Let’s Rallie brings Philadelphians together IRL — with a little help from their phones

For Robbie Verna, business is all about community.

The 29-year-old, originally from Delaware County, has been reimagining how communities connect and celebrate through event technology platform Let’s Rallie since 2021. His cofounder, Wendy Verna, a longtime entrepreneur and founder of Octo Design Group, also happens to be his mom. Both companies are located on South Street in Philly.

“We started it during COVID as a fun little startup,” Robbie told Technical.ly. “Since then, we have pivoted the business to our current business model with the same mission, to drive commerce to different neighborhoods.”

The platform is an app to to help users navigate in-person community events, serving local organizations, nonprofits and community groups across the Philadelphia region. It supports everything from festivals to brewery tours, providing interactive features like scavenger hunts, voting and custom event maps.

Embracing the city’s community vibes

Verna left his hometown of Media for college at a Connecticut university, where he studied marketing and entrepreneurship. After graduating in 2018, he was ready to move back home, but instead of suburban Delco, he moved straight into the city of Philadelphia and has been there ever since. 

Verna embraces life in Philly, from the strong sense of community to the easy access to networking events. Depending on the weather, he bikes, walks or takes the bus from where he lives in the Graduate Hospital area to the office. 

His desire to see the city’s communities thrive fueled Let’s Rallie.

“Our mission is to drive traffic to local businesses and also support neighborhoods and their operations,” he said. “Our goal is to help different community teams with their event technology [and] to keep people in those areas, exploring new things.”

Let’s Rallie’s bread and butter, Verna said, is a software service for local organizations looking for technology for their events. Some of its clients include The South 9th Street Italian Market, Manayunk Development Corporation and CampusPhilly, as well as regional clients including the New Jersey Tourism Association and Harford County, Maryland. 

Attendees download Let’s Rallie to their phones, where they can access features like schedules, interactive maps, push notifications, raffles and scavenger hunts.

A voting feature allows events to interact with attendees, who can use it to participate in things like pet costume contests at a Halloween event.

“We do a ton of festivals,” Verna said. “We’ve done ice sculpture festivals, food truck festivals, the Italian Market Festival, and we also do a lot of tours and crawls, like a burger crawl, a seafood crawl. We’re right now doing a brewery tour.”

Now, he said, Let’s Rallie is expanding into multi-day events like restaurant weeks and soccer tournaments, too.   

“We started out in the East Falls and Manayunk area, and they took a chance on us,” Robbie said. “And then from there, some people from South Philly heard about us, and it just snowballed.”

Born into entrepreneurship

Both of Verna’s parents are business owners, something he says has been a benefit as he launched his own startup.

“It was certainly helpful to have both of my parents in my corner,” he said. “It let me know that it was possible, and made it a little less scary.”

Wendy Verna’s 25 years of doing business in Philly and making relationships gave the business insight into how things work in the city, like having a built-in mentor. 

Logistically, the Vernas had to start by building the app, which they did with the help of a friends and family round of funding. Since then, they’ve been bootstrapping.

“We did join an accelerator with Philly Startup Leaders early on,” Verna said. “They helped us with our business model and making sure everything was buttoned up and ready to go. They were certainly a big help, with connections as well, so that helped us grow.”

As clients started signing up, they learned to listen to their needs to keep the business growing. 

“As we got those clients, we reinvested that money back into what would be helpful for them, so trying to be as nimble as possible,” Verna said. “We’re ear-to-the-ground, listening to clients, and making sure that we weren’t just building something and trying to make it fit.”

Ultimately, he said, the clients are communities, in a city and region where community is a big part of its identity.

“The creativity and the true community energy that the city has, and the willingness to help each other, is definitely something that has been very beneficial to our business,” Verna said. 

Rallie-ing to the future

In the future, Verna would like to see the app evolve into an all-purpose events tool that community members can take with them and use, even after a specific event has passed. 

The map feature, for example, could be used to show a user all of the events happening in the area on a given day. A tool that a user can open when they go to a new town in the region — or, eventually, beyond the mid-Atlantic.

“We’re growing, one relationship at a time,” Verna says, “and now, with people expecting an app for their events — we’re right where they want us to be.”