4/22/08 - Featured Company: College Tonight
Web Site: www.collegetonight.com
Headquarters: Los Angeles
Year Founded: 2005
Founders: Zach Suchin, President & CEO; Jason Schutzbank, Executive Vice President & CTO
Investors: Publicly held (result of a reverse merger with Simex Technologies)
Employees: 6 full-time; 40 part-time; hundreds of campus representatives
Company News: www.collegetonight.com/press
*Updated 4/22/08
By Zach Suchin, Co-founder, President & CEO
College Tonight, Inc. owns and operates the web site www.collegetonight.com, an interactive service and networking platform for the college market that targets both active students and alumni. As the antidote to “anti-social” networking, College Tonight differs from other social networks by promoting active social interactivity in the "real world" rather than the sedentary lifestyle nearly all competing social networks relegate their users to behind a physical computer screen. College Tonight fosters in-person communication and activities with an emphasis on nightlife and other social events both local to the user's college campus and beyond that area for more broadly-based communities. The web site provides an online forum for students to exchange information on social activities happening offline, serving as a catalyst for real-life relationships and interaction among users.
Founders' Story:
During college, I provided marketing and branding for several different companies and organized high-profile nightlife events for college students and celebrities. It was a very unique situation because the celebrities loved hanging out with the college students and obviously, the college students were thrilled to party with their favorite artists. It was a rare melding of the two worlds.
Toward the end of college, I started developing the College Tonight concept with my partner Jason after a microcosmic success story in a conference called “Emory Nightlife” on the school’s server. While the server was meant for strict academic and school sponsored extra-curricular, what was started as a conduit of communication between me and my small group of friends, quickly turned into the most populated group on the school server, with hundreds of “add-me” requests being processed each day. The conference eventually reached about 85 percent of the undergraduate populous at Emory University with a strictly opt-in population. There was even a practical sub-module in the group called “Drunk Lost & Found” meant for those who lost items at various events around town, which ended up becoming more relevant than the official school’s lost and found conference. Since November, 2005, my partner and I have been developing College Tonight.
College Tonight was started completely organically, through a natural need at one school in Atlanta. Jason and I realized that this was by no means an isolated vacuum in the market and we both put all of our money from our previous businesses into creating version .5 of the service. This beta version of the service was meant to test with the Emory community exactly what features were going to be utilized and would be worth expanding upon. In September of 2006, we held a beta launch event that attracted many people, including the largest periodical in the South, the Atlanta Journal Constitution. We started to get press that no one expected. At this point Jason and I knew it was time to take our knowledge of what worked and what didn’t, and we started to raise funding for a more official version of the service. We hustled and finally achieved enough funding to develop the current version of the site.
After securing an initial round of private financing, we started to analyze an opportunity that arose in the public arena. Simex Technologies approached Jason and me with the opportunity for a reverse merger. This is a fairly unique method of raising funds, as we became one of the only social networks that have decided to follow this path, but it’s extremely helpful for various reasons. Reverse mergers have a certain level of liquidity, which really helps to attract talent that we otherwise may not have been able to secure. The open market value is fairly obvious—there are no guessing games to play or $15 billion valuations to argue. The market will naturally value the company at a fair worth. The company’s vision and wide variety of unique revenue streams will soon begin to dictate the young company’s stock value.
Business Model:
Client Subscriptions: Local venues pay a monthly fee, or a per event fee, to run a virtual blog/group that updates their events, specials and deals for College Tonight users. Front-end data and premium placement are also available with this monthly subscription.
On Site Advertising: Untraditional "click-to-call" banner ads with the latest flash technology, with the ability to target/filter specific user demographics and behaviors are available. Advertisers can place an ad, sponsor a group, or sponsor an event.
Nightlife Events: College Tonight’s motto “Get On, Get Up, Get Out” has been the key message behind the site’s “Disorientation Tour,” a nine month roll out tour begun in late 2007 consisting of 52 promotional events targeting 116 campuses around the country. These nightlife events mark the culmination of week-long promotions held locally at individual campuses, with neighboring student populations merging for the ultimate college party experience. As College Tonight continues to introduce its services campus by campus, advertisers will create brand awareness with their participation.
Mobile Component: Mobile advertising is directed to a captive student audience with few distractions.
Nightlife TV Podcasts: With an eight-episode season, College Tonight’s monthly podcasts, focusing on college nightlife and lifestyle, provide advertisers with access to College Tonight’s substantial user base.
Freshmen Social Packets: Restaurant menus and social information disseminated to incoming freshman at universities across the United States through a soft-back published book.
Instant Messaging & Chat Services: Advertisements may be placed where users communicate most.
Photo Printing: Users will be able to print photographs through the web site.
College Tonight Magazine: Traditional magazine advertising through uniquely innovative flash technology.
Online Store: Sale of products ranging from computers to energy drinks through College Tonight’s Online Store.
Power Hour/Music Mixes: Merchants can place an ad in between one of College Tonight’s power hour or music mixes available for download/streaming through the web site.
Sponsored Games: A game that incorporates an advertiser’s brand interactively.
Individual Venue Web Development: Bars, clubs, and restaurants will be able to hire us to custom design their web site, integrated with a software solution that allows events they post to automatically and seamlessly feed into College Tonight.
Food Delivery & Liaison Service: A national food delivery service will act as a liaison between restaurants and students. This is another avenue to familiarize the student with College Tonight’s services.
Custom Ring-Tones & Wallpaper: Users will have the ability to upload their own photos or take photos from the site, and develop custom wallpapers for their cell phones. Similarly, users will be able to upload .mp3 files and use snippets to create a custom ring-tone for their cellular device.
Various pending acquisitions will bring even further revenue opportunity to the company.
Current Needs:
College Tonight continues to seek support in the form of an investor base, as it is a publicly-traded entity.
What do you think about College Tonight? Leave your comments below. Feedback about StartUp Beat?—email us at editor@startupbeat.com
