How ArtNight Scaled 1,000 Monthly Offline Events

With an ESIM from Airalo, you get unlimited data wherever you go. Which is handy because let's face it, Florence is more Florence when you can Google which David is the David and which one is just Dave. Bellissimo. Download Airalo before you fly and get all the data you need abroad. No sketchy wi fi, no roaming charges and no surprise bills. That's a I R a L O. Airalo connection means the world usage restrictions apply. See more@airalo.com. Welcome to StartUpLead IO, your podcast and YouTube blog covering the German startup scene with news, interviews and live events. Hello and welcome. If you are a founder or creator who believes creativity belongs in everyday life, this episode is for you. We have a special guest today in our founder series here and I'm welcoming Amy Zara Carstensen. Hello. Hello. Thank you very much for having me today. Yeah, I'm very much looking forward to this because I think we all need reminders to make more room for creativity in our day to day lives. You are the founder, founder and CEO of Art Knight and you turned a simple idea painting and socializing offline into what is now one of Europe's biggest creative experience platforms. In our show today, we will unpack how you scale from a few events to what is now a multi million euro community business. How you survive the pandemic. And not you personally, but also the business and what it takes to build something that brings people joy at scale. So everyone, welcome to today's episode. Stick around. Right after a short ad break, we will dive into the decision that changed everything for Art Night. This is a paid message from GoFundMe. Meet Juan Naula. When his son was hospitalized for a viral infection, Juan started a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses. It was 5k to pay the bill for my son and I need only 22 hours. It was amazing. People really trust on GoFundMe. How did Juan raise $5,000 in less than a day? He posted a short video on GoFundMe telling his story in 30 seconds. 30 seconds. Be specific, be quick and tell. What are you gonna be using the funds for? I was nervous to do it because it doesn't feel okay to ask money. But you shouldn't be nervous. Sometimes you just have to do it. The results. We were able to save my son's life thanks to gofundme that we still have my son with us. Start your GoFundMe today at gofundme.com that's gofundme.com gofundme.com. this message reflects one person's experience. Today on Startup Land, we are joined by Amy Zara Carson, a founder who left the corporate world to bring creativity back into people's lives. Before launching Art Night In I think 2016, you worked for Axel Springer and Bertelsmann, learned there how to build digital communities yourself. And now you are running Art Night which has hosted over a million participants across 60 cities, inspiring people to disconnect from their screens and reconnect with creativity. You started with flyers at Christmas markets as far as I know and you led this to a full scale experience brand. And so today we will dive into a story about persistence, purpose and painting your own path. I hope none of this is wrong, but my first question for you would be you were part of the corporate world, you were a corporate executive and you became a creative founder, obviously. What was the moment that gave you the idea and the feeling of I'm going to take that leap? Yeah, good question. So I remember that moment quite good because in the corporate world I was in my mid-20s and I had a leadership position. My original thought was that I'm really thriving for a corporate career because both my parents are entrepreneurs and today they are quite successful. But back then they have founded several companies. Several companies also did not work out, so they started from scratch. And for me as a teenager and also as a child, I, I thought this is quite stressful. So my plan was never to found own company. But I believe that I'm an entrepreneur by heart. And of course you always say also until your mid 20s, I don't want to be like my parents. But then suddenly you realize you have at least some parts of them. So for me it's definitely the entrepreneurship. And I was at Bedelsmann, I was part of quite nice coaching program and we were in the middle of the woods with a group of other leaders. Some of them or most of them were a little bit older than I was and already C level positions, etc. And then we discussed about my next career steps and what is following. And I just realized, okay, actually I really want to found an own company and just try it out. And my plan B was always that I thought if it doesn't work out then I can go back to the corporate world again. And that's actually the day when I made the decision, okay, then let's found a company without having any idea or any thought what this really means. I just had a couple of thousand euros of savings on my bank account and then I started looking for ideas and getting to know other people. And this was actually the start of the decision. Nice. I feel very much reminded of my own story because I haven't always been a journalist. I used to work for Mercedes and then for Audi. And the first time when you have an idea or a feeling like this, I'm going to start my own thing. For me, it was. I was brave for about two minutes and thought, yeah, I'm going to do this. And then I thought, well, of course I'm not doing this. It would be stupid to do the other thing. So. But then again, I think you kind of create the spiral and then your mind is already on the other track and you think about how to make the other thing work. In that moment though, was there the idea for Art Night already in your head or was it more, I just want to start my own thing. What could I do? Yes, it was more, I want to start my own thing. What can I do? And back then, what I did already was, as I said, I was in my mid-20s, I was in a leadership position at this corporate company and I was quite young and also a woman, which was not quite common back then. So what I did is I have found it next to my job, a community for women, because I wanted to build up a network. I