Rich Future: Rich IRL

The future of dinner parties.

Kalei Correll — Sun, 12 Apr 2026 12:15:38 GMT

It’s no secret that I’ve become fascinated with IRL experiences. As someone who began their founder journey by way of online business in 2021, eventually teaching others how to grow their own, then deciding to launch another (this media brand) in early 2025, then spending a full year absorbed in the markets and AI headlines and tracking every single social media platform update until it became impossible to track every single one because of the new pace of the world or whatever… I found myself somersaulting into Q1 this year feeling pretty fried.

It was a flavor of burnout I hadn’t experienced before. Most of us are familiar with the over-working kind. This was different. This flavor of burnout was driven by too much intake. Flowing in through my screens, all day, every day. An infinite scroll providing an infinite drip of potentially useful information to either write about or do something with in the markets.

In December, I wrote to you when I noticed people were beginning to talk about 2026 as the year of going analog. The first wave of it (the dumbphones and rawdogging flights) seemed like protest behavior and somewhat performative. But then I thought more about AI adoption and how the growth of the wearables market will naturally reduce screen time over the next decade. I connected it to the expansion of buy-now-pay-later plans into travel, events, and experience markets. I realized the overstimulation and personal disgust I felt about my screen time was a microcosm of something much bigger. I realized we’re entering a market correction that will play out for the next 5-20 years.

It’s what inspired me to start noticing the founders in my network who are already building for this. Eventually it inspired me to launch this Rich IRL segment.

Today I’m proud to introduce you to our second founder in the series, Saba Ahmed.

Saba is the co-founder of Tiny Dinner.

We met through a community channel for startup founders.

When I first landed on the company’s site, I wondered if they were still in stealth mode. Their site consists of a simple yellow landing page containing their logo and a single link: Request an Invitation. You wouldn't guess that behind it are over 300 dinners across New York, Miami, and LA.

Tiny Dinner

While much of the world is preoccupied with looksmaxxing and AI-maxxing and productivity-maxxing every waking hour, Tiny Dinner immediately stands apart because Saba and her co-founder, Morgan, operate through restraint.

They met at a party in 2024, introduced by a mutual friend.

Morgan is a second-time founder (ex Public Goods) and Saba has a background in finance, strategy, and operations (ex theSkimm). They both grew up in cultures of hospitality.

“We'd both independently decided to dedicate the next chapter of our lives to building community. Interestingly, both of our journeys started with a book. Mine was Lost Connections and his was The Art of Community, which inspired him to start hosting dinner parties. We started hanging out in our neighborhood and sharing our perspectives on this topic we both cared deeply about. A few months later, he asked me to build Tiny Dinner with him.”

Tiny Dinner launched as an invite-only community for dinner parties with friends of friends in people's homes. Their gatherings are intimate, usually 6 to 12 people, and every member has been personally invited by someone in the community.

The community has already scaled to where dinners are happening almost every night of the week in New York, which makes it easy for their members to find one that’s convenient for them and build relationships over time.

I asked Saba what happens at a Tiny Dinner?

“Every Tiny Dinner is a little different because the host sets the tone. It’s their space, their menu, their personality. But the throughline is: guests show up ready to connect, and because everyone there is a friend or a friend of a friend, there’s a sense of familiarity even if it’s people you’ve never met.”

They intentionally decenter the “what do you do?” question that plagues most networking interactions by encouraging their hosts to ask a table question at some point during dinner. This brings the conversation together so guests aren’t just talking to the person next to them all night.

As for the dinners. Dinners and brunches are both being hosted. The food can be either home-cooked or ordered in. Seating is whatever the host prefers. Sometimes guests sit at a dining table, sometimes a backyard, rooftop, or just huddled around a couch.

I asked Saba what’s surprised her most about what people want from an IRL dining experience?

“It’s not about the food. People aren’t coming to Tiny Dinner because they’re expecting a gourmet dining experience even though some of our hosts really do pull out all the stops. What they really want is community and food is a vehicle for that but it’s not the point. Which is what I tell people who want to host but maybe don’t feel super confident about their cooking skills.”

What a relief for those of us who don’t love to cook but still want to host and bring people together.

Tiny Dinner feels refreshingly distinct from other dinner club concepts out there. They aren’t tasking you with showing up at a random restaurant, seated among strangers you’ll likely never see again, grinding through awkward icebreakers. Everyone there is a friend or a friend of a friend, which means the social vetting already happened before you walk in.

KC: “Why do you think people are hungry for this kind of experience right now?”
SA: “Because one in four Americans eats every single meal alone. There are many reasons for this — the pandemic, ‘frictionless’ technology, a challenging economy, people feeling burned out, an over-therapized society that’s learned to prioritize boundaries and self care over community. Socializing is self care and we are relearning that.”

Relearning we are. I’m very independent, sometimes to a fault. Last year I was working on a random personal project that involved testing ChatGPT’s memory capabilities. At one point, I prompted it with a classic “based on everything you know about me…” and asked what it thought my Myers-Briggs profile was. It guessed I was an introvert. And of all the four dimensions it was most confident on that one. I was shocked! This chatbot with a supposedly robust view of my inner world thinks I’m someone else. I’ve always known myself to be an ENFP so I took the assessment again and it was undeniably obvious that I am a people person. This is a sidebar to emphasize Saba’s point about how much we’ve normalized independence as self care to the point that we can convince our AI — and ourselves — that our coping strategies are our true identity.

