Adam Torres and George Meyer discuss VegasNearMe.
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Show Notes:
VegasNearMe is on a mission to create the world’s best tourism discovery platform. In this episode, Adam Torres and George Meyer, CEO & Cofounder at NearMe Entertainment Inc. / VegasNearMe, explore George’s journey as an entrepreneur and VegasNearMe.
About NearMe Entertainment Inc. / VegasNearMe
VegasNearMe is the ultimate insider guide to Las Vegas, providing real-time updates on everything from hidden gems to high-profile events. Whether for seasoned visitors or first-time travelers, the app enhances the Vegas experience by offering instant access to dining, entertainment, nightlife, attractions, and more—all in one place.
Full Unedited Transcript
Hey, I’d like to welcome you to another episode of Mission Matters. My name is Adam Torres, and if you’d like to apply to be a guest on the show, just head on over to missionmatters. com and click on Be Our Guest to apply. All right, so today I have George Meyer on the line. He’s CEO and co founder of Near Me Entertainment Inc. Which their first app they have out is called Vegas Near Me, and let me tell you, I’m pumped. I’ve been talking to George about this app. I’m going to be downloading this. Kind of get my get my fingers all over the app and learning about the platform. And I’m just pumped, man, because I go to Vegas a lot for my long term listeners that been following the show, you know, I’m out there covering a conference or doing a gig at least a couple of times a month.
And I’ve never been able to find a great app that I feel like it’s everything done for me. So, first off, George, welcome to the show. Oh, thank you for having me. I’m excited to be on. All right, George. So big shout out. First off, I should, I should lead with this big shout out to Jets in Capital and their entire team over there.
I know that’s where myself and George, we were at the same event and our media coordinator met George and he’s like, hey, you gotta get the This guy on there. He’s got this app. It’s called Vegas near me. And so again, Matt, our media coordinator was out there and I’m like, all right, Matt, let’s, let’s get it done, man.
I’m in. So that’s the backstory. So again, shout out to Matt and of course the Justin Capital guys for the guys for making this happen. And George, just to get us kicked. off when people hear app, when people hear maybe like, you know, things to do, sometimes they tune out because they think, Oh, here we go.
Is this what we need? Another app. However, what you’re doing is pretty groundbreaking. It’s different. I want to know before we get into all the features, the functionality, what you can do before we can get into all of that, like Tom, give me the seed, like how was the seed planted and like, why did you create the app in the first place?
It’s actually a funny story, but I’ve been in Vegas 15 years and I was kind of a concert schmuck until I moved out here. And then I got to know some people that actually are pretty close with some arenas. And I’m a weird guy. I like new bands. You probably never heard of an old bands and. I thought I knew pretty much everything that was going on.
Right? I mean, people would ask me what was going on. And probably seven or eight years ago, I woke up on a Sunday morning and a good friend of mine called me and said, wasn’t journey awesome last night? and I said, journey was here. I’ll like to. Okay. Yeah, and journey is one of my favorite older bands.
Right? For sure. And, you know, now they kind of do residencies. So they’re here for a while, but seven, eight years ago, they were here once a year. Right? And I missed it. And to make it even worse, they were at the grand garden arena. Where I had a connection, I had like the ultimate connection. I could literally text a friend and I often sit front row, right?
So I could have gone and sat there front row and I totally missed the, concert because I didn’t even know they were in town and I got mad and I’ve been a tech guy my entire life. But then I started a mission and started to interview people and found out that it wasn’t just concerts that people were missing, but people were having trouble finding restaurants or hotels or activities or everything and that’s what started it all. and how many years have you been working on this project? Almost eight years. It’s been an incredible, incredible amount of work. And now the app is the app has been incredibly good for, I don’t know, two or three months. So the one thing I encourage everyone listening to this. Is no matter how much we talk about it.
You have to go see it and play with it yourself It’s completely free and just go to the play store app store and look for vegas near me That’s just our first app But our first app is for the vegas area now. I mean, that much time putting together an app. Did you have a tech background before that?
I’m just curious, like, for first of all, most people, when they say they’re going to start an app or something else like that, they either get it done and it’s kind of subpar or it’s something else. But if you spend that much time, I’m curious what you did before that. Did you have, like, I know you had to be in the weeds on this thing.
