The Epic Llama Story: From a Wild Travel Idea to a Global Social Experience
Hello, world. Stefano here, founder of Epic Llama and Head Llama Wrangler. 👋🦙
I wanted to take a moment to share the story of how Epic Llama started, how it evolved, and what we’re really here to do.
Because while the shape of our work has changed over the years, the heart of it has always stayed the same:
bringing people together through playful, meaningful, slightly unexpected experiences.
2017: The mystery adventure days
When Epic Llama first began, we were focused on one thing: gamified weekend adventures to surprise destinations in Europe. ✈️
The concept was simple, but a little wild.
You would show up at the airport with only a very vague idea of where you were going. You would meet your fellow adventure buddies just one hour before the flight. Then, once the trip began, we would give you a series of mysteryenvelopes full of clues, challenges, and strange little missions that could only be opened at specific times and places.
We sent people to off-the-beaten-path cities like Bratislava, Thessaloniki, Catania, and Bucharest.
It was part weekendgetaway, part treasurehunt, part socialexperiment.
And somehow, beautifully, strangers became friends in a matter of hours.
It was comfort-zone-breaking, silly, adventurous, and deeply human. In other words, very llama.
2019: The Berlin experiments
In 2019, while living in Berlin, I (Stefano 👋) started experimenting with smaller urban experiences.
The goal was to build a local community and give people a taste of what Epic Llama was really about. Not just travel, but connection. Not just activities, but experiences that made people feel alive.
That’s when we launched two events:
F*ck the Small Talk
A social experience where strangers skip the boring chit-chat and dive straight into meaningful, fun, and surprisingly human conversations.
Playground for Adults
A playful event full of games, movement, laughter, and inner-child chaos. Basically recess, but for grown-ups who forgot they were allowed to be silly.
Both events started to growquickly.
They sold out. People came back. Friendships were made. Strangers shared stories they had never told anyone before. Adults played games in parks, laughed at themselves, and remembered that life does not have to be so serious all the time.
On a personal note, I had a ridiculous amount of fun hosting them. Blowing a whistle and asking grown adults to walk like chickens was not exactly on my childhood career vision board, but here we are. 🐓
And somewhere in the middle of all that beautiful weirdness, we realized something important:
We were never really in the travel business. We were in the business of connection.
Travel had simply been the first container.
The real magic was always in creating spaces where people could meet differently, play differently, and feel a little more human together.
Our first-ever F*ck the Small Talk in Berlin, September, 2019
Playground for Adults, June 2020, Berlin
back to the story. 📖
2020: The year everything went online (pivot)
By early 2020, F*ck the Small Talk was growing fast.
We had hundreds of sign-ups, glowing feedback, and had just started running in-person team-building experiences for companies.
Our last in-person event before lockdown happened on March 10th, 2020.
It was that strange week when nobody really knew what was happening yet. People were still joking about masks. Coughing in public had not yet become socially worse than farting in an elevator.
And then, suddenly:
No events.
No gatherings.
No high-fiving strangers.
Nada.
Like millions of others, I felt pretty lost.
All we had was the internet.
So I looked at my computer.
My computer looked back at me.
I asked, “Shall we do something about?”
At first, the idea of bringing our events online felt ridiculous.
How could F*ck the Small Talk work through a screen? How could Playground for Adults work without a room full of people moving, laughing, and creating chaos together?
But people were craving connection. And we were curious enough to try.
We found a wonderful video platform called Gatheround and launched our first online F*ck the Small Talk.
It sold out and people LOVED it.
People from our Berlin events showed up. People from other cities joined too. Somehow, even through a screen, the magic was still there.
So we tried an online games event too.
And that worked as well.
It was a huge lesson for us:
Connection is not limited to a format. It just needs the right design.
Online FTST, April 2020
Online Playground, May 2020
A week after one of our online Playgrounds I got a message from one of the participants asking me if we could host an event for their team. We’d actually never thought about that until then! My response?
We got incredible feedback (in fact, they hired us again 4 months later!) and well, we’ve been with them since that day.
2021-2023: Team events, online parties, and a new chapter
From there, a whole new part of Epic Llama began.
We started designing online experiences for companies, communities, business schools, and teams around the world.
