Houseparty

Houseparty's roots trace back to Life on Air, Inc., a company founded by Ben Rubin around December 2012 together with co-founders Itai Danino, Uri Haramati, and (from 2015) Sima Sistani. The founding team, several of whom (Rubin, Danino) are Israeli and studied at institutions including the Technion and Reichman University (IDC Herzliya), initially spent roughly two years building backend infrastructure for a different, unreleased video product before pivoting to build Meerkat, a live mobile video-broadcasting app that let users stream to their Twitter and Facebook followers. Meerkat launched in February 2015 and became a breakout hit at that year's SXSW festival. Days after its debut, Twitter cut Meerkat's access to its social graph and shortly afterward acquired rival live-streaming app Periscope, badly undercutting Meerkat's growth. In March 2015, Life on Air raised $12 million in venture funding led by Greylock Partners — this is the specific, confirmed point of Greylock's involvement, with Greylock General Partner Josh Elman taking a board seat that he held through the company's later pivot and acquisition. Facing Twitter's competitive pressure, the Life on Air team spent roughly ten months building a new product internally, and in February 2016 quietly released it to app stores under a placeholder identity; by October 2016 the company had redirected its focus (and eventually its website and brand) entirely to this new app, Houseparty, and Meerkat was formally shut down and pulled from app stores on October 4, 2016. Houseparty was a group video chat app supporting up to eight simultaneous participants in a 'room,' designed to simulate the spontaneity of dropping by a friend's house, and it later added built-in social games (Quick Draw, Chips & Guac, trivia, and a licensed Ellen DeGeneres 'Heads Up!' integration in 2019, plus Mattel's Uno and Magic 8 Ball in 2020). In December 2016, Houseparty raised a large round reported at $50 million led by Sequoia Capital; Crunchbase lists Sequoia Capital, along with NFX (James Currier, an advisor to the company since 2014) and Aleph among the company's investors across what Crunchbase records as five total funding rounds and 36 total investors, though full details of all rounds are not publicly disclosed. Combined confirmed disclosed funding across the two well-documented rounds (Greylock's $12M Series A-type round in 2015 and Sequoia's $50M round in 2016) is at least $62 million. In March 2019, co-founder Sima Sistani (previously Head of Media at Tumblr, with earlier experience at Yahoo, and a co-founder of Rogue Paper) was named CEO of Houseparty, succeeding Ben Rubin, who had served as CEO from the company's founding. In June 2019, Fortnite maker Epic Games acquired Houseparty/Life on Air; the deal's terms were officially undisclosed, though Business Insider later reported a price of approximately $35 million, a figure subsequently cited by TechCrunch and other outlets as 'reported' rather than confirmed. Life on Air became a subsidiary of Epic Games, and Sistani said the deal made strategic sense given Houseparty's popularity among Fortnite's young player base; she later stated Houseparty likely could not have continued operating independently. Houseparty's usage exploded during the COVID-19 pandemic: in the roughly 30 days following mid-March 2020 lockdowns, the app reported approximately 50 million new sign-ups, was the #1 social app in dozens of countries, and users averaged 60+ minutes (peaking above 80 minutes) per session — a surge described by outlets like Fast Company and Fortune as putting Houseparty in direct competition with Zoom, Skype, FaceTime, and Discord for pandemic-era social and work video chat. The app won a 2020 Webby Award for 'Breakout of the Year' and hosted a celebrity-studded 'In The House' virtual festival in May 2020 featuring guests such as Alicia Keys and Neil Patrick Harris. In March 2020, Houseparty also faced (and Sistani publicly denied) rumors that its servers had been hacked amid the surge — rumors that were never substantiated and that the company attributed to a coordinated smear campaign. In November 2020, Epic integrated a 'Houseparty Mode'/'Fortnite Mode' video chat feature directly into Fortnite. Despite the pandemic boom, usage declined as lockdowns eased and competition from Zoom, FaceTime, and other established video platforms intensified. On September 9, 2021, Epic Games announced it would discontinue Houseparty, citing a decision to focus company resources on building 'social interactions' at 'metaverse scale' across its broader Epic/Fortnite ecosystem rather than maintaining Houseparty as a standalone app; the app was removed from stores immediately and existing service was shut down in October 2021, ending Houseparty's run just over two years after the Epic acquisition and roughly nine years after Life on Air's founding.

Business model

Consumer social/communications app (B2C), free to download and use, monetized primarily through scale/engagement rather than direct revenue; after 2019 operated as a wholly owned subsidiary product of Epic Games with no disclosed standalone revenue model.

Free consumer app; no confirmed public disclosure of direct monetization (ads or paid features) during Life on Air's independent life or under Epic Games ownership.