brand of Atomic is Hims & Hers, which went public via a special purpose acquisition company early last year and is snapping upshopify storefronts.
Atomic hasn't had a blow-your-hair-back-level exit yet, but it has seen plenty of success, including on the basis of how many of its startup raise follow-on rounds. ACME Capital and Atomic, along with Box founder and CEO Aaron Levie, raised a new round of funding for BoomPop in February.
Prior to teaming up with Atomic, Cypher founded his own company and co-founded some of Atomic's companies. After it was founded, Oak Labs made a full-length touch-screen mirror for dressing rooms and was acquired for tens of millions of dollars.
BoomPop could become a big business if it makes it through a recession because of the data that supports it.
Even with layoffs in the air, offices in the US are still less than half full. People don't like spending a lot of time in offices.
As soon as possible, companies are adjusting to that shift. 42% of companies plan to cut office space in the next year, according to a survey by Robin. The outfits would shrink their space by more than half.
They are dressed in suits, but we are told they don't actually wear suits. Jack Abraham isn't pictured.
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