The nightlife industry is big — $21 billion big – and Boston-based startup InstantNightlife aims to make a dent in it.
Founded this time last year by MIT student Kayvan Zainabadi, InstantNightlife set out to revolutionize the nightlife industry. The company built a mobile app that allows users to see the current status of nine popular Boston clubs before heading there – things like how long the wait in line is and the girl to guy ratio. And today, the startup has extended their services to venues in Boston with launch of a real-time deals platform to help owners lure in customers.
The company expanded their app into this service after speaking with venues here in Boston and learning their pain points. “They told us they don’t have a good way of reacting to the night as it unfolds (i.e., hedging if they’re having a slow night). They also complained that they don’t have a reliable way of knowing if their marketing dollars are actually bringing in business (i.e., how many extra people did that expensive ad in the Boston Globe actually bring in?),” Zainabadi shared.
The company’s real time deals platform allows venue management to react in realtime as their night unfolds and appeal directly to their target audience by posting specials to lure people through the door. “Imagine if it’s a dude-fest one night, the manager reacts by posting a realtime ad waiving cover and providing line privileges for women for the next hour,” he said. According to Zainabadi, since bars and clubs make 80 percent of their revenues on alcohol sales, waiving cover and offering discounted appetizers can result in real incremental sales.
Club owners will be able to post deals to the app through a simple dashboard. I had a chance to test drive the experience, which has three features:
- Post Real-time Deals: Venues login and post any deal, instantaneously hitting InstantNightLife’s apps, website, and social media feeds.
- Auction Bottle Service: Similar to above, except this strictly hones in on auctioning off a bottle service.
- Update Your Club: This allows venue owners to update their club status: wait in line (short / long), activity (quiet / crowded), dance floor (empty / full), and ratio (guys / girls). If the venue doesn’t submit an update again within a specified time period, the update will disappear since it is no longer a real-time representation.
With regard to the third point, InstantNightLife has collected this information through a mix of being on the ground and using data mining. “We’re MIT data freaks. We collected data by actually visiting a set of venues every weekend for a full year, every 15 minutes to collect the data,” Zainabadi explained. “We now have a rich set of data set that we’re mining using machine learning techniques to create a smart predictive algorithm that can be applied across a wide spectrum of venues.”
On top of this and now venue owners contributing status updates, in the near future they plan to crowd source this aspect. “People will be able to correct any prediction that is wrong and receive points which can be redeemed for things like free drinks or free cover,” he said.
With regard to the user side of the equation, since launching their website has received over 18,000 unique visitors, their iPhone app (launched in April) has had over 3,500 downloads, and their Android app (launched in July) has had over 2,000 downloads.
Zainabadi shared, “We’ve been bootstrapping for almost a year and are pretty proud of our numbers. The thing we’re most encouraged by is that 40 percent of our users are repeat users, indicating that we’re providing a service people actually value and use.”
InstantNightlife will be celebrating their 1 year anniversary tomorrow night at Umbria which will feature a familiar guest DJ — Jeff Taylor, founder of Monster.com and Eons.com.