Like, obviously, this isn’t a template. Obviously, this thing’s intense. Go ahead, please. The size and scope. I’m an old guy now, but I’m best known for a company called I Omega. In the mid 90s, we launched a product called the zip drive. And we went from 141 million to 1. 2 billion in 12 months. At the time, it was the fastest growth in the history of American business and kind of that changed my way to go do things.
But, ironically, I’m best known for that. That hardware product but I’ve been a software guy my entire life. I started a consulting company after that, and then I moved to Vegas in 2009, and ended up taking care of my parents, who, who passed away a little while after I was here. But I was actually at the keynote when Jobs launched the iPhone, and like I said, I’ve been a software guy my entire life.
Get out of here! You were there? That’s amazing! I was there. I was actually there. The irony he launched it there. Nobody had iPhones to record it. I’m like, come on now. If that would have happened every I know it might be a bad joke, but I think about things like this. Go I was actually in the audience.
So I remember that. I remember that. Like, it was yesterday. It was such a deal, but I, right at the very beginning there, I thought apps might revolutionize the way to go do things. And I moved to Vegas when I was taking care of my parents, I really couldn’t do my consulting company. So I started getting involved in apps and I did a little poker math app first, and that was like a 10, 000 project, but pretty cool.
But then I worked on an app called Poker Near Me, it became the biggest poker information app in the world. And I ended up partnering with Caesars Entertainment in the World Series, and I sold that company to Overlay Gaming. But that was about a million dollar project, so which is pretty big for an app.
And this makes it makes it look like a kid’s toy. I think there’s literally hundreds of man years of work that’s been put into this project and it’s fun to see it. it’s always going to get better, but right now what we have is, is it’s revolutionary. What, what, so what need did you see in the marketplace and how is this app filling it?
Because obviously when you started going down like this rabbit hole, which I’m saying it’s rabbit hole, not your words, but there was something. And then you’re like, wait a minute. Well, yeah, it has to be. I have to call it that because it started with the Journey concert. You missed it. Like, if Journey’s listening, hey, you’re, you’re responsible for Vegas near me in a way.
But like, what need were you serving? You went down and you just kept doing, you kept building. Like, what, what was the need that you saw was missing in the market? Well, when I first started the project, I did hundreds of interviews and really our mission is to. Kind of revolutionize the tourism industry and make it fun and easy for, locals and tourists to discover, learn about shoes and ultimately find a book on things to do and see initially in Vegas, but then everywhere.
But when I did, when I started the project and did interviews. Of course, I found discovery was a big issue, right? It was me missing the journey concert was pretty easy. And if you, if you think about it, I mean Vegas it’s probably the entertainment capital of the world, but, these casinos are only going to.
Promote their events, right? Yeah Ticketmaster is only going to show you ticketmaster events. AEG is only going to show you their events, right? Caesars is only going to show you their events. So it’s it’s really easy to miss things and in fact one of the biggest Ticketing companies told me that they think even when an artist like ed sheeran is in town They think 80 of the people don’t know he’s here.
You know what I mean? So it’s really Missing but I found other problems besides that I found that same issue for finding restaurants and finding other things, but the other problems that we found on and you know, I don’t want to in the interest of time, I’ll just gloss over them. But number one was, and they’re not in any order, but accuracy, the data accuracy, what’s kind of funny is Vegas near me is already by far the world’s most accurate source.
for data for what to do in and around Las Vegas. And it’s not because Google and Yelp or Alphabet and Yelp are amazing companies, but they’re trying to do it for hundreds of millions of places, and it’s very, very difficult to get the data to be accurate. And our data is far superior.
And we found that a big issue. And I can tell you some comical stories about how inaccurate data is right now. The third large problem we found is how do you choose this stuff, right? I mean I’ll never forget, I sent a couple to Absinthe, one of my favorite shows in the world, and I asked them the next day how they liked it.
This is like, was at the time, my favorite show in Vegas, and they told me they hated it. I said, I said, why did they hate it? It was too adult for them, right? You know what I mean? So the adults weren’t going to really turn them off. But I learned all that stuff. Like, you know, I have a 10 year old, what can I go do with my 10 year old?
It’s hard to choose stuff. Another large issue we found is everyone’s lost. And this one is probably more prevailing than Vegas, but there’s hundreds of people in every casino right now asking where something is. And this is a huge problem. And the last one, I just found out, and this is probably the most important thing, I think, of what we’ve done is just usability.
