He Took Over the Bachelorette Party Market

Want to dominate a $50B industry? Start with parties that involve penis straws.

That's what Hampton member, Mike Petrakis did. 

From a cowboy party bus to private yacht charters, Mike is taking over the $50B group travel industry - and he started with bachelorette parties. 

His platform, Batch, exploded to over 3 million users across 35 cities while sending 6-figure revenue boosts to local business partners.

In this exclusive Hampton interview, Mike reveals:

• How Batch’s unique approach to customer targeting slashed customer acquisition costs while driving exponential growth.
• How he built a multi-million dollar platform by solving the painful logistics of group celebrations.
• How small businesses see 6-figure revenue boosts by joining Batch’s partner marketplace. 
• Why “experience machines” are the overlooked goldmine of travel tech.

If you're wondering how to spot and scale a lucrative niche opportunity, this conversation is a great place to start:

Hello! Who are you and what business did you start?

I’m Mike Petrakis, founder and CEO of Batch.

Batch is the leading group travel platform in the U.S. We’re an app that helps people plan parties and book incredible experiences with their friends.

I’m super passionate about this business because getting people together is rare. It costs money, it’s hard to plan, and it’s a giant headache to coordinate friends for a trip.

So, we’re really proud of building an app that facilitates that—making it easy to plan something from start to finish.

On the supplier side of our marketplace, we empower small businesses by bringing them growth—traffic, insights, data trends, bookings, and revenue boosts.

We’re proud to work with small businesses throughout the country. That’s what we do: help people party and empower small businesses.

What's your backstory and how did you come up with the idea?

I come from bootstrapping companies. Before Batch, I started two apparel e-commerce companies, and I was also an owner of a gym at one point. So, I’ve done the revenue-funding or bootstrapping type of businesses.

But I wanted to build something that could be a legacy—something that would live on and impact people long-term. There are tons of ways to make money, as you can see in Hampton. But Batch was a chance to tackle a huge market opportunity: group travel.

A little backstory: I'd gone on a surf trip to Costa Rica, and thought it could’ve been planned much better. That inspired me to think about how to improve group travel planning.

Take us through the process of building and launching the first version of your product…

We took a niche-first approach. Instead of trying to tackle the entire group travel market, we laser-focused on bachelorette parties. They’re mandatory events; if you’re invited, you’re going. They’re also often planned by Type-A personalities who value tools that simplify the process.

No one was organizing these events at scale, and that allowed us to dominate.

To build momentum, we created a waitlist of 50,000 people during our development phase. After a year of work, we launched the app on January 1, 2020, complete with planning tools like itineraries and expense splitting. Within three months, we had 100,000 users.

Then COVID hit, and everything came to a halt.

That pause let us figure out our business model. We realized experiences were highly fragmented. Flights and hotels are dominated by big players, but experiences—what you do with your friends—were wide open.

We started with party buses in Nashville, boat charters in Miami, and private chefs in Vegas. These highly specific experiences let us stand out and grow quickly. (Partnering with local small businesses helped them tap into a growing market while bringing unique and authentic experiences to our users. Win-win.)

Then, as Covid slowed down in 2021, we had a planning app that hundreds of thousands of people started to use and a marketplace of experiences across three cities. We were off to the races from there.

Since launch, what growth channels have been most effective for you?

We figured out early on that the secret to growth was starting with the most influential person in the group—the maid of honor or the best man. These natural planners are the ones who take charge, and if you win them over, they’ll do all the heavy lifting for you.

So, we paid to acquire them as users, and then they invited their entire crew for free. It was like having a built-in marketing team for every party. 

Once those attendees experienced how smooth the planning process was, they’d tell their friends. That organic word-of-mouth growth was huge for us.

Did you ever have an “oh shit” moment where you thought it wouldn’t work?

Where do I even begin. Every year has its challenges.

In our first year, we had co-founder issues and had to let two co-founders go. Then my COO battled cancer during COVID.

In 2023, we realized that 30% of all bachelorette parties in the US were using our app to plan their party. That was an “oh shit” moment in a good way, but it also pushed us to expand into birthdays, bachelor parties, and other events—a necessary move to sustain growth. 

The key to expansion was to drive repeat usage from our bachelorette users. We had to make them realize that our app could be used to plan any trip; this required a massive brand overhaul as well as product enhancements to ensure the platform was great for any party type. 

We went from 97% bachelorette parties to 40% over the next 12 months. 

Can you break down the keys to this business model for us? What makes it work? And what do outsiders typically not understand about your industry?

