The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – VegasNearMe App Interview, George Meyer, CEO & Founder at NearMe Entertainment

Episode Date: January 13, 2023

VegasNearMe App Interview, George Meyer, CEO & Founder at NearMe Entertainment VegasNearMe.com

You wanted the best. You've got the best podcast, the hottest podcast in the world. The Chris Voss Show, the preeminent podcast with guests so smart you may experience serious brain bleed. The CEOs, authors, thought leaders, visionaries, and motivators. Get ready. Get ready. Strap yourself in. Keep your hands, arms, and legs inside the vehicle at all times, because you're about to go on a monster education roller coaster with your brain. Now, here's your host, Chris Voss. Hi, folks. This is Voss here from thechrisvossshow.com, thechrisvossshow.com.

Hey, we're here with my good friend George. We're going to be talking to him about his amazing new app, Vegas Near Me, and of course how it's going to be rolling out in Vegas and to cities around the world and nation, I suppose. George, go ahead and introduce yourself, if you would, please. Hi, my name is George Meyer, and I started this company called Near Me Entertainment,

and our first app is called Vegas Near Me. There you go. And what's the.com where people can find this and our first app is called Vegas Near Me. There you go. And what's the.com where people can find this on the interwebs? VegasNearMe.com. There you go. And, of course, they can download the app on Android and iPhone now. Yes, on both platforms. There you go.

So what motivated you to want to make this app? What was the thing that made you want to do it? Well, it's actually a good story. I moved to Vegas about 13 years ago, and I love going to shows and events. I think about six, seven years ago now, I wanted to go see a Journey concert. Actually, Journey is one of my favorite bands in the world,

and I didn't realize that they were here. And they were here on a Saturday night, and I didn't know until Sunday, and it super upset me. And I looked at all the ticketing apps, and I went, God, these apps are really poor. I can build a better app. So this app actually started to be called Tickets Near Me. And then I started doing more research and work and said, people want to find everything. So now it's called Vegas Near Me, and it helps you find everything.

Everything. So from food to casinos to gambling, pretty much everything. Yeah. Our tagline is, if it's fun to do or see, it's on Vegas Near Me. So pretty much anything you can think of that's fun to do or see in and around Vegas is on the app. The only exception to that is we did add a medical category just in case people want to find the closest open emergency room or urgent care or God knows what if they need here. You need that for the hangovers. Yeah, definitely. Those bloody-eyed hangovers. God knows whatever else people are in. Now, your vision for this is not just to be in Vegas, correct? You've got more cities aligned that once

you build this out, you're going to do other cities? Yeah, our goal really was to make something. At first, I'm focused solely on Vegas, right? But our goal is to make it so good that you go home and go, God, I wish there was an L.A. near me or a New York near me or a Paris near me. Wherever you're from, we just make it so easy to find things. I think you're going to go back home and go, I wish there was an app like this for my city. There you go. I'm usually looking for an app that's trying to get people away from me. But I think that're going to go back home and go, I wish there was an app like this for my city. There you go. I'm usually looking for an app that's trying to get people away from me.

But I think that's Facebook. Anyway, so Vegas near me, they can download it wherever it's possible. Let's take a walk through some of the screens here and see how this works. So one of the best ways to start is let's think about you're planning a trip to vegas right the first thing you might want to go do is find which hotel would be the you would want to stay at one of the nice things about this is so let's go pick resorts let's just sort by name so i can find the ones i want to find and let's say i want to go stay at caesar's palace right if i look at this i can tap this and make a hotel a favorite or not. So let's make that a favorite. But one of the nice things is we have 33,000 and counting podcast and video clips about all these different businesses in the app.

