Mike Welkon's Nightin is an Upwork for hospitality, connecting Michelin-trained bartenders and chefs with clients for events and consulting. The platform handled over $500k in bookings in 2023 for Morgan Stanley and other high-end clients, tapping a $150 billion corporate event market that 15 million hospitality workers currently can't reach.
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This founder has 60 seconds to pitch their business. Watch to the end to see how much I would invest. I'm Mike Welkon, CEO and co-founder of Nightin. Think of us like Upwork, but for hospitality. We give Michelin-quality bar and restaurant professionals a platform to run their own freelance events and services businesses. So from espresso martini masterclasses to consulting for high-net-worth wine buyers, we're a one-stop shop for bookings, marketing, operations, and payments, all in exchange for a percentage of each transaction. Through my labor economics degree, I watched the US quickly trend towards becoming a 50% freelance-based economy, When I met my co-founder, Rena, I learned that for the 15 million individuals in the hospitality industry, they had no platform to actually run their business and connect with clients. With over $150 billion in corporate event spend each year going to hospitality, we knew we had to build something better. So we launched last year, and in 2023, our experts did over half a million dollars in bookings for companies like Morgan Stanley, real estate firms like Related, and even a Grammy Award-winning artist. We're now expanding service offerings and markets to allow any hospitality professional in the US a platform to run their own freelance business.
