When Nicolas Khonaysser, 26, moved back to the Bay Area after graduate school in 2024, he was thrown by how unfamiliar the city felt. He’s been in Walnut Creek since age 10, when his family relocated from France. As a teenager, he’d felt connected to the Bay’s thriving social scene. But after grad school, things felt different.
“It was fragmented,” he said “You needed 10 different apps to know what was happening. And even then, you’d miss out on something cool.”
He felt lonely. And he wasn’t alone. Data analysis from the Chronicle shows that 20-somethings are the largest demographic leaving San Francisco, with some citing a lack of connection as the reason.
Jacob Wells, Khonaysser’s friend from Arizona State University, and some of his new connections felt similarly. Last May, they decided to take action, renting a six-bedroom house above a bar in the Excelsior.
For Khonaysser and the others — five men and one woman — the house became a home, party venue, and the headquarters for their business, an events startup called Vently, which throws parties and lists events throughout the city.
Khonaysser is the CEO. The goal? To help Gen Z, and everyone else, have fun again. And to make money by being Gen Z’s go-to events platform while they’re at it.
The competition is stiff: Vently is up against legacy platforms like Eventbrite and Facebook Events, as well as newer players Posh, Lu.ma, and Partiful, which have collectively raised more than $50 million. Vently’s $500,000 in seed funding is comparatively pennies, but its party-forward, fun-centric brand has struck a chord with San Francisco’s dwindling 20-somethings, and the founders are hoping they can bring the city’s youthful energy back to life.
At home, at work, at play
When the friends moved into Vently HQ (which is also their home), they equipped it with three coffee machines, furnished the living room with cream loveseats and a 400-pound marble table, and decorated with porcelain vases tastefully printed with breasts, rehomed from a breast-milk startup that was moving out of the state.
They installed a cold plunge tub on the deck, naturally, and a weights bench in the living room. To cap off the startup vibes, they hung a bedazzled purple Vently “V,” gifted from an investor, above the fireplace. They purchased an eight-seat Escalade so they could travel together.
The month after they moved in, the team threw their first party. Khonaysser posted the invitation to Instagram: “Wine dinner. Eight strangers. … Dinner, drinks on us. Dm us.”
Hundreds responded — nannies, tech workers, venture capitalists, local politicos — which confirmed his hunch. “People are hungry for connection,” he said. “They just need some help.” The night of the party, he donned a butler’s jacket, set the table, and waited by the door. All 12 RSVPs showed up, and from then on, “Dinner With Strangers” became a monthly event. Nowadays, it boasts a 5,000-strong waitlist.
In the past year, Vently has promoted and hosted hundreds of events: Orangetheory workouts, bank raves, boat parties, a SantaCon takeover, viral “lookalike” contests. It has partnered with TechCrunch and the Golden State Warriors (“They reached out to us!,” Khonaysser said). The company has amassed 12,700 followers on Instagram and in November launched a platform where event organizers and venues can list and sell tickets, send text blasts, and manage their communities.
Of course, living with cofounders — and hosting parties in the home — can put a strain on relationships. But Gargi Kand, 26, Vently’s head of growth and self-proclaimed “big sister” of the house, thrives on intensity. (Last year, she ran a marathon with no training. “Don’t recommend it,” she said. “Dislocated my knee a month later.”)
Living in a party house with her colleagues has been generally low-stress, she said, noting that the guys are respectful and clean up after themselves. The only disagreements are over Khonaysser’s “pathological need” to blast the heat; the others forgive him because he makes a killer espresso martini.
As for romantic entanglements, only Khonaysser is in a relationship. “If someone has girl problems, I’m the one they talk to,” Kand said. Jacob Wells, 22, who went to college with Khonaysser and is Vently’s COO, said he’s on standby if Kand needs relationship tips. “Gargi comes to me when she wants a straight-shooter opinion on her many dating problems,” he said.
Vently’s evolution has led the founders to expand far beyond hosting parties: They aim to be the online platform of choice for any event in the Bay. Think Eventbrite, but with fewer fees, and for Gen Z.
Andrew Wasilewski, CEO of The Faight Collective, an artist event space in the Haight, is a happy early Vently adopter. “Eventbrite’s fees are brutal,” he said. “We don’t just want random ticket buyers. We want to build a real, engaged community.” If Vently can streamline his team’s marketing and admin work from eight apps to one? “Game-changer.”
The demand for a hub that centralizes local community events is real, said Nicolas Meader, a VC at Lioncrest Ventures, which backed Vently’s seed round. “The hardest time to make friends is if you move after college,” he said. “You go from having 20 friends down the street to no one, plus a ton of work responsibilities. Vently [helps] you get involved in the community.”
Vently closed out January with its biggest partner event yet: the Quarter Century Tech Giga Party, a 2,500-person, five-floor conference-turned-club-night at Temple nightclub that ran from 5 p.m. to 2 a.m.
The team was hyped about the lineup, which included California State Treasurer Fiona Ma; VCs from Andreesen Horowitz, Sequoia, and Blackrock; and DJ sets from Twitch cofounder Justin Kan, and Arielle Zuckerberg (Mark’s sister). The night was beautifully chaotic: the layout was confusing, the acoustics made it hard to hear speakers, and attendees hadn’t been able to figure out if they should dress for a club or a conference.
But there were many charming moments: the silent disco on the rainy rooftop, the hands that shot up when someone asked who’d used DeepSeek, the man in a cardboard robot costume doing the robot on the dance floor. It was a big night, but not Vently’s best party, according to some attendees, who referenced the 2025 New Year’s Eve masquerade ball, Hibernia bank rave in November, and the Halloween haunted mansion bash at a Palo Alto luxury estate.
Khonaysser isn’t fazed by the growing number of well-funded event startups with which his company competes. “San Francisco is the best place to start something, the best place to party, the best place to make your mark,” he said. To drive that point home, Vently in January acquired issfback.com from an Andreessen Horowitz scout. In an odd twist, that website once redirected visitors to an October 2024 story in The Standard with the headline “SF is so back.” (We had nothing to do with it.) Now the URL takes you straight to Vently.