So if you're picking a resort to stay, one of the nice things you want to know is what does a resort look like and then what do the rooms look like? So the first two are actually the best video we could find on the resort, the property itself. And the second one is the best video we could find on the room, right, that's out there. And then, of course, the newest, whatever the newest podcast or video somebody put out there is there. But then there's hundreds more if you want to learn about that stuff that's in there. I could get all the parking and valet and uber directions everything that's all built in there And I and I could see even sister properties that are like that, but let's make caesar's a favorite Let's go back and say okay. I'm looking for an activity and let's say that i'm a you know

I've got a five-year-old right so I want to come in And I want to look for an activity and i'm going to go say look for anything But let's say drive and ride. That's a fun category. I can look for bungee jumps, roller coasters, zip lines. Let's pick zip lines. If I pick a zip line, I can even set an age filter. And say I have a six-year-old. Now what it's going to do is it's going to sort by distance or by name

and show me the ones that are okay for my six-year-old, right? So let's say I want to go to Slotzilla. If I pick Slotzilla, right, I can go look at that whole thing. I can look at another podcast and video, and there's a bunch more clips that are all built in. Notice that if it's a long one, wherever they start talking about that is where it'll play. So it'll play that podcast right where they start talking about slots at that point in the podcast, right? So I can go back and let's just say I'll hide all those. I can get turn-by-turn directions to that place. I can even get Uber, one-button Uber.

That's in the app and Lyft will be in the app by the time you probably see this. One of the nice features is I can tap Set Near, because let's say we're going to go there, but then we want to find stuff near somewhere else. It's one of the things that's hard to do in existing apps. So if I tap Set Near, then let's go back and look for Eat and Drink. And I can pick anything. I mean, Chris, do you have a favorite kind of food?

Italian. Italian. Okay, so let's look for Italian food that's near the Slotzilla zip line, sort of by distance, and you can see whatever is there. So let's go, I want to go to the Adamano Steakhouse or whatever that is. I want to look at it. All the menus are all built in. I can see all that. Or I could go look at more podcasts that somebody has reviewed this thing and talked about it, right?

Nice. What does it cost to park? You know, all those things are all built in. But then you might say, well, let's go back. That's a good one. Let's go back to eat and drink, and let's look for Italian food. But let's say, you know, I don't want to eat near Slotzilla. We're staying at Caesars, so let's look for stuff that's near Caesars, right?

So I want to look for a Malfi, nice Italian restaurant there. If it's inside a resort, I might want to know what does it cost to park there, all the parkings built in. I might want to know where it is. I can even tap on it, and it'll show me where the place is located inside the resort. There's few places that have this, and you can get lost in these resorts. In fact, they're made that way, actually. 25 of the 50 largest resorts in the world are in Las Vegas. Nice.

And this feature right now is on the iPhone, and it'll be within a couple weeks, it'll be out on Android. So it's been something we've been working on for years, but you can find anything near anywhere. And it just makes it very, very simple and easy. You can look at things at a map view. So here's all Italian restaurants on a map view, right? I could go look for certain things. So let's say that I want to look for coffee, right? So I search for coffee. The app will say, here's, we have a coffee and chain category. Here's some popular chains. I want to see every Starbucks in town. And with one button,

there's all the Starbucks. That's a lot of Starbucks. I tap one and say, I want to see all the ones that are open right now. Those are all the ones that are open now. I want to see them in a list view instead of a map view. Sort of by distance, let's go near me. Wow. Shows the closest one near me right now. That's the biggest near me at work.

Yep. And so what's nice about it is just everything's in it. So I can go to shows and events, and I can look for major events, and I can look for the Raiders game that just was happening today. That's probably what they lost again, too. Yeah, they got pretty much beat pretty bad today. But everything is in the app, anything you can think of. There you go. And I like it from the aspect of, like Yelp, you don't, you know,

they have some reviews and you never can trust half of them, but you guys have where the podcasts guys have gone in, they've reviewed it and they kind of give you a personal feel for what the place is like and the food. And I think that's really cool, you know, because then you can really get a good experience of, of what, of, of what the real reviews are on the thing. Yep. Definitely, definitely. So you guys have expanded this to pretty much cover everything in Las Vegas for the most part. Oh, yeah.

