Ever waited in line to get into a club or bar only to regret it once you are in because the whole scene sucks? Too many guys or too many girls or an empty dance floor or whatever….the scene sucks….if only you had known. Well, Joseph Salvador shares your pain but he actually decided to do something about it by starting Denver-based BarOptic.com.
The idea came from a long wait in a line for a Boston nightclub after waiting for an hour or so I entered an empty club and the idea struck me It would be great if I could see into the clubs before I get here My fiancé and I spoke about this idea during the long drive back to Denver and shortly thereafter I started building the prototype website and testing video equipment. – Joseph Salvador, Founder
BarOptic.com streams live video feeds from nightclubs and bars. The feeds are accessible via the internet and cell phones. Potential patrons can access the feed in order to help them make a decision on the club or bar to patronize. For example, on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights from 10pm to late night you can see what’s going on at Vinyl in Denver or many other clubs. To complement the BarOptic live feeds, BarOptic also has BarOptic TV on its web site to enhance the user’s experience by providing the ability to navigate through nightlife related, professionally produced shows. According to Salvador, users spend an average of almost six minutes per visit.
BarOptic is on a quest to wire up all the clubs in the US and around the world. When I asked about BarOptics strategy for achieving this, Salvador responded,
Our marketing department is launching a new campaign called, The Top 100 Nightlife Destinations in the US. With this campaign, the top 100 destinations are offered exclusive invitations to join our live network at no cost. Our main goal is to get new clubs/channels set up so users can have a viable resource to navigate nightlife destinations across the US. Strategic agreements are in place with local & national resources to help facilitate the process. Once the US is wired, we venture into the international market. – Joseph Salvador, Founder
BarOptic has entered into partnerships with BestBuy for business supplies and hardware, Geeksquad for installation and maintenance and SpotXchange for the ‘in-stream’ advertisements played on top of all BarOptic content.
Some clubs and bars have raised privacy concerns for their patrons. To those concerns, Salvador responds,
Our cameras stream video with no audio and are meant to show the crowd, not the individual it’s more of a birds-eye-view of the scene, showing ambiance, lighting, and crowd. Notices are at the entrance of our live clubs and we do not record any video from our cameras once the event takes place, it is gone and can’t be accessed again – Joseph Salvador, Founder
BarOptic is currently bootstrapped by Salvador and his fiancée and tons of credit. It consists of six employees in Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts and Texas.
Salvadors BarOptic solution is really addressing a pain that I personally felt back in the day when I used to go to clubs. However, BarOptic’s success lies in the ability to scale beyond Colorado. Their creative partnerships with BestBuy and GeekSquad will help them scale to markets beyond Colorado while maintaining a small team.
