Building JoonBug was a fascinating, engrossing experience, and there were all kinds of moving parts, from the tech side, to the finance side, to the social and entertainment aspects of working in nightlife. And peppered throughout those experiences were, of course, celebrity encounters! My team and I met and mingled with some of the true glitterati of that time, many of whom are still famous today. It was almost always a transient, happenstance kind of thing, a fun or exciting or just plain weird moment in time. These are just a few that stand out in my memory.
Biggest Fan
During my college years, but technically before JoonBug, I often went to a lounge called Spy Bar and tried to get in. It was the hotspot, the hardest place to get into, and the best place to be seen. I had a few hits, but mostly misses, trying to get past the velvet ropes. Spy Bar was a celebrity hotspot, so “ordinary” people had a tougher time getting in than they might have at a large mega club, where doormen were looking to pack the giant venue out with an eclectic crowd.
The experience of building JoonBug from the ground up during my days as a nightlife impresario and before the days of EventBrite and social media provided valuable tools and lessons that have come in handy in all areas of my life.
It’s not that some of the best ideas don’t happen over a few drinks at 2am. Sometimes they do. But what’s unique is the experiences that happen in the places and with the people that associate with the 2am timeframe that produce the best ideas. Nightlife (a place shrouded in mystery) often propels some of the more interesting characters in entrepreneurship into not only stardom but great wealth. Though it’s not necessarily nightlife where that stardom and wealth happens; Sometimes nightlife is just the stepping stone. For me many of my greatest life and business lessons spawned from my experiences in nightlife.
Let’s go back to just around September 11, 2001; a time when many New Yorkers and Americans were not only recovering from a national tragedy, but where businesses and workers were also struggling. The tech bubble had burst and I was out of work after a failed tech startup I had founded went bust.
