I’d like to start off today’s post by apologizing to Start Co. and their startup founders for leaving the Demo Day after-party so early. I had planned to hang out and network with the entrepreneurs until at least midnight. That didn’t happen and I was out before 10 with an upset stomach.<\/p>\n
Here’s what happened: Between Demo Day and the after-party, there was a cocktail hour at the Silly Goose. That’s normally where I’d be anyway on a Thursday evening, so I attended the cocktail hour. People from Start Co. came over and handed me three green tickets. “What are these for?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Each one will get you any drink you want here,” they replied.<\/p>\n
“Anything?” I asked.<\/p>\n
“Anything.”<\/p>\n
Now, the Silly Goose is one of my neighborhood spots where I spend time with friends and drink cans of PBR. However, the Goose is also one of the best cocktail bars in the city, with a menu of hand-crafted cocktails. If I could trade a green ticket for anything I wanted, I damn sure wasn’t going to waste it on a domestic beer. “Make me your favorite drink from the cocktail menu,” I asked Jessica. “… that isn’t too girly, and that you think I would like.” She brought me a mojito. It was absolutely delicious, so I cashed in my remaining two tickets on mojitos as well.<\/p>\n
Well, here’s the thing. I drink beer. I do shots, mainly Fireball. However, I almost never drink mixed drinks. It had probably been more than a year since I had more than one mixed drink back-to-back. My stomach couldn’t handle three successive mojitos. By the time I walked over to the after-party at 9, I wasn’t feeling well. By 9:45 I had to give up and go home.<\/p>\n
The after-party venue, The Bradford at the Deluxe Arcade<\/a>, was a beautiful space. I had never even heard of this venue until recently. It’s at 10 North Second, a block north of Paula & Raiford’s Disco. It was big enough for Start Co. to have two bars and two DJs. It can hold 300+ people and has 3000 square feet of space. It is a classy, elegant setting that I would recommend for parties and wedding receptions.<\/p>\n While at the Silly Goose I got to talk to one of the founders of Boosterville<\/a>, a new mobile payment platform. It saves retailers 50-80% of fees that would go to credit card merchant services, charging a fee of only 1%. In addition, Boosterville allows merchants to offer a loyalty program, and Boosterville is cause-driven, donating a percentage of fees to local charities. I once worked in credit card merchant services, and I can tell you the status quo in that industry is a dinosaur. Nice to see a Start Co. startup working to make the dinosaur extinct.<\/p>\n The Daily News has a complete list of businesses<\/a> that graduated from Start Co.’s accelerators.<\/p>\n Tonight is the weekly free Memphis Jams series at Handy Park at Third and Beale, kicking off at 6:30. This week’s live music will be Neosoulville presents an Isaac Hayes celebration,<\/p>\n Casablanca<\/i> will be shown on the big screen at the Orpheum tonight at 7 PM. Come early for themed cocktails and movie-related activities.<\/p>\n Double J Smokehouse and Saloon will host an SEC kickoff party<\/a> tomorrow from noon until 6. There will be drink specials and game day food specials. Wear your game day attire and look for your team’s tent station. Tickets are $10 plus an 89 cent fee, $5 of which goes to local charities. Your ticket gets you a wristband and two drink tickets.<\/p>\n That’s all for now. The last weekend before college football and fall festival season begins is almost here. I still have no definite plans, but I’m sure I will be out and about Downtown.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’d like to start off today’s post by apologizing to Start Co. and their startup founders for leaving the Demo Day after-party so early. I had planned to hang out and network with the entrepreneurs until at least midnight. That didn’t happen and I was out before 10 with an upset stomach. Here’s what happened: … Continue reading “Fri update: Good (and relatively unknown) party venue, credit card merchant services alternative, Isaac Hayes celebration, Casablanca, SEC kickoff party @ Double J”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15514"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15515,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15514\/revisions\/15515"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15514"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15514"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.paulryburn.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15514"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}