realized, okay, business is a lot about networking, but I do not know anybody. And also I don't have the family connections that I get just like a network from home. So how do you do this? So I organized events for women across Germany with kind of ambassador programs. We had like a blogazine, etc. So this was the whole woman empowerment movement. When there wasn't a woman empowerment movement, we were a little bit too early for the market. And this was what I was doing already and I really enjoyed it. Bringing people together offline, connecting people and also showing people that they're capable of daring to fulfill their dreams. And actually then I looked into different ideas because I got to know a couple of people, met women and men and other founders. I looked into a couple of startups and nothing really catched me. Then I had first the idea of building a business in the wedding area. So when it comes to wedding, greeting, cars, wedding organization, but I wasn't really passionate about it. But with this wedding idea, I met my co founder with whom I founded Art Night. He's not part of the company today anymore, but back then we founded a company together and we met and then we discussed a couple of ideas and then Art Night popped up. So bringing people together offline, offering creative Events and actually doing something with your own hands instead of just having a speaker or dinner and having kind of a creative experience. And this was then the start. What was the event like back then and how did it change now? Like, what happens at Art Night? Yeah, what happens at Art Night? That's a good question. So basically you can think of creative events. So you book your ticket online in advance and then you go to a bar, restaurant or cafe, because the events are always happening in those locations, which is also nice atmosphere. You come there and now depends if you book, like painting or a DIY format. We are offering several different products, but the material is prepared for you. You always have like a local host or a local artist who guides you two to three hours to create your own piece of art, whether it's jewelry, it's a painting, it's paper flowers, it's oysters that you decoupage and paint. And then you enjoy the evening or the afternoon and take back your own artwork. And everything is like a little bit guided, but it's still like in a cozy and nice atmosphere. You can go by yourself. You can also book it with a private group or you go with a friend. And for me, what I like most is that's kind of an offline experience that you can do alone, but also with other people, and you're doing something with your own hands. No screens and just quite nice. What does an average ticket cost at the moment? 49. €49. Okay. And then at the cafe, I guess I can order food, I can have booze. I know it from here in New York, mostly as like paint and sip. But okay, so that is all. You don't have to, but that is all possible. Okay, interesting. Did something in 2016, going back to when you had the idea and you looked at the industry, did something like this exist or did you feel, oh, we have to do it differently, or did it feel completely new? What was the market environment like back then? It did not exist in Europe. In the US there was a company who did something similar. So you had in the US back then already a lot of paint and sip studios. So really studios where you just go and where nothing else happens than painting and drinking. And also in Australia, there was another company doing this, and we got in touch with them. They had no interest in also expanding to Europe. So we thought, okay, this is a good opportunity. And the toughest part was, of course, in the beginning, we tried to copy it quite exactly how it happens, for example, in the U.S. but we realized quite quickly that people are interested in painting, but not so in the drinking part. So I remember the first events where we also had like Jagermeister. Somehow we got Jagermeister there also as a sponsor. And we did kind of an event where you were painting like for five minutes and then you had a shot and then you were painting and then you had another shot. And we realized quite quickly that especially in Germany, the culture is quite different. So people like to enjoy their wine or aperouchtritz to their art night. But it's not about getting drunk. It's more about, okay, I really also want to learn something. I also want to have fun, but I want to decide by myself if I would like to drink alcohol on a Wednesday evening or not. And this is when we change the concept and also realize we need different hosts. So in vs, for example, we have a lot of entertainers who are doing these events. So you don't need to be as good in painting in Europe. We really need artists who know what they're doing and are really, really good in their skill set. So there's a lot of differences, especially culturally. And so yeah, we developed the experience like in the last nine years more and more. And now it's quite perfect, I would say. Yeah, it's so interesting that there are all these data points or that there are apparently also very different needs from the target audience. I have a friend, she runs events like this probably like once per quarter or something. And there it's just. She does it to like. It's about painting nude guys. So it's actually really like. So it's like a whole different value proposition probably, I guess. Guess. Oh, we also did that in the past. Nice. In the early days. Let's talk. Maybe like the first year or so, everything was pretty scrappy. You had like small venues, flyers, word of mouth. It was not like a, like a big. I guess it didn't feel like a big startup company probably. So like what, what did it like, what were those moments like? And what did it teach you about the validity of the concept? Lesson learned. You do not need a lot of money to build a great business. Back then this was actually the problem. We did not really have a lot of money and we were both not like in university or had any scholarships or anything like that. So we also had to earn money quite fast. So you really are getting creative then how to do marketing. You really