Most media companies are now trying to build events businesses. The logic is straightforward: live experiences offer a way to diversify revenue beyond advertising and subscriptions while deepening audience relationships.
But for The Future Party, events weren’t an add-on. They were the starting point.
Long before it built a 200,000-subscriber newsletter, the company began as a series of informal gatherings in Los Angeles—parties designed to bring together young professionals trying to break into the entertainment industry. “We just wanted to get everyone together who was grinding their teeth as assistants and coordinators,” co-founder Boye Akolade said. “It was really just networking for us, even though we hated the word networking.”
Over time, those gatherings evolved into something far more structured—and far more lucrative. Today, The Future Party operates as a hybrid media-and-experiences company, but its core business is neither subscriptions nor ads. Instead, it makes most of its money by partnering with major brands—from Amazon to luxury fashion labels—to produce high-end, invite-only events tied to cultural moments like SXSW, Art Basel, and Coachella.
In a crowded events landscape, The Future Party has carved out a distinctive position: it doesn’t just produce events. It delivers access—to a curated network of cultural insiders—and monetizes that access through brand partnerships.
The result is a business model that flips the traditional media playbook on its head.
In an interview, Akolade walked me through every aspect of The Future Party’s events strategy, including how it pitches brands, its method for curating guest lists, what KPIs clients often look for, and why the company prefers free, sponsored events instead of charging for admission.
Let’s jump into it…
Building a brand before building media
The Future Party’s trajectory runs counter to how most modern media companies evolve. Typically, publishers build an audience digitally first—through newsletters, social media, or podcasts—and then layer on events as a monetization extension.
The Future Party did the opposite.
“For us, we started brand first,” Akolade said. “We just had a dope brand people liked.”
That brand was built in physical spaces. The early events functioned as both community hubs and signaling mechanisms—bringing together people who saw themselves as part of the next generation of cultural tastemakers. The company began collecting email addresses early on, but the digital layer lagged behind the in-person experience.
It wasn’t until six or seven years in that The Future Party launched its newsletter, which now serves as a media extension of the brand. The publication covers the “business of culture”—a mix of entertainment, tech, fashion, and marketing—with a lens aimed at helping creative professionals navigate their industries.
The newsletter provided scale, but it wasn’t the core product. Instead, it became part of a broader ecosystem designed to reinforce the company’s positioning and feed its events business.
This sequencing—brand first, media second—proved critical. By the time The Future Party leaned into content, it already had a highly defined audience and a clear value proposition: access to influential people and cultural insight.
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