Startup Sense Podcast

Ep 96: Interview with Aleksey Kernes, founder of Hooch


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What if you could get 1 free drink every single day at a trendy bar or restaurant and it only costed you a $9.99 monthly membership fee? Sounds amazing right?? Well that's exactly what Hooch is providing. With more than 500 participating venues in 10 cities and 7,000+ active members Hooch is reinventing the way that people discover new places and meet new people all while the hospitality industry has found a new cost-effective way to acquire customers in their target demographic.

Hooch officially launched in November 2015 and immediately saw strong user growth which helped them raised $2.75 million from some amazing investors including Chris Burch, Len Blavatnik and Russell Simmons. Hooch seems like an incredible business model with almost no cap on how big the company could eventually be. This concept could be scalable to hundreds of cities across the globe. 

In this interview I spoke with Aleksey about the origin of Hooch, how he found his business partners, why his previous work experience helped the company scale quickly in NYC, how they plan to spend the $2.75 million they've raised thus far, why the hospitality industry has been so receptive, why they only charge $10 per month even though they could charge much more, how they're acquiring their users, which demographics they are targeting and much more. 

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All of our Startup Sense episodes are posted at StartupSense.net

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Thanks for listening, regards...Jonah Lupton (your host)

You can find me at JonahLupton.com

You can message me at [email protected]

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the Startup Sense Podcast is sponsored by the Lupton Group

 

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Startup Sense PodcastBy Jonah Lupton