think about how can you save money, build up a good sustainable business. And this is what we actually did. And it was quite tough in the beginning. But A lot of things worked out. A lot of things also did not work out. And our biggest problem was that back then also nowadays if people do not understand the concept, then you have to explain quite a lot. And people, they don't read like five sentences to understand what you're offering. So we had to figure out how to pitch Art Night. Quite good and sharp, especially for marketing. And then we tried out different things. For example, I'm still part of a thousand Facebook groups for singles. So we just posted in all the cities where we were offering events like Single in Berlin, Singel in Munich, Singel in Vienna. Hey, there's a new event format. If you are looking for a cool date and you want to have a conversation, but you also want to feel comfortable, if the conversation isn't going that well, then Artnet is the perfect thing for you. He is like a five euro discount. So we did different things and then learned step by step how to market an experienced product. And then if we are talking once, we are talking now about, okay, it felt more like a startup maybe then we usually have the bad A S word, which is scale. And I imagine that, I imagine you must have gotten the criticism very often of like, okay, this is all nice, but it sounds like a hobby. Doesn't sound like a really real big business. So how do you scale this? Was this a huge part of your conversation in the background or when strategizing, was this something that weighed heavily on you or like, how did you approach this idea of like, oh yeah, does this scale? And is this even an important question for us? Yeah, definitely. So for me also the interesting part was always, how are you able to scale offline events? Because I know a lot of companies, they are working agency like, so they are organizing event over event. And what was motivating most was like building really tech in the background that scales offline events without needing a lot of resources for it. And this is actually what we have built also from the beginning on. Of course it takes a little time to develop all those processes and also the tech behind it. And what is quite funny, I had yesterday, I had a lunch date and I heard of a word the first time. It's called IRL tech in real life tech. This is completely new. Like I'm doing irl, an IRL startup since now nine years, but now there's like a new hype coming. This hype wasn't there nine years ago. So we always had to explain what we are actually building. And Art made is in the background. A tech platform where we are able to scale offline events. And one example, we are doing around 1000 events per month in Germany only. And we only have like one and a half FTE in customer service, for example, and one more FTE managing all the hosts and all the operations behind it. So it's really. You don't need a lot of human resources in that sense because we have built really great tech behind it and we could also do 5,000 events tomorrow if the marketing would be a little bit easier. But this is how I understand scalability. And this was the thought from the beginning on. And also building a tech scalable platform that is not only able to do painting events because actually right now we could do the same or we are doing right now the same. We started that last year again with DIY events. Or in 2019 we launched like baking events, cocktail events, planting events. So this was always the original thought behind it. Why? We also got funding and then went crazy. And we're also crazy scale up before COVID hit. I want to talk about the pandemic more in a second, but I'm curious, how does it work right now? So you get a share of those 49. Like how. How is the money split up? Does the instructor do part of the marketing too? Or is this considered to be like a freelancer for you for the event? Like how does this work at the moment? Yeah, we are not a marketplace. So we are really the event experience creator. And this is how the platform works. So all the processes, they are like our core business. Our hosts that are hosting the events in front of also the people, they're freelancers and they're doing the events with a couple of guidelines we're having. And they're with us. Especially like in Germany, we have hosts. They're with us since nine years, eight years, seven years. So they did like a lot of events already. And this also shows that the system works. But we're doing the marketing, we're doing the ticketing, we are doing the tech processes and we have amazing people who are hosting the events and are collaborating with us. Okay, you just said pandemic, so I imagine it's 2016, you got the idea, you build it, it's working nicely. It's 2019. You have these new ideas, what you just mentioned of like, okay, let's move this past just like paint, painting and do DIY stuff. And then March 2020, the pandemic hit and yeah, your IRL tech non tech business is confronted with real life. Indeed. So what was that like and what was the Hardest call you had to make to keep Art Night alive in that moment. Maybe to answer the question, like, what were we doing in 2019? So we scale up the business super fast and it was also the time. So costs were irrelevant, money was cheap. You were able to raise like a lot of money from investors with just a couple of PowerPoint slides. So that's what we did because we were really hungry and the startup scene was also working like that. And I was quite inexperienced. So if I'm looking back, I wished to make like or had made a different decision. But we were in a super scaling phase when Covid hit. So we just launched three new brands. We just expanded Artnet to five other countries. We did all that within four months and scaled also from 20 employees to over 100 employees. And then we got like a couple of millions of funding. So Covid hit and I just imagine like, remember the first days also of COVID and nobody of us knew how long will this go or what will happen now because we never experienced something like that. So what we actually did was building even more complexity. We had the money because we did fundraising before. So we did online events for all formats. So digital painting, cooking, planting and cocktail events. We also tapped into the e commerce business because we then built boxes for at home events. Cocktail boxes, baking boxes, painting boxes, planting boxes, and were Suddenly shipping around D2C products to different customers. So then what happened was Covid took a little longer. The regulations, especially in Europe, they were like really a lot. And in every German city there were different regulations. So it was quite tough to keep up the operations. But we realized quite quickly after the first lockdown that all those digital products and boxes, they are working quite good. But actually people want to meet in real life again and want to join real events. So we started with real events quite quickly again under all those regulations. Now your question was like, what was the hardest part or decision? This was actually when the pandemic was fading out because we had back then like a business which was super high in complexity. We had so many employees, the costs were crazy. So we were like a young startup and we were doing online events, offline events, e commerce business, B2B business, B2C business. So the best but also the hardest decision was focus and turn the business around and make the decision to really build like a sustainable company and focus only on artnet in Germany and Austria and closing everything else down and also tidying up the company again. And also like, yeah, stop scaling in that sense. But also reducing the overhead, which meant we had to let go a couple of people also to save costs and money and build it a little bit better from scratch kind of again. And this is what we did then the years after Covid. Ah, I think this is a good moment to take a little break because we now learned about the building of the company, the growth of it, and then how you kind of like pruned it when the pandemic happened and something really heavy external happened. And yet now the company is again launching other concepts like Bate Night and plant Night. We will come back to that after the break. And please stay with us when Amy shares the ways of how they at Art Night think about diversifying or doubling down on what it is. The core success so far. Stay with us. Welcome back. So we talked a lot about how you overcame the challenges of COVID successfully. And you also hinted at the fact that there are probably now plant nights and bake nights. So when did those ideas come up? And how do you decide when to diversify versus when to, like, double down? Yeah, so we made a decision in 2019, before COVID 19, to do like, a vertical and horizontal expansion, I would call it, so geographical expansion and expansion in other verticals. And we closed them down by the end of the pandemic again. And we focused the last year on Art Night only because this was the concept that was working best and we needed to focus a little bit more. Okay, interesting. I see more and more here in New York. There's many plant cafes now popping up. So apparently people are doing like. People are really looking forward to do a crossover between flowers and having coffee. I think it's a bit of a weird crossroads, but probably there's something there. We talked about scaling a lot already, but I'm still curious. How do you make sure that there are certain that each event stays within a certain range, that there's a certain quality that each event feels personal and authentic, but also adheres to the standards of the company. How does this work on the ground? Nitty gritty. For us, the quality of the events is the most important thing. Why? Just imagine if you would buy a new pair of sneakers, for example. You buy them online, you get them at home, you try them on, and maybe you don't like them, so you just send them back. If you like them, you wear them and also show them potentially to other people with experiences. The business is super different. Why? If you're booking a ticket for an experience and you have a shitty experience, you tell this other people. So, for example, you go to work the other day or you talk about the experience with your friends, family, you're part of WhatsApp groups or whatever. And so if the experience is not top notch, then other people will know. And this means for us, bad marketing. So from the beginning on, a really amazing experience was the core of our business. And the result is that since nine years we have an NPS so NET promoter score where you can actually measure also feedback in a quite nice way of minimum 96, which is crazy high. And this is why we are successful, I would say also since many, many years, because the quality is so important. How do we do this? How do we measure this? So with the last point, how do we measure it? We ask for feedback after every event. If something went wrong, we are trying to fix it and figure out why it went wrong. It's still like a people business. So it could be, for example, the location is closed, it was supposed to be open. Things like that happen, but they do not happen quite often. But with everything else, we coach our hosts, we work with them super closely together to really make the best experience happening. And for us, creating a new experience product. As I said last year, we have diversified a little bit again, but in the DIY sector, so doing Julie reinvents paper flower events, etc. And it takes us up to half a year to really develop an amazing experience. And there are different things come together. There's like a psychological part, what should happen during an event. There's like an organizational part that should happen during the event. And there's also the material which also should be really, really good in quality. And yeah, that's our secret sauce, how everything comes together. It's good. You also already talked a bit about the like, the concept behind it now aligning with bigger trends we see in society at the moment. And I would definitely agree. Even my impression is that especially younger people kind of understand that online and Internet experiences are not everything. I feel as if sometimes now Gen Z or the younger people of Gen Z are much better in moving away from devices than us. Millennials are so good for them. And that there's a hunger for this and that. There's. I mean, we also see it for example, in the music sector where you can make less and less money with records and Spotify and people say, well, how about we are just on a forever tour because people do want to go to concerts, etc. So what are some of the broad strokes of the broad impressions that you have of experiential culture? Where do you see this is going what are your feelings around just like the market you're in. Yeah. So recent global and local studies highlight that especially loneliness is no longer just like a senior issue. So it's really hitting also young adults the hardest. And one of six people are really feeling really, really lonely. So this actually means that. Yeah, also in the studies, like around 60% of especially young adults are feeling moderately lonely. And this is like a crazy health risk. It's a higher health risk than smoking 15 cigarettes a day if you're feeling lonely and not socially connected. Because it's something that we as human beings really need. So this is the one thing. The other thing is we are all spending roughly like six to seven hours on screens every day. So both comes together. And I think especially the younger generations, they now understand that they have those human needs, that they want to connect with other people, but it's really challenging for them doing so because when have they learned to connect with other people easily? So this is a quite interesting movement that communities are getting more and more important. You have a lot of running clubs or sports clubs or communities in cities where people connect with each other. And I think it's just something normal. My hypothesis is, and I say that quite often technology has developed super fast in the last years. Just look at everything we can do with AI today. But we as human beings, we are still really basic. So the human needs we actually have. Excuse me. Yeah, but they haven't changed, like, since forever. Like, we need to sleep, we need to eat, we need social connections. And although things haven't changed, so I think this is something that is super interesting and where we are going more back and back to all those basic needs and core needs, because if we don't, we are getting sick. So bringing people together offline, offering communities and offering, like the fancy word IRL in real life is something that we as human beings just actually need to survive. Yeah, yeah, I would definitely agree. And it also brings us back to the pandemic a bit, which I think was also a huge lesson in the fact that we're not only craving the connections to our good friends, but also that we probably undervalued the weaklings in our lives. Lives and the weak links to people like the. The barista or just like the other regular you saw at the bar or the people in your soccer club. And I had this one friend who said, well, I really miss friends, but I also really miss strangers right now. And so, yeah, this idea of the fact that we are social animals is definitely something I can relate to. And I also think it's interesting when we are looking at the generations and again talking about probably Gen Z, they have never experienced the Internet as this like innocent thing that's going to bring just good, which probably a generation of people that is now in their 30s, 40s, 50s and who remember a time before and then who remember the golden age of the Internet and everything was meant to like solve society's problems. That type time is also, is also gone. So I mean that's a story for a whole other day. And they're like huge bookshelves written about this. But I definitely do think that, yeah, experiential culture, the in person connection and also the idea of we have to expose ourselves to people who are other and different from us, that this is just very beneficial to us. I always tell people it's very easy to hate a group. It's very hard to hate a person. So like you have to meet the other people. Two quick final questions that we asked every guest. Number one, are you talking to new investors right now? Are you looking for money? I'm not looking for money. But on the other hand, always not from investors. Okay, from customers. Are you hiring or looking for talent? How does it work if I, I'm not a good enough painter? I can't, I have to wait for like, I don't know, we do poetry night or something then I will come. So right now we are always looking for great people. But now, right now we are especially looking for great hosts. So creative people who want to do events and host events next to their normal job. I would say these are the most that we are looking for in many, many cities and countries right now. Very nice. Thank you very much for joining the show and for explaining. I feel I, I feel very inclined now to book it the next time I'm in Germany to go to an art night, I have to talk to some people. You convinced me the pitch worked. Yeah. You're invited. The most important thing is dare to create whatever it is what you're creating. Yeah, it's true. Yeah. Oh God, yeah. I'm too much of a perfectionist. It's very often like this doesn't look right, but it's stupid. Obviously in order to have a good 10th painting you need to do nine others. But before I guess so you don't just like half an hour starting point is enough or five minutes between shots, which I learned today too. Dear listeners, if you have ever joined an art night yourself or you maybe thought about starting a community driven business yourself, please let us know what was a takeaway from Amy's journey here. Write it to us in the comments, tag us on social, write us an email. We are curious whether you you like this. Bit of a different episode today because we for once we were not talking about AI and software as a service here. I say thank you for coming on the show, I hope. Yeah. I wish you the best of luck with the business and till the next time, bye bye. Bye bye. That's all for Find more news streams, events and interviews@www.startuprad.IO. remember, sharing is car.