I mean, nobody understands how to make software fun and easy to use. And I think that’s the biggest thing that we’ve done is that if you’re going to take a trip to Vegas, like, say, you come here. you said you come here, Adam, from L. A. Right. And you’re here for four days. You’ll probably interact with 50 different apps and websites, right?
By the time you’re here. And we do it all in one single place. And, now we’re actually revolutionizing what we already have, and we’re building a genetic AI platforms to really take this to the next level. But in one simple, fun and easy to use app, you can find anything in seconds compared to minutes.
Yeah, I love it. And every single thing that you just mentioned, I’ve had an issue with, and I feel like my audience, like they, we’ve all, we’ve all been there. We’ve all had an issue. So when I think about a an app that’s going to solve those problems, like I’m in so you said, what has been, as you roll this out to people in Vegas and otherwise like talk to me a little bit more about that and, your goals for, the rollout.
Well, one of the things that I’m very excited about is what we’re building is a platform. So and we have, it’s kind of an extendable flanker brand of what you think about it. But what I’m very excited about is I want to make Vegas near me so good that you go back home and you wish there was an L.
A. Near me or New York, New York near me or Dubai near me or a pair of me, right? and so, we have this kind of expandable flanker brand to, to make that, very easy to be able to do this. So we’ve worked really, really hard on this platform to be able to expand it to other areas in the future.
I love it. Like the concept’s great. The, the idea and I’m, my goal is to start seeing this more and more. I’m going to, I’m definitely. I’m going to start playing with it. Next time I go out to Vegas, you better believe I’m going to be doing some videos. I’m going to be using it. I already have some ideas. I want to do some blog content of me using the app and get our team out there and really get into this because I’m just a big fan of Vegas.
I mean, for the entertainment, like all the other things they’re doing, how about the sports side of what’s happening in Vegas now and the entire town being revitalized through some sport, not saying it was ever gone, but like the sports, like, I feel like the town as a whole. It’s just become so multidimensional than maybe when I was a kid or younger, and it was just like, Oh, you go there and you can see just to show, or you can just see that, you know what I mean?
Now there’s so many things to do. Right, right. Yeah. So, let’s do this, George. I definitely want people to go download the app. Like, how do people download the app? It’s available for what? For iOS, Android. Talk to me a little bit more about that. How do people do that? And how do they connect as well?
Well, yes go to either the Google Play Store, Apple App Store and search for Vegas near me. And like I said, it’s a totally free apps and go get the app. And in fact, you can book all your hotels and all your shows before you go. So, even while you’re planning your trip, I suggest go get, get the app before you come here, but like I said, it’s totally free.
I can’t even make an account. You know what I mean? It’s just right, You know, easy and fun, easy to use to get involved with. So that’s the easiest way is just go to the store and find it. And to reach me it’s the easiest way is just send me an email, georgeatvegasnearme. com.
We’re, always looking for partners and we’re doing a series A round. So I’m looking for accredited investors too. I mean, this is already. Millions of dollars have already been put into this project, but it’s it’s the size of the opportunity. It’s just enormous. It’s pretty, amazing. I love it.
And so, yeah, so there is a raise. There are a lot of business owners, a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of executives that watch this. So and did you leave your email so that in the investment side, people can reach you? George at Vegas near me dot com. That’s the easiest way to get ahold of me.
And like I said, the first thing to really see the quality of what we’ve done is just to go download this app and play with it for 10 or 15 minutes. And I can tell you about. In five minutes here, I can tell you about some of the most amazing stuff that’s in the app, but you really have to kind of see it to do it.
But if you want, I can cover a couple of those really, really. Yeah, put it out there. Yeah, sure. Okay. Well, the first one that we’ve done is our searches is pretty incredible, right? So you can, search the app and you’ll find our search is pretty amazing. Like, you can search for coffee and it’ll show you.
Yeah. Every coffee chain and they’re all well organized. You see every Starbucks or every coffee bean or whatever you want. But one of the main inventions that we’ve done is I call a visual categories. So when you open up the app, you have this what we call a pentagrid. And it’s actually got six visual categories.
And from there, you can look for maps and places, activities, one called eat and drink to find a restaurant, shows and events, bars, clubs and dispensaries and gambling. But then underneath all those, you can find anything you want. So if you’re into skydiving or golf, golfing or hiking, there’s there’s a visual category in the app.
