Nightlife startup Nocto has launched its App this Friday

Nocto was one of the five startups pitching at the Paradiso Launchpad Meetup last month. They created an App that helps you find out where you should go if you want to have the best night out based on your desires for music type, atmosphere and attendance. Nocto just released their App through the Apple store on Friday the 27th of January.  We wanted to hear all about it from David Franzén, Nocto’s founder and CEO.

How it all started

As a Swedish student at Rotterdam School of Management, Franzén got the following assignment: work out a plan for a company that solves a particular problem. “I was interested in the nightlife scene, and asked myself: what are the problems there? A problem that I often experienced myself, is that there is no way of knowing what is going on around town in real-time.” That is how he got to the idea of Nocto. Franzén decided to continue with the idea beyond the university assignment and make Nocto happen.

Wait, an app that gets you free drinks!??

Nocto is an App on which users can upload real-time photos and videos information from within the events they attend. This way, other users can easily see where they should (or should not) be, and they never have to miss out anymore. The app also lets you collect “Nocs” as a reward for uploading your photos or videos, which are credits (Franzén prefers the term “in-app currency”) for various things. You can use Nocs for a free drink or free entrance to an event for instance. Nocto is not only available in the Netherlands, but in most parts of Europe. There are currently 3000 venues in the App, 650 of which are in the Netherlands. Nocto also already added 20 venues from the exotic island of Curacao. These are the venues users can check in to, and upload their insights about their events through the app.

It’s all about the app

Franzén works fulltime for Nocto, and he has many people around him to help, students and non-students alike. He started the business with his own savings as the only investment. Two of his colleagues now have some minority shares. How will Nocto generate income? The app is completely free for users, and helps them improve their nightlife by providing real-time information about events, and letting people get free things for contributing. In the meantime, the app collects information that the venues use to understand more about how people perceive their venue, and to understand the venue’s demographics. Nocto’s business model is to allow venues access to the data collected from within their venue through a subscription model.

Partnerships with venues

So how do the partnerships with venues work? Franzén explains: “Venues usually know very little about their visitors. Venues can subscribe to our profile management website where they will be able to review and update their profile in the app. Specifically, they can review the insights posted from within their venue, their upcoming events, understand their client demographics and offer drinks or entrances in exchange for the Nocs that users have collected in the app. We help them improve as a venue by helping them understand who their clients are, and what their clients like or dislike.” The statistics can be seen per event, per day of the week, and even per hour. The only limitation is that results only show the statistics of Nocto-users, which is not necessarily a representative sample.

Ambitions and challenges

Franzén is very ambitious. When asked what he expects to see happen with Nocto in the coming months, he sounds confident: “This is gonna be massive, everyone is so excited!” Their greatest challenge? “To deal with the scalability of the whole thing. If we really want to expand quickly, there is a lot of work to do. Our next step will be to create a company structure that can handle this scalability.” Once that is sorted, Franzén is very clear about Nocot’s future ambition: “Our goal is to become THE nightlife platform all over Europe. People won’t look on Facebook anymore to find out what is going on, but on Nocto. When the question arises of where to go, Nocto will be the go-to platform.”