The ROI is insane: 26-year-old turned $15,000 pizza investment into $1 million in revenue

How can you transform $15,000 into $1 million? By purchasing a large number of pizzas.

Matthew Parkhurst, co-founder and CEO of New York-based tech startup Antimetal, aimed to inform potential clients about the company's existence as it prepared to exit its beta phase.

So, he bought them lunch.

On April 4, Parkhurst's company distributed over 1,000 pizzas from local pizzerias in New York and San Francisco, with boxes featuring the company's branding and contact information. Any undelivered pizzas were given to delivery drivers, who received tips of "a couple of hundred bucks per driver," according to Parkhurst.

Antimetal spent approximately $15,000 on pizzas, packaging, and targeted delivery to potential clients, venture capital firms, and tech influencers with large social media followings.

Antimetal has gained over $1 million in annualized net revenue from roughly 75 companies that received pizza, according to Parkhurst.

"Clearly, the ROI on the revenue side is astonishing compared to the expenses we incurred," Parkhurst remarks. "Additionally, it was an excellent experience because we were able to assist small businesses."

A tastier version of a cold email

Antimetal offers a business model that helps startups save money on their cloud infrastructure costs. For $599 per month, the company can identify inefficiencies in your AWS plan and reduce your monthly spending from $50,000 to $49,401.

Parkhurst's target customer: any tech company that heavily invests in cloud services. "Our product is incredibly easy to sell," he remarks. "It's like having free money, to some extent."

Every tech CEO, venture capitalist or influencer receives a lot of emails. Rahul Sonwalkar, CEO of San Francisco-based data analysis startup Julius AI, recalls receiving a cold pitch from "Antimetal" but ignored it.

While eating an unexpected lunch with some of his employees, Sonwalkar checked social media platform X and discovered that Antimetal was "the talk of the town," he says.

Browserbase founder Paul Klein was unfamiliar with Antimetal's business until he received a pizza from the company.

Both startups reached out to Antimetal, subscribed to its monthly service, and committed to staying with it as long as it continues to save them money.

"As a founder, I often find myself overwhelmed by the noise. However, when someone does something interesting, it snaps me out of ignoring cold messages," says Sonwalkar.

Parkhurst didn't just settle for pizza; he aimed for a viral moment that would spark conversation about Antimetal. Branded swag was too forgettable, and champagne was too expensive.

Parkhurst says that the $15,000 spent on pizza represented "almost the entire marketing budget" for its launch, and the results exceeded his expectations.

"No bad press has been reported about this [to my knowledge], which is highly unusual. Whenever something is done on a large scale, someone usually finds something to complain about ... No one was upset about receiving the pizza."

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