We charge a modest fee and commission to be on our platform. We are marketing technology for our experience partners; not just a standard booking site. There are three core differentiators that result in growth to our partners:

1. High-Touch Account Management: We built an AM org that is not offering customer support but rather they are business consultants that deliver growth to our partners. We offer 24/7 support, ongoing check-in calls, and roundtable discussions offering recommendations and strategies to help their businesses grow. Other marketplaces just don’t do that.
2. Data and Insights Dashboards: We provide our partners with detailed KPIs and market comparisons. They can see exactly how they’re performing on Batch, an easy way to track the metrics that matter the most, and how they stack up against competitors in their city or category.  
3. High-Quality Users: We’re super intentional about who we bring to the platform. We are not focused on SEO arbitrage; we are spending to acquire high intent parties who have an upcoming trip that they need to book. While this is a pricier acquisition cost to find these planners, it results in significantly higher conversion on the platform for our partners.

As for how people look at our industry – First off, people balked at a bachelorette app; lots of VC’s didn’t believe that this was a big space. But bachelorette parties spend 11B/year in the US. Second, people tend to underestimate the experiences space because it involves quirky businesses like party buses, hibachi chefs, or male revue shows.

But these small businesses often make more than $1M a year, and they are crushing it building a great lifestyle for themselves while supporting the local economy. They thrive through Batch, and we’re proud to play a part in that.

What platform/tools are absolutely crucial for your business?

We use the same tools as everyone else – slack, notion, zoom, etc. 

But taking this question a step further in two ways: 

1. Bringing on strategic board members has been transformative. Every single board member on Batch has been an operator previously and has very relevant domain experience to Batch. This has helped us focus on what matters most vs getting tripped up in funding conversations; building a world-class planning platform for parties and driving growth to our partners. 
2. Creating a culture around transparency has been very helpful to drive employee retention at Batch while being a remote company. Every FTE joins our pulse check discussions, board meeting follow-ups, and gets our investor updates. Practicing this level of ‘nothing to hide’ leadership has had a trickle-down effect to every member of the team that drives a strong workplace culture.

What have been the most influential books, podcasts, or other resources?

Some of the books that have shaped the way I think and operate:

1. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight (is just a classic—the grit, the grind, and the sheer persistence that built Nike is so inspiring.)
2. The Four by Scott Galloway (packed with insights about how the biggest tech companies operate and dominate)
3. Smart People Should Build Things by Andrew Yang (I really resonated with the idea of creating something impactful)
4. Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross (super practical, especially for building and leading a team.)
5. The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni (also super practical. Helped with team building and leadership.)
6. Decide and Conquer by David Siegel (he’s actually a board member at Batch. His take on leadership and decision-making has been invaluable.)

Podcasts: My First Million ( my go-to. It’s entertaining, packed with value, and always gets me thinking about new ideas.)

Where do you see untapped opportunity in the market? What business do you wish someone else would build that would make your job easier?

There are so many opportunities here. For instance, better AI-driven financial reporting tools could make things so much clearer.

Transparency in finances is a huge pain point, and tools that could simplify that process would be a game-changer.

Then there’s ad-attribution. Consumer marketplaces spend a ton on ads, but knowing what actually works? That’s still way harder than it should be. Smarter technology there would save businesses so much money and time.

Lastly, marketplace health optimization. Right now, we’re building out these sophisticated Excel sheets to track how well markets are performing. It’s clunky, it’s manual, and it could be so much better. If AI could take that over and give us real, actionable insights, it would completely change the game for companies like Batch.

What are some strong opinions you have about leadership, and how do you actually put those into practice in your company?

As I mentioned, Transparency is everything for me. Every Friday, I share everything with the team—board presentations, investor updates, and how the company is performing. Not just with leadership, but with everyone. It’s not about showing off progress to the world i.e. ‘building in public’, but about making sure the team knows where we stand and where we’re headed. It’s about trust and clarity.

I’m also all about direct communication. No BS. If there’s an issue, we talk about it. If something needs to be fixed, we address it head-on. This approach has shaped our company culture and keeps things real.

Then there’s the fun part. Honestly, sometimes I feel like a bit of a jester, but that’s intentional. Keeping things light and entertaining goes a long way in making sure people actually enjoy their jobs. High retention comes when people feel good about where they work, and fun plays a big part in that.

My last one would probably be-- leading by example. You’ll see more of me putting myself out there publicly as the face of Batch in the coming year. Visibility matters, and I want to make sure I’m representing what we’re building.

Where can we go to learn more?

You can check out Batch here: https://letsbatch.com/

My LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mike-petrakis-a3445453/