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Comment by LeonM | Hacker News Reader

> Qwest: Lets people pay money to skip lines at venues like clubs and bars. They’re currently at 10 venues in 2 cities, and say they should be at 100 venues in 6 cities this year. They aim to expand to events like music festivals and sporting events.

Aren't most lines created deliberately for security reasons? Like: crowd control, maximum number of visitors, metal detectors, luggage checks, etc.

I can imagine that some clubs deliberately create lines outside to give the impression of popularity and exclusivity. But for any other situation it is of economic interest to the owner to keep lines as short as possible (visitors can't spend money while in the line).

What I'm trying to get to is: I don't get why any event organiser or bar owner would want this.

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I actually consulted briefly with a company that tried to do what Qwest is doing.

Popular bars and clubs have lines out front for a variety of reasons. It exists, and while "we're at capacity" is one reason, its not the only reason.

The issue they encountered was that right now, "skipping the line" is something you pay the bouncer to do in cash. They're also the ones you have to convince to use this app. But you're asking them to use an app that kills that revenue stream for them, it transfers all that $ to the club owner instead. So bouncers would only half use it, or "forget" to use it, or quit and go to another club.

Maybe offer commission to bouncers to encourage them to "sell" the crowd on paid line skipping. