How Meetselect CEO Carlo Cisco grew Meetselect to $2.9M revenue and 15K customers in 2024.

hello everybody nathan latke here my guest today is carlos cisco he's a serial entrepreneur who's founded multiple successful companies and helped grow category defining brands he's currently the founder and ceo of select which has been heralded as amex for the next generation and the black card for millennials he's also a member of hawaii scene has been featured in 100 plus stories across many different media outlets including entrepreneur forbes and the huffington post carlo are you ready to take us to the top yeah i'm excited all right most people when they think about rewards cards they think oh like i'm gonna get some like weird token thing that i'm never gonna know how to actually use or exchange walk me through how meat select is attacking this market yeah exactly so so that's that's sort of exactly the way the system works today it's points it's fractional cash back it's things you need to earn a crew and you know they typically aren't necessarily that relevant so what we want to do is create a large network of benefits that were significant so our benefits are typically up to 70 off or you know priority access free drinks for your entire party that kind of stuff that people had instant and unlimited access to so meaning like once someone has a select card they can use all of our benefits anytime they want as often as they want there's no limitations whatsoever and then ultimately the goal is actually to combine that with the sorts of points and reward systems that you would see from typical cards today um you know in issuing a credit card to sort of create this mega credit card if you will and you know that's where the amex for the next generation line um came from is you know essentially there perhaps the company that's innovated the most to date but but we have more exclusive benefits than them by a magnitude of over 200 so over 200 times as many benefits so uh so we've built a pretty robust program this world you play in is about nothing more than leverage uh if if amex is processing 20 billion a month and they can say go to four seasons and say give our if they use an amazon four season give us a discount you know amex can argue they're gonna drive more gmv through four seasons four season does a deal you're not as big as amex so what leverage point are you using to get these deals great question and really for us it comes down to brand um the demographic we have and sort of our history in delivering for clients right so so i'll give you an example um and four seasons is a great one they're a partner as well but i'll give you an example from the dining space um you know of the top grossing restaurants in the country we have four of the top ten those venues do not need extra business they their tables are always full they don't need new people the reason they like to work with us is that we tend to bring that younger more affluent millennial and then in addition like our check sizes even with the benefit included tend to be higher than the average of the venue um so that's why venues like tao and and those kind of places love working with us is we're bringing sort of this younger fresher hipper customer demographic that's really focused on experience really focused on um you know being social and going out and doing these things and then also who tends to spend more than their average customer okay so let me role play real quick amex had a business development callstow bring bring hey like it's amex we want discount they say we're full we have a waitlist tonight for like four hours like we don't need extra business and we're not going to give your people a discount okay that call ends you call bring bring hey they go hey carlo you know select you go hey i know you're totally full but one way to increase revenue is to increase your average check size these millennials are spending so much money on freaking avocado toast and moscow mules they're going to spend so much money here it's going to be about 130 higher than your current wait list give us some sort of deal and you'll make more money is that kind of what it sounds like pretty much yeah am i hired uh yes absolutely um the other big leverage point is just like the network of brands becomes like a really good foundation and also sort of a huge barrier to entry so once you have brands like tao four seasons whoever it may be other brands want to be associated with those brands why do they believe that the other big thing we have to like why does tao believe why do they what why do they believe you when they say our checks is going to be bigger like why do they believe that so so with most partners especially one of that magnitude they're going to test initially right so so so initially with tau we had four locations um it was four locations here in new york within six weeks they expanded to all of their new york locations um what's the data look like from the test like what how much was the increase yeah it was uh it's a lot of reservations um you know check size i don't know specifically for tau i know across the board it tends to be around 20 to 30 percent so it's not a huge magnitude but it is higher and that is you know with the benefit factored in whether that's free drinks or a discount or whatever that the case may be like after providing that benefit they're still making more money yeah the reason i ask is i i mean i imagine i have a lot of millennials right now listening right who are like when they launch their own company and they're going why does he think that we're gonna spend more money i'm freaking broke putting all my money in my startup i'm not gonna spend extra on drinks like what it doesn't make sense and you hear them like millennials they like are bad at saving money like why do they actually spend more out of towel so so it depends on you know of course who who the person is how they like to experience things right there's going to be a degree of variance but typically what happens is when you're getting some sort of incentive that elevates your experience you end up like investing further in elevating that experience so like you know if you're saving 30 on a dinner let's say you tend to order an extra round of drinks or get an extra appetizer or maybe do things that you wouldn't normally would and what's cool about it is like it makes your experience at that place so much better it becomes like much more of a night out much more memorable and i would say that's actually even more amplified with hotels so so for example like i book well obviously i book all my hotels through us but uh but before our hotel program was as good as it was today i actually didn't do that um i used to use whoever had the best rates but but now um you know saving over a thousand dollars on a trade like it'd be hard if you're if you're staying somewhere for more than three nights not to save over a thousand dollars and it's typically in the range of like you know any well the average savings is 31 but you can be as high as 70. i tend to save like 40 to 50 percent but what's cool is it completely changes the caliber of the place you can stay you know like we're still a startup so like being able to stay at like five-star resorts at like basically half the price that's a pretty compelling thing for me and it completely changes the nature of your trip can you is i want to get like really specific here is there oh okay oh perfect okay i see on your site the standard high line i go here all the time all right member benefits up to 25 off best available rates complementary upgrade when available now is this 25 off best available rates like truly i look at booking.com i look at the standards website i look at hotel tonight ever they're the cheapest you will find will be 25 if with a select card yes and and and standard is a unique example too because they don't tend to like to be on those kinds of sites um so that's that's part of why um they're featured separate from the hotel portal um is that like they actually are a sort of rare brand where they really like sort of the importance of their brand the demographic that they bring in and they tend to stay off of those sites in general but but in total our hotel program encompasses um 500 000 locations um at a little over uh 200 000 of those and it varies based on inventory um we have the best rate anywhere so how do you make money how do we make money mostly our membership fee uh membership fee is the vast majority of our money i see okay so i'm clicking apply for membership you're asking for a bunch of information to sign up then you're gonna put a paywall up how much do i have to pay for this 300 a year okay 300 per year okay um and you are basically banking on the fact that people won't actually use enough savings to make up the 300 bucks is that accurate no we don't have to fund any of the benefits uh so so we hope that they use it as much as humanly possible on average members recoup over 3x that annual fee okay and that's in addition to having access to our concierge getting invites to member events other things that are more experiential that are harder to put a dollar value you have a dating app can i can i go find other rich people on select and only date rich people not not currently but um i i think that that is a popular element of our events for sure i'm kidding i'm kidding cougars stay...