‘Insane ROI’, tech startup CEO sends pizzas worth Rs 12.5 lakh to potential clients, earns Rs 8.3 crore in revenue

Companies go to extreme lengths to bag clients for their business, don’t they? Can you imagine how a CEO startup generated loads of revenue by treating them with food? Well, this isn’t a cooked up story as it actually happened when a CEO of a New York-based tech startup did the unthinkable.

In April, Matthew Parkhurst, co-founder and CEO of Antimetal, a tech startup based in New York, invested $15,000 (approximately Rs 12.5 lakh) to purchase pizzas for prospective clients, including venture capital firms and tech influencers. This initiative aimed to raise awareness about the company during its beta phase.

forbes

In just about two months, Antimetal turned its expenses into lucrative deals and earned more than one million dollars (Rs 8.3 crore) in revenue. 75 companies who were treated with pizza turned into Parkhust’s clients.?

In conversation with CNBC Make It, Parkhurst said, “Obviously, the ROI (return on investment) is insane on the revenue side, compared to what we spent. And, it was really great all around, I think, because we got to support small businesses.”

Interestingly ‘Pizza’ wasn’t the first choice for him. He told the publication that he was hoping to create a viral moment that would lead to people talking about his company. His other choice ‘Champagne’ didn’t seem feasible as it would turn out to be ‘too expensive’

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The money spent on sending the pizzas to clients was the company’s entire market budget for the launch

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Parkhurst mentioned that the amount spent on purchasing 1,000 pizzas constituted nearly the entire marketing budget for the launch. He noted that the outcome surpassed his expectations significantly.

One client shared that when the Pizza showed up at his office, he instantly took notice of the brand

One of the firms that partnered with Antimetal was Julius AI, a data analysis startup based in San Francisco. CEO Rahul Sonwalkar told CNBC Make It that he vaguely recalled seeing the name Antimetal in a cold pitch he had received and initially dismissed it.

However, when pizzas from Antimetal arrived at his office, Sonwalkar became intrigued. He decided to research the company on social media and discovered that Antimetal was generating significant buzz in the industry.

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Reacting to this Parkhurst said, “There’s literally no bad press out of this [to my knowledge], which is extremely rare. I think whenever you do anything on that scale, someone finds something to be pissed off about... Nobody was mad they got the pizza.”