Tiny Dinner seems to be solving for three of the hardest problems of adult life: how to make friends post-college, how to find a community of like-minded people in your city, and who knows, maybe just maybe… someone you meet eventually introduces you to your future partner. It’s just dinner. But is it?

I asked Saba where they see this business in a year.

“We recently expanded to Miami and LA and are learning what it looks like to build this in other cities. The early signals are strong. Our goal is to be in every city where our members want us to be and to get there by finding great hosts through our community.”

They’re currently growing through a monthly “pay-as-you-wish” membership model. The dinners themselves are free to attend.

KC: “What do you want us to know about Tiny Dinner that we wouldn’t be able to find online?”
SA: “There’s not a lot of information about Tiny Dinner online because we’ve been very private, growing through word of mouth. We’ve hosted over 300 dinners for thousands of guests.
It’s been transformative for me, for Morgan, and for our hosts. When we say our mission is to inspire people to host, it’s because we’ve seen firsthand what a ripple effect a single dinner party can have. We’re always open to meeting people who love to host, so get in touch if that’s you.”

Personally, I love the idea of a business like this reaching a global presence, growing entirely by word of mouth. I don’t currently live in any of Tiny Dinner's cities, but I’ve lived in LA before and know the specific challenges of building community in a city where each neighborhood is basically its own city and they don’t easily talk to each other. I also plan to spend some time in New York this summer and eventually split my time between cities more permanently. Knowing Tiny Dinner exists gives me more confidence to pursue the multi-city lifestyle dream.

After my conversation with Saba, I closed my laptop and started thinking about who I'd invite to my own table here in Scottsdale. Which, I think… is exactly the point.

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PS: if you know a founder building in this space with an interesting story to share, please send them my way: hello@richfuturemedia.com

The future we build when we're not on our phones.

Kalei Correll — Mon, 19 Jan 2026 02:05:54 GMT

Seems like every founder in my network is thinking about in-person experiences right now, whether that’s finding the best co-working space for their team (I like Kiln and Industrious in Phoenix) or deciding which events to attend at SXSW in March or… launching their own events, activations, and companies to service the IRL market.

It’s inspired me to think more broadly across conversations I’ve had with my family, my non-founder friends, my neighbors, at social dinners, basically anywhere in my life over the past six months and I realized that everyone is solving for the same thing:

The Good Vibe Studios

I connected with Carly Gilleland, founder of The Good Vibe Studios, last week after their MKR MBR membership launch caught my eye on Instagram. I had a photoshoot at their studio in October 2024.

They have a podcast recording room that’s on my shortlist for when the Rich Future podcast launches later this year.

I like that they recently added themed rooms to make photoshoots feel more playful and immersive. I like that they have a recurring client base which tells me it’s already something more than a sterile rental facility.

I asked Carly whether that was intentional?

“Most studios in Phoenix are transactional. You book the space, you create, you leave. I wanted to build a place where relationships are just as important as the content being produced.”

She launched the new studio membership in January to build upon this sentiment. Members get studio access plus a new community layer: co-working sessions, education workshops, monthly dinners.

I asked what kinds of people are joining.

“Being a member signals a certain standard. We are seeing podcasters, photographers, videographers join with intention of building their skill set. It positions creatives as part of a vetted, professional ecosystem rather than a sea of freelancers.”

I find this interesting during a time when it’s easy for anyone with a smartphone to call themselves a content creator.

What separates a TikTok hobbyist from a professional creative?

Memberships like MKR MBR become a quality filter.

Founders and executives picked up on this.

Carly Gilleland, founder of The Good Vibe Studios

“Our members aren’t just surrounded by other creatives, they’re in rooms with founders, executives, and brand-forward leaders who actively need high-quality content.”

After speaking with Carly, I realized she’s building a community and something else at the same time…

Matchmaking infrastructure.

She’s facilitating the collision between creatives and the people who hire them. Community + Lead flow.

Feels very… Rich Future.

Over the coming months, AI will automate more of our tasks and free up more of our time.

The prevailing question will shift from "what can I automate?" to "what do I want to do with my free time?"

The founders building infra for IRL experiences right now are answering that question before most people have thought to ask it.

If you know someone building in this space, send them my way: hello@richfuturemedia.com

We wrap with a few news signals on my radar about where the future of money and culture are headed...

OpenAI will start rolling out ads to free and ChatGPT Go users. This was inevitable for a company with a $5B annual burn rate and 300M+ free users.
New York judge flips the script on the AI malpractice debate. “I think there may come a point where you’re committing malpractice if you don’t incorporate AI into your practice.”
Prediction markets hit $5B weekly volume… then face insider trading scandal. I doubt this was the first prediction market scandal but it’s the first one loud enough to prompt Congress to introduce the “Public Integrity in Financial Prediction Markets Act.”
The government wants to give creators benefits in the form of algorithm transparency and portable healthcare. This connects to what I wrote about last June on high schoolers graduating into the algorithm.
81 M&A deals were made on creator assets in 2025. Up 17.4% YoY.

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