Looking for something fun to do this evening and don’t feel like scrolling through the 8 million Facebook invites you’ve gotten over the past few months, all of which seem to be happening in the city you moved out of two months ago? Forget all of that and head over to 99events for an easy-to-use, clearly formatted way to find out what’s going on in your town.
Currently active in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Miami, Chicago, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Atlanta, 99events is still in its first stages but the idea is promising: it’s a search engine for local events.
An easy to search, clear directory of fun events in my local area? Yes, please.
Filter the good from the bad
The site gives you two options for searching: by zip code or by type of event. If you choose to search by zip code, you can narrow it in as close as the “exact” area or as far away as 25 miles. That way, if you’re feeling extra lazy, you can figure out which events are just around the corner and forget about the subway or finding a designated driver.
Additionally, each city has a browsing option, which lets you get an overall picture of what’s going on, just in case you’re not even sure about what type of thing you’re interested in doing. Your options range from dating events to meetups around shared hobbies to parties down the street so it shouldn’t be too hard to find something awesome.
Information Aggregation
Regular readers of KillerStartups know that I’m a big fan of anything that reduces the amount of work I have do. Whether that means automated services, instructional videos, or aggregation sites, I’m all for it.
With 99events, there’s no more hopping around to different specialized websites. Instead, the site pulls from Meetup.com, Eventbrite, Eventful, Ticketleap, and Facebook events and delivers all of the events in an easy to read list that can be organized by relevance or by date. You have the option to see everything that’s going down this month, or even just what’s up tonight.
A founder with experience
Founder Chris Russell is a serial entrepreneur with a background mainly in job recruitment. His website CareerCloud.com connects job seekers with jobs that might otherwise be hidden from their view through a series of mobile apps and social tools.
As he’s been rocking the job search world since 1999, Chris clearly knows the ins and outs of finding what you need on the internet. 99events was born out of his frustration with the convoluted process of finding interesting events that he could attend for networking opportunities. Like any good startup founder, he took that frustration and turned it into an opportunity.
As I mentioned earlier, 99events is in the early stages still, but keep an eye on this nascent startup. I think with some of the kinks worked out and an expanded reach, this one could really go somewhere.
Photo Credits
99events | Chris Russell