And that makes it really, really unique and fun and easy to be able to find stuff. Like a good example there I say is like, if you go to activities, we have a category in the app called Wild and Crazy, and we have some stuff that you can do in Vegas, Adam, that I’ll bet you, you had no idea you could do.
Mm-hmm . There’s a place here called Camel Safari where you can ride camels in the desert. Yeah, I didn’t know that place called. Yeah, I didn’t know that. Machine gun helicopters where you can shoot a machine gun on the side of a helicopter. Gunship helicopters. Wow. Right. I mean there’s just, there’s a place called Sky Combat Ace, where you can fly.
Some plane and do dog fights, right? You wouldn’t even know how to search for stuff like that. So the visual categories are super fun and just go play with it and see what you have there. Another couple things that are very unique is we have what I call the near me button. But, you know, if you think about it, Google and Yelp make it really easy to find stuff near you.
We make it easy to find stuff near you or near anywhere you’re going. So any of the businesses in our app, and we have like 17, 000 different businesses in the app, there’s a bottom on the detail page that says set near, right? And if you tap set near, then You can find, let’s say you want to go to the High Roller, you can find every burger restaurant next to the High Roller, or a comedy club next to the High Roller, because you know where you’re going.
And that is so incredibly helpful, right? Because a lot of times you’re like, I don’t want to eat near me, I want to eat, I want to find a place to eat near Caesars where I’m staying, right? A couple of the next most unique features are that instead of reviews, We have a patent pending on this idea, but we’ve timestamped and curated over 75, 000 YouTube and podcast clips.
Wow. And we found this is a much, much better way to learn about and choose things to do, because you can listen to and watch real life experiences, right? And, and I think, I think over, I don’t know, some of about 5, 000 of the businesses in our app have at least one podcast or YouTube clip. So it’s like, you want to go to this restaurant, there’s probably somebody that’s been there, done a review of it, and it’s so neat.
If it’s a, say it’s a two hour long podcast, if they talk about the restaurant an hour in, when you go to the app, it’ll play right where they start to talk about it. Right, which is crazy. And the next feature, I think, and this one has just been incredibly hard to do, but we’ve actually mapped all of the resort shopping entertainment centers ourselves.
So, we have gone through and created our own custom internal maps of all of these places. Wow. So, if you want to find anything. It’s so neat. There’s a button on the bottom that says, show place map and it’s inside of a resort. It’ll bring up a detailed map of that resort. And if you happen to be nearby, and by the way, for this, you should probably have Wi Fi turned on, or it may not be able to find your location, but you’ll show up as a blue dot.
And it just makes it really easy to find anything right? That’s there. A couple of things just briefly to talk about is we have a feature. I don’t have any kids, but tell me why no one’s invented this. We have this really unique age filter. You can tell the app that you have a 10 year old and then find all rides that your 10 year old can go on that are near, you know circa downtown.
You know what I mean? Whatever you want to go do. It’s just, it’s neat to be able to do that. We even have a feature called kid mode that you can put the app in kid mode and then it’ll, cool. Get rid of all the adult categories, right? Because if it’s legal, it’s in this app. I mean, so it’ll get rid of all the strip clubs and dispensaries and all of that stuff to be able to go do it.
So there’s just the app. It’s just filled with with stuff like this. There’s one other thing. There’s even a button we called get a ride. And if you tap that, it links right to your uber lift account. and our maps are embarrassed there’s right. So it makes it much easier to find where the rideshare pickup points are.
And you can even tell the driver where to drop you off. You know what I mean? It makes it much easier because you can pull up the map of where you want to go. Yeah. man, this is this is, I’ll tell you what, if you’re listening to this and George hasn’t convinced you to download the app, you better add dollars for your app.
So Vegas near me and everybody listening. thing, just so you know, we’ll definitely put the we’ll put the link in the show notes. So you can just click on the link and head right on over and, and and download the app and George left his email. So if you’re a credited investor and you want to get involved in this opportunity, obviously shoot him an email.
And speaking of the audience, if this is your. First time with mission matters, and you haven’t done it yet. Hit that subscribe or follow button. This is a daily show each and every day. We’re bringing you new content, new ideas, and hopefully new inspiration to help you along the way in your journey as well.
So again, hit that subscribe or follow button and George, man, appreciate, appreciate all you’re doing and look forward to meeting you in Vegas and getting to use this app. I’m going to create some videos and have some fun. So thanks again for all you do. Oh, thank you. Really excited to be on your show.