So, my fellow writer here at KillerStartups, Emma McGowan, sent me the press release for MyGoodNight – the site that’s bringing us night crawlers all the latest info on all things nightlife. Seems my party girl rep has not gone unnoticed. Fair enough, I do like to keep up on my nocturnal events. We caught up with co-founder Dan Gunam to talk dinner, dinero, daily inspirations and helping users live out their Hangover dreams.
Tell us a little more about what inspired MyGoodNight.
The inspiration actually came when Bryan and I met few years ago; I was opening up Roosevelt Room, and Bryan approached me asking me to sign up my venue and my event company on his nightlife site called Party-PM. After awhile he had to call me almost weekly to remind me to upload my content to his site–mainly because I was already engaged in few of the social networks and doing more traditional marketing–I didn’t have the time or resources to maintain his site, plus every other sites out there. Eventually I just told him if you want stuff, just go get it from Facebook or my website.
That pretty much started the conversation of building MyGoodNight. Also the numerous calls and text messages I get from friends and family asking where they should go or what they should do made me realize that people are still having problems discovering things; sometime they don’t know if an event happened till they read about it on a blog after it happened. Current solutions depend on venues and influencers to constantly post content to their site, or they need writers to create content, but venues and influencers don’t have time to always update content regularly on third party sites and having content creators can get expensive very quickly.
I wanted to build something that helps everyone and gives people an easy way to discover places and events.
What was your best night out ever?
Recently my best night was during Toronto International Film Festival and dinner with Robert De Niro during his Silver Linings Playbook and then partying with Adrian Grenier (real life entourage). We did give a couple of lucky followers a chance go hangout with Tommy Lee Jones during his Emperor Movie cocktail party at Spoke Club (I think we made their dreams come true).
We also sent a couple of followers to go have dinner with Zac Efron during the Paperboy premier. We love giving people a chance to live out their dream night outs; recently we gave away two tickets to UFC 152 and we are in the process of running a contest to give four friends a weekend in Las Vegas (so they can live out their Hangover movie dream)!
Got any great bootstrapping tips for the lean startups out there?
I would say throw small events, dinner parties, whatever you can do to raise funds needed. But most of all from my experience: network, network, network! Every person you meet is someone who could help you one day, and utilize the network to make your startup grow. For me, if I didn’t have my network, I wouldn’t have had the opportunity to give away those tickets to UFC or those dinner, etc.
If you could have lunch with one person, who would it be, what would you eat, and what would you talk about?
I would actually love to meet Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia the founders of AirBnb. I think what they created was amazing, they built something to solve real life problems and how they went about building and bootstrapping their startup was great.
I would book one of the tree houses they list and order in some Chinese food and talk about the struggles they went through and cool places they explored and visited because of their startup. I would also pick their brains on their design and user experience of the site. I love the design and flow of their site, which is something I’d like to offer with MyGoodNight.
Biggest startup challenge?
I guess biggest challenge is financial backing. Having the funds helps us grow rapidly; otherwise you have to grow slowly and organically, allowing someone else to jump into the market to compete.
Web App or site you couldn’t live without and why.
For me thinkexist is one of them— I love quotes and have a habit of collecting them and using as inspirational guidance and to spread a bit of positivity to people around me.
I also love instagram, its great to capture moments, not just to share to friends and family but also mostly to remind me of things that captured my attention at that instant.
What’s your music-streaming site of choice, and what’s currently playing?
Usually I am on beatport or sound cloud to check out music from my favorite dj’s and artists. I do have a diverse taste in music; on my iPod I have anything from Frank Sinatra to City and Colour to David Guetta to Drake. I find music plays a significant role in what I am doing and where I am going and I tend to tag music to my moments as well.
What’s the greatest thing about MyGoodNight?
What makes MyGoodNight great is its real-time content, giving people the information they need to discover new places and events they otherwise may never know about. Also, our planning tool helps those who always end up being the social planner of their friends, put their preference, create a night out and share it with their friends for their approval.
Where can our readers reach out to you?
They can reach us at hello [at] mygoodnight [dot] com, or follow us on twitter @MYGDNT or Facebook.
Thank, Dan! Next time I’m in Toronto I’ll make sure you get me on the guest list for Roosevelt Room. And all you party-goers that want to stay in the know, look out for MyGoodNight when it launches very soon.
