Rizz Invites: finding customers and fixing a narrow name
Tatiana Colligan is CEO of Rizz Invites, a mobile-first digital invitation platform for hosts planning events from kids’ birthdays to weddings. Colligan discusses winning customers through Google Ads, the work of rebranding from Birthday Rizz, and why customer acquisition should come before building.
Work out how you will reach customers before investing heavily in building a product. Colligan’s experience also shows how an early name can limit a business as it expands to serve more occasions.
What’s the short story of how your business started, and what makes it genuinely different from the other options your customers have?
As a mom of three, I was paying $36.99 for every one of my kids’ birthday e-invitations, and my guests still had to wade through ads to RSVP. So in February 2026 I started Rizz Invites: beautiful, mobile-first invitations you send by text or email, with real-time RSVP tracking, no ads, no subscription, no clunky card editors. You pay once per event and that’s it.
What makes us different is a clean experience and an affordable price. The simplicity comes from our AI Invitation Maker: you pick a template, and AI adds your event details into it. There’s no dragging and dropping or choosing font colors when you’re not a designer. We’re bootstrapped on purpose, growing from revenue instead of investors, so there’s no pressure to add ads or upsells.
How did you win your first customers, and where does most of your new business come from today?
First customers came from Google Ads and that is where most of them come from today as well. A few of my friends used it for their birthdays too and gave me feedback which was very helpful.
What’s one decision that changed the direction of your business, and one mistake that taught you the most?
Moving from Birthday Rizz as a company name to Rizz Invites – we wanted to be there for our customer not only for birthdays but for graduation parties, friendsgiving dinners etc. So, that was the first mistake – to pick a limiting name. It took some time and hustle to migrate and move to the new domain, but better late than never!
What has changed in your industry or in what your customers expect over the last couple of years, and how have you adapted?
Our first mistake was picking a limiting name. We started as Birthday Rizz, but we wanted to be there for customers beyond birthdays, for graduation parties, Friendsgiving dinners and more. Rebranding to Rizz Invites and migrating to a new domain took time and hustle, but better late than never!
If you were advising someone starting out in your industry today, what would you tell them to do first, and what would you tell them to ignore?
Think about how you’ll get customers before anything else. In the age of AI, anyone can build an app or a website in a few hours, so marketing is the new bottleneck. People’s attention is limited, Google still has only ten spots on its first page (there’s a joke in the SEO world that the best place to hide a dead body is the second page of Google), and enterprise companies have millions to spend on Google Ads. So when you’re starting out, figure out your acquisition channel first, and worry about the building part second.
Thank you to Tatiana Colligan and the team at Rizz Invites for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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