We created playful team-building sessions, virtual connection events, and immersive celebrations. One of our favourites was Party in the North Pole, a 2.5-hour Holiday event designed like a chaotic online house party full of games, surprises, and festive nonsense.
It was weird. It was joyful. It was very us.
In early 2021, we were hired for our biggest projects yet: helping design and facilitate large company-wide sales kickoffs for companies such as Signavio (SAP) and Dynamic Yield.
We officially entered a new chapter.
We were doing what we had always done best, but now in a new playground:
designing experiences that help people connect, whether in person, online, or somewhere in between.
2024-2026: The F*ck the Small Talk era
After years of experiments, pivots, online events, team experiences, and a few glorious detours, something became very clear:
F*ck the Small Talk had a life of its own. 🚀
What started as a little Berlin experiment had slowly turned into the heartbeat of Epic Llama.
We started receiving dozens of emails from people wanting to bring FTST to their city.
So in 2024, we decided to take it more seriously.
We printed our own conversation cards, created a stronger structure for the event, and began training hosts around the world to bring F*ck the Small Talk to their own cities.
This was a big shift for us.
Instead of me personally hosting every event, we started building a globalnetwork of thoughtful, playful, and brave humans who could carry the experience in their own way while keeping the same spirit alive.
Over the course of 2024 and 2025, we trained and onboarded almost 25 hosts. We ran 4 sold-out cohorts in the first two years!
Cities started popping up around the world. New communities formed. Local hosts brought their own flavour, while the heart of the event stayed the same: helping people skip the small talk and meet each other in a more honest, fun, and human way.
And then things really started moving.
In 2025, F*ck the Small Talk welcomed almost 5,000 attendees, our biggest year yet. Nearing a total of around 11,000 worldwide since it started.
Then in March 2026, we hit another milestone: 26 events in one month.
26 rooms full of strangers.
26 chances for people to meet someone unexpected.
26 tiny rebellions against boring conversations.
It has been beautiful, surreal, and honestly a little ridiculous to watch this thing grow from a small Berlin event into a global series of gatherings.
Somewhere along the way, we also ran Rejectathon twice, a playful challenge designed to help people get more comfortable with rejection, courage, and the tiny terrifying act of asking for things.
Around 40 people from around the world joined us for those experiments, proving once again that people are hungry for experiences that are not just fun, but also help them stretch, grow, and feel more alive.
And today, while Epic Llama still has many ideas, side quests, and suspiciously ambitious llama dreams, our main focus is clear:
We are putting most of our energy into growing F*ck the Small Talk.
Because the world does not need another awkward networking event.
It needs more rooms where people can arrive alone and leave feeling like maybe, just maybe, strangers are not so strange after all.
And now?
Today, Epic Llama is mostly focused on growing F*ck the Small Talk into a global movement for meaningful, playful human connection.
The event now happens in cities around the world, hosted by a growing network of trained local hosts who believe, like we do, that meeting new people should feel less awkward, less transactional, and a lot more alive.
We’re growing slowly and intentionally, one city at a time. By the end of 2026, our goal is to bring F*ck the Small Talk to 40 cities around the world.
We’re also continuing to experiment with new formats and audiences. In early 2026, we hosted our very first French version, F*ck le Small Talk, and we’re now exploring the idea of bringing F*ck the Small Talk to older adults too. Because honestly, the need for meaningful connection does not magically disappear after 35. Shocking, we know.
We still love experimenting. We still love games. We still love weird questions, beautiful rooms, playful challenges, and experiences that make people feel a little more awake to life.
But F*ck the Small Talk has become our main path forward.
It brings together everything Epic Llama has always cared about:
connection, curiosity, play, courage, and the magic that happens when strangers are invited to meet in a different way.
Because that’s really what Epic Llama is here for:
To create spaces where people feel more curious, connected, playful, and human.
We believe strangers can become friends.
We believe adults should play more.
We believe good questions can change a room.
We believe gatherings can be designed with more care, courage, and imagination.
We believe meaningful connection is for everyone, at every age.
And yes, we still believe llamas are deeply underrated.
One day, we may still start that llama sanctuary.
Obviously.
Stefano
Founder & Head Llama Trainer🦙