It has everything. I mean, and the amount of data, it's almost stunning. I mean, just pick anything you can think of, any restaurant, any activity, and it's all built in, right? And, like, I want to find every dispensary in town. This fast, I can look at all the dispensaries, and I can find them all on a map, right? There you go. That's a lot of dispensaries. Pretty crazy, right?

Those are open now, right? But you can find them all. They're all pretty much open right now. But to get the idea, I can even check the weather, by the way. So with one button, that'll show the weather with sunrise and sunset time and I can even look and say okay what's the forecast for tomorrow or say well wait a minute I'm coming to Vegas

on March 15th what's historical weather and then I might go well wait a minute on March 15th I wonder what the biggest shows and events are going on in town sorted by size that are near me. Okay, I want to go see the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

That's coming on April 1st. It's sorted by date from wherever you pick, right? You can find that stuff, and I can even look at seat maps. Oh, wow. There's a seat map of the league. You can plan your whole Vegas trip through this. And buy tickets. And buy tickets.

There you go. Right from within the app, right? Which is important because, you know, buying the tickets for whatever show you're going to, the O Show or the Beatles. They're all in there. So this is really cool. I really love the UI. The UI is beautifully designed.

What sort of work went into that? You know, probably the best thing to do is if you want to do things, we first started to interview people to find out what the problems were. And there are two big problems. Number one is discovery. There's no other tool really that shows everything in Vegas nicely organized. And if you think about that, it's because the resorts themselves don't have motivation to do that, right?

Caesars is only going to show you their stuff, right? MGM is only going to show you their stuff, right? It's whatever you want to find, you're just going to find it according to there. What we decided is we wanted to have everything here. So discovery is a big deal. And no matter what you're looking for, you can go find it or find, you know, you can type in the name of your favorite band and it'll tell you when they're coming. The whole thing. And the second big problem we found was location. Like we mentioned before, it's really hard to find this stuff, right?

So we've been working on maps to be able to physically locate all these activities and get there. And then the other big issue I really like to talk about is just usability. It's really important to me that the app is easy to use whether you're 8 or 80. You know what I mean? It's really simple is easy to use whether you're eight or 80 you know what i mean just it's really simple and easy to use and and that's we've spent a lot of time years actually working on that there's been a team of over 40 people at our peak working on this thing over six years right most apps are done by one guy in his garage you know what i mean so this is a this is i'm sure the largest mobile app project

ever done for any city or area and it's free. Free! And it comes with 30,000 plus YouTube and podcast clips about 16,000 plus

fun things to do and see in Vegas. That's a great byline. There's always something to do in this town. And you're right, there's so much to do. I mean,

you just, yeah, I mean, I'll show you one other fun category. Let's go to Wild and Crazy, right? And I'll just sort by name and you'll find stuff. Some of the stuff that you can do here that you would have no idea, like Camel Safari. Is it Camel Safari?

Who would know that you could ride camels in the desert, right? But sure enough, you can, right? I mean, it's like dive with sharks. Swim with sharks. Dig this. You rent big land moving equipment, right? And run it all around. It's just crazy, some of the stuff that's here. Gunship helicopters. This one's one of my favorites. You can actually shoot a machine gun out

of the side of a helicopter flying right outside of town. Can I play the Flight of the Valkyries in the full what was the movie, Apocalypse Now? Love Cloud. I mean, this guy's got a plane with a bed in the back, right? And that's his whole business, is fly you up in the city and join the live club, right? The amount of stuff that's here that you would have no idea is just, it's comical.

