Available in English Area served United Kingdom Founded 2009 Type of business Private | Headquarters London, United Kingdom Website [1] Number of employees 30 | |
Type of site Discovery site; Ticket sales; Booking software Key people Andrew Webster, CEO; Nicholas Telson, CEO; William Taylor-Jackson, CTO Profiles | ||
Designmynight com founders
DesignMyNight.com is a nightlife discovery website that was set up in 2011; it allows the customer to tailor their night out depending on their budget, where they want to go and what type of night they’re after. The site has coverage across 15 cities in the UK - London, Manchester, Birmingham, Glasgow, Brighton, Newcastle, Liverpool, Bristol, Bournemouth, Cambridge, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Leeds, Leicester and Reading. The company was branded as one of the world’s best start ups in 2015 and top UK startup in 2014 generating over 3 million hits per month.
Contents
DesignMyNight has also become a software provider for the nightlife industry with its own ticketing solution, Tonic, that can be integrated on the site and the client’s site as well as an enquiry management and booking software, Collins.
Founders
DesignMyNight.com was founded by Nick Telson and Andrew Webster whilst visiting New York City. They were both amazed by the nightlife knowledge of their Hotel Concierge and were inspired to help people discover their perfect night out in the UK. Both quit their corporate jobs at L’Oréal and Accenture and worked solely on DesignMyNight, with no income for two years, before the business took off in 2013.
Funding
DesignMyNight started off on personal funds of £15,000 before receiving investment from 6 prominent business Angels which amounted to £500,000 over two rounds. The Angel investors have a history of growing online brands and believed in the company’s strong consumer facing site as well as the huge opportunity of growing the B2B software arm of the business.
Products
After the launch of the website itself, 2013 saw the launch of the DesignMyNight App, it gives access to thousands of venues and events, with ratings and reviews alongside the opportunity of booking tickets to events on the go. February 2014 then saw the launch of Collins, an enquiry management and booking software designed specifically for bars, restaurants with bars, pubs and private hire spaces. bar bookings and inquiry-management software. It allows venues to do real-time bookings from their site while also taking enquiries and managing them effectively within the system’s back-end. The venue can also take payments, card authentications, manage emails and their client’s database. 2014 also saw the launch of the ticketing software that allows event organisers to take advantage of DesignMyNight’s 3 million monthly userbase while also making their own site or social media channels transactional.
Competition
The likes of Time Out and View London are consumer facing search sites and the two largest restaurant booking systems in the market are Opentable, recently acquired by Priceline and Livebookings/Bookatable.