Nobody likes waiting in line, and I learned just how awful it can be last Saturday when I was forced to stand like a cow in a two-hour queue at a nightclub in unseasonably cold weather.
I don't plan on repeating that experience anytime soon. Luckily, there's a startup out there for that.
Y Combinator-backed LineLeap is a service that lets you pay to skip the lines at the bar. The startup's mobile app lets users purchase priority entry passes to venues that LineLeap partners with.
“As college students, we noticed a common problem that many before us had experienced,” LineLeap co-founder and CEO Max Schauff told TechCrunch. “Our favorite college bars had really long lines. The problem was, bars didn't have an open, transparent way to let customers skip the line on their most special nights — and they were missing out on a lot of revenue because of it.”
Love the concept or hate it, venture capitalists seem to like where LineLeap is headed: Y Combinator led the company's $10 million funding round last month, with participation from The Chainsmokers' Alex Pall and others. That round brings LineLeap's total funding to $25 million, valuing the company at a staggering $100 million.
Driving from university town to university town
Shauf met LineLeap's second co-founder, Patrick Skelly, while working at EnvoyNow, an on-demand food delivery startup targeting college students. Through a mutual friend, Shauf and Skelly met LineLeap's third co-founder, Nick Becker.
While Shauf was an undergraduate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Becker and Skelly were at the University of Michigan, the three developed LineLeap's business plan and began building the website together.
“We started our business on a minus-5-degree February night in Madison, Wisconsin,” Shoaf said. “After the success of our opening night, we capitalized on that excitement and spent the next few years loading up our car and traveling from college town to college town, mostly during summer vacations, trying to expand our business.”
At the time, LineLeap wasn't the only line-skip app — and the three knew it. So to differentiate their platform, the three co-founders decided to target college bars as their first big customer segment.
Image credit: LineLeap
The co-founders stayed in rundown motels, rented cars, traveled around the country selling at venues, and snuck into the YMCA to shower when they had time. After a few years of hard work, the trio felt they had proven their business model and applied to Y Combinator.
They were accepted into the 2019 summer class.
Flash forward to 2024. LineLeap has weathered the COVID-19 downturn and now has an office in New York with a team of 40 people (not including part-time ambassadors). The app has 1 million users, over 400 collegiate bar partners, and is on track to process over $30 million in payments this year.
“One of our biggest challenges – meeting with venue owners and closing deals – has also proven to be one of our biggest differentiators,” Shoaf said. “Closing deals with these venues is difficult, but we've risen to the challenge through our relationships within the industry and our track record over the past seven years.”
Inequality and privacy concerns
Today, LineLeap offers much more than skip-the-line passes. Using Venmo, PayPal, Apple Pay, or a credit card included, users can purchase concert tickets, pay for admission, pre-order drinks, and reserve VIP tables/bottle service. They also receive push notifications and emails about special events and promotions. Venue owners have access to a dashboard that displays transaction reports and analytics.
Events range from DJ nights to football viewing parties to stand-up comedy.
Image credit: LineLeap
LineLeap makes money by charging a Ticketmaster-like fee on certain passes. The company also charges venues a fee on “new revenue,” that is, revenue that venues didn't previously generate, such as selling priority access passes.
“Venues generate significant new revenue streams through the LineLeap platform while also gaining the ability to communicate and market directly to key customers,” Schauff said. “For venues, LineLeap is zero-cost and completely risk-free, so they can partner and launch quickly with no downsides.”
I don't think we can agree that it doesn't have its drawbacks.
LineLeap is another example of technology that allows the wealthy to save on wait times, what CNN's Nathaniel Meyersohn called a “burgeoning benefits industry.” The benefits come at the expense of poorer experiences for less-fortunate customers, raising concerns about quality and fairness of service for those not willing to pay the premium.
That could backfire at some establishments: “Yeah, if a bar charges you for reservations, you might want to find a new bar,” one reviewer wrote about the LineLeap app on the Google Play Store.
Mr. Shauf tried to reassure me there was nothing to worry about.
“There is a wave of new operators and an overall mindset change in the industry embracing technology and data solutions, and LineLeap is at the forefront of that,” he said. “Venue operators are now hungry for more data-backed solutions for marketing purposes, and better technology to help increase revenue.”
This also seems like a potential privacy issue.
I asked Shauf about LineLeap's data retention policies, including how long the company stores user data and whether users can delete it at any time. Shauf declined to answer in detail, instead referring me to the terms of use on the LineLeap website.
What's concerning is that the terms of service don't provide a clear data retention period and state that LineLeap may be “unable to completely delete or anonymize” user data for “technical” or “other operational reasons.”
For now, Shauf says the funding will be used to expand LineLeap to more venues in the nightlife and entertainment industry, introduce new in-app features, and build a full-fledged customer relationship management platform for bars.
Image credit: LineLeap
“There have been many companies that have tried to start skip-the-line companies for bars and clubs, but none have lasted more than two years with a presence in multiple markets,” Shoaf said. “We're proud to be a company that will continue to be a partner to venues for years to come.”