Yeah, I tried that, but then they're like, do you want to take someone up with you? And I was like, oh, that's a good idea. Yeah. But again, with all these podcasts and videos, it's like Omega Mart is one of the most amazing places. But how would you describe that? Well, the best thing to do is go watch a video on it, right? And there's just a ton of things like that that are all built in people who just plan and book their whole trip they don't have to be

in vegas to use the app you can do it from the road and uh plan your whole trip make the wife happy get the right places and make yourself happy you know the the car things are really crazy that where you can go rent a car for the day yeah and go up on the racetracks i need to do that yeah some of those places are crazy. By the way, the Apple Sense, if you're outside of Vegas when you install it, and instead of near me, it'll show near Caesars Palace as the first location. But let's say you're staying somewhere else. You can tap near a location and put, say, Circa.

If I'm staying at Circa, now I want to find everything near Circa. Now you can sort and find whatever you want. So let's say I want to find everything near Circa. Now you can sort and find whatever you want. So let's say I want to find things to see, and I want to go look for an aquarium near Circa. You know what I mean? So that's sort of by name, sort of by distance, right? Crazy. 700 feet, I can go to the Golden Nugget one across the street

and get more podcasts and videos, right? Will it help me get the best price on a hotel? We work with Priceline right now, which is pretty crazy great deals. I flew my girlfriend out to Buffalo round trip for $168 from the app, from Vegas. No stop. I mean, that's pretty tough to beat, right? We're going to have great coupons and deals that are in the app that are coming, so you'll be able to have that.

But right now, it's direct from the box office or our partners that we're working with. And then your vision is to roll this out to cities throughout the U.S. then? Yeah. Like I said, I think we're so focused on Vegas for at least a year or two until we get it to the point that everybody wants to use this app, right? But the goal was to make it so good that you go home and go, God, I want to find the closest Jack in the Box to me. How come the Jack in the Box app doesn't work in Dallas that way, right?

And so that was the goal, is to make it fun and easy to use everywhere. There you go. Well, anything more you want to tease out before we go? No, I think that pretty much covers it. I just love everybody to go try it. And one other really neat feature is if you try it and you like it, you can share it by just tapping the share button. There's a QR code that you can scan the app to go get.

In fact, that'll work if you scan it right off your screen right now. Oh, there you go. And you can go get that. Or you can share it with your friends and family with AirDrop or email or messages. But the QR code is nice because then you don't have to share your phone number with people, right, if they want to go see and how to get the stuff. And that's actually a little feature, but you can swipe across the screen with my finger and share it. You know what I mean?

That's cool. So there's some hidden stuff like that that's in there to be able to go share it. The UI in this is so nice, and it's so much easier to use than competitive sort of apps that are out there, even ones that have been around for a long time. I mean, it's so beautiful. It's easy. Everything's there in the menu, and it's rich to look at, too. So it doesn't look cheap in any way, shape, or form.

I mean, I think Yelp kind of still looks cheap, in my opinion, when I look at their app. So this thing looks nice, and you can plan your whole trip to Las Vegas and where you're going to give us all your money. Yep. And know where everything is, right? Which is so nice, right? Now, will it tell me where to bury a body in the desert? No, it doesn't do that.

There's not a mafia feature to it? No. Well, we'll give it time. All right, well, thank you, George, for being on the show, and thank you for sharing, for being on the show and thank you for sharing the data with us.

Give us a .com, wherever people can find it on the interwebs. Yeah, go to VegasNearMe.com and you can go

to our website. Our website, by the way, is really interesting too. So we have 19,000, almost 20,000 pages of

unique content on Vegas. So another thing I didn't mention, but our data is much better than Yelp, Google, or the company's own websites. And it's just because I'm focused

on one city, which is hard enough. And I don't mean to pick on Yelp and Google, but they're trying to do it for hundreds of millions of places, right? So their data is just way out of date here compared to what we have and how it's organized. There you go.

There you go. Well, thank you very much, George, for being on the show. Thank you, Chris, for having me on. I really appreciate it. And guys, go download it. Vegas, near me. You can find it on the web or your app store and all that good stuff. Thanks for tuning in.