We’ve all been there. You are with a group of friends and you’ve got nothing to do. Out of ideas, you fall back and call it an early night, again. Nobody likes those nights, and that’s why Linute was created. Giving you only events going on within 24 hours, you’ll be able to be social at the drop of pin.
Founder, Nabeel Alamgir, takes us through his new company and how him and some high school buddies created a their service
Tell us about the product or service.
Every event on Linute is happening within 24 hours, because last-minute plans often make the best memories. Linute is an event-planning social app that lets you see what’s happening in your city and what your friends are up to, all on an easy-to-navigate, scrolling feed. You can share what’s happening in your city, and create events for your friends.
How is it different?
We promote immediacy and intimacy– Linute supplies a way to reconnect face-to-face rather than remaining separated by screens and technology. We value the little things in life, things that require little to no planning. We are “close” to thousands of people (our followers, our “friends”), but we are isolating ourselves from true socialization. Linute will fix that.
We are also different because we built Linute with only money made from our Kickstarter campaign, with an app design made by non-techies. It has been a tremendous learning experience.
What market are you attacking and how big is it?
Our primary market is the Social Networking Sites Market, with a specialization on last-minute event planning. This market has an approximate annual revenue of 11 billion and an annual growth of 25.4% in the last five years (ibisworld.com).
What is the business model?
We plan to generate revenue after acquiring a healthy user base through sponsoring posts, ticket sales and recommended search. An example of sponsoring posts is having businesses or promoters target users based on their interests and showcase their post towards the top of the feed. Because our app only allows last-minute events, businesses can sell their unsold tickets at a discount. Our users benefit because they are getting great deals on tickets, while businesses can sell tickets at higher prices without discounting them weeks in advance unlike Groupon.
Through recommended search users will get recommendations of places when creating their own events. In this section, businesses will have an option to promote their place depending on the category that users search, similar to Google AdWords.
What inspired the business?
Hadi, Andi and I went to high school together, an unhealthy mix of best friends and competitors. We started seeing less of each other during the college years, even when we were home for breaks and holidays. Entering the professional world, we almost completely lost touch, for no real reason. Hadi recognized this as a problem, and made it into a college class project. A couple of weeks later, Hadi dropped out because we made it part of our real life project.
What are the milestones that you plan to achieve within six months?
Initially, within the first 6 months of work we wanted to move Linute development full time in-house. We made it happen. In the next 6 months we hope to reach 50k active users, get funded, put our team on a Ramen Noodle-level salary, and continue to learn and develop our app.
What is the one piece of business advice that you never got?
Age is no guarantee of efficiency, youth is no guarantee of innovation. An investor (who made a great impression on me) told me that I should listen to 10% of what he has to say, that investors bet on numbers and people, but cannot know where the next big bang is. Similarly, I don’t know where our app will be a year from now. I can predict and I can hope, but I cannot shove a thesis down our users’ throat. we have to let the app evolve. Just look at viagra. Pfizer was testing Viagra to lower blood pressure, and the side effect now is the primary service it provides.
If you could be put in touch with anyone in the New York community who would it be and why?
I would love to get in a room with Gary Vaynerchuk. We are both immigrants hustlers in the tech industry. I’ve followed him and learned from him for years. I am actually very close to connecting with him as of a few days ago– our Marketing Director is an intern at Vayner Media, and on the #askgaryvee on his youtube channel, she asked him if we can have a meeting with him live on camera. He said yes, so we will see!
Why did you launch in New York?
I came to the US at age 15, and on my first day of school, I couldn’t speak one word of English. About one year (and a bunch of Scorsese movies with subtitles) later, I started putting up a fight. Queens is my home, my friends are here, my family is here, and some of the hardest working entrepreneurs are from here.
What’s is your favorite restaurant in the city?
Bareburger. (Note: this is a hugely biased answer). I am the VP of marketing at Bareburger. I started as a busboy and worked my way up. My CEO, Euripides Pelekanos is also my mentor. He has taught me everything he knows. We have grown to 28 locations. I was just in Japan for my birthday, opening our first international location.
