Gadgetory

deal flicks is a startup the partners with movie theaters to fill vacant seats by offering discounted ticket prices it's a business model that has worked for other industries but what sets the company apart is they're back to basic strategy for making partnerships can their grassroots tactics actually compete though so we went to this unsexy conference and we start pitching all the people from 500 startups everyone else is making a million in revenue or whatever it is and then here's our little thing and I remember one person just says guys your company has no traction whatsoever like you guys suck on your knee gum like a really nice well known investor in the Silicon Valley area he mentions this comment how do you think you're gonna sell theaters anyways so I just went crazy on him and then I started to saying you don't know who I am this is what I used to do I set the price to decide to do that and my co-founder Kevin living in the van right now man how dare you speak to me my co-founder is living in a van when a company is bootstrapped its starting without the help of outside funding so becoming profitable fast is crucial so when you look at a bootstrap startup your first thought might be these people are at a huge disadvantage compared to a startup that was backed by millions in venture capital and you'd be right that forces them to come up with a business model that works in a hurry Shawn came to me one days I had this great idea like you think about like Hotwire Python but for movie deals I'm like no I didn't but just give it a shot so it's where I'm here first you have this idea and you just think you're gonna make a billion dollars that's kind of step 1 with an entrepreneurs mind about 88% of movie theater seats were empty and at the same time over 40 billion dollars are spent every year just on movie ticket to popcorn and soda and you're just thinking this can be easy let's do this it takes more than just a good idea to be successful in order to compete you either have to grow quickly enough or do something competitors aren't doing those are we call those in Dark Ages right early days constant rejects from theaters constant falling apart with the team constant frustrations with the website with everything just nothing works Kevin comes to me and he said I have an idea and he says you know the first 6070 theaters that we've signed up all required some face time cold calls of not working emails is not working and so what I want to do is I want to trade in my Acura for a minivan and I want to drive across the country and hit up all these theaters and that was just the first of many man van trips most of the startups that I write about do not have a van based growth model being bootstrapped enforces a discipline that is often very helpful to a start-up because from the day one they've got a ticking clock they've got to get to profitability much faster than one of those venture-backed startups the first three weeks it's like oh my god this is like camping with my buddies like urban camping this is so cool I get to see all these cities that I've always wanted to visit it's kind of like that for the first few weeks in the next three weeks it's like yeah I'm just sky that lives in a band this is kind of cool but you know there's all these extra things you need to think about when you're coming from a man been to a meeting that you normally wouldn't need to think about for example tomorrow when I have a meeting I just go to the meeting because I already know that I brush my teeth in the morning I know that I took a shower in the morning I know that I'm wearing appropriate shirt and I'm wearing boxers because it's the daytime you know each time you wake up you're just kind of like you know is this is this really worth it I mean the quality of life is so fricking poor just looking for you know the next gym to shower and looking for food and you're just like oh my god this is rough so that's that that's that was the toughest part for me but I'm glad we did it because just you know looking at where we're at now it definitely paid off it's kind of old school meets new school it's Silicon Valley saying hey we're not just going to type behind a computer screen or call you we're actually going to show up and try to make a deal and a lot of the theaters too they respect it a lot because they realize how did you find me here you know I'm in a Seaside Oregon which is just way out there and you're here I remember that meeting because he's like none of our other vendors ever come here and you actually came here we ended up getting them to commit to sign for that thing yeah after that we're like we're in Seaside Oregon let's go to the beach yeah you have to admire their tenacity if you're a movie theater owner and you have some guy from Silicon Valley calling you trying to sell you on their business and promising you that you're gonna drive more butts of the seats you're thinking yeah right but if someone actually shows up to your feet or your theater or face to face and kind of makes you an offer that you can't refuse I think the face-to-face interaction probably helps them in some way there's been numerous startups that have been very similar to deal flicks I mean chin flicks movies now my movie deals movie Mongoose I mean there's been so many of them they just weren't able to close deals and they're an exact replica of what we do I think the only reason why we're able to be where we're currently at is because the drive and the focus is just maniacal I mean who thinks about living in a van for two years and going on the country yeah we're just hustlers you know we're boots on the ground make it happen type of people Paul Graham who founded Y Combinator the startup incubator here likes to say that at the beginning you should do things that don't scale in other words do things that software can't do because if you're doing that chances are you're doing something hard and if you're doing something hard then chances are that somebody isn't gonna come in right behind you and try to do the same thing from there we learned a little bit about fundraising we got some cool investors in we've raised them a little under three million about 2.9 million now the deal flicks is off the ground not only do they need to scale up but they also need to face the challenges of a changing market going out and meeting people in your van is great but what deal flix needs is for people to come to them ultimately they have to find value for their customers beyond saving two or three dollars for a movie ticket I think the question is how many people are willing to go through the rigmarole of going on to a website that you know maybe they're just becoming familiar with in order to save 2 or 3 bucks so we're currently in about 600 theaters across the country we definitely want to go international we want to solidify you know bigger partnerships with a few of the bigger chains better deals improve deals we also want to try you know I guess different products and services possibly something like deal flicks now where you can watch movies on our website we really envision a full dynamically priced marketplace where just like Priceline or Hotwire or whatever it is the prices are just constantly in flux depending on supply and demand that's how we think it should be with movie theaters in the long run and that's one of our big long-term goals there's less incentive to really go to movie theaters in fact if you look at numbers from summer 2013 to the summer of 2014 box office revenues were certainly down and this is a business that is really dependent on how well the movie theater business is doing in general they've picked something where sure there may be a lot of excess inventory but people aren't going to the theaters that's not good for deal flicks here's what I would say I think up into a certain point it's a great idea to drive around the country and live in your van and make these deals face-to-face well ultimately the word-of-mouth that you're getting from your existing customers has to be good enough that you can stop driving around in your van right if the business works you should be able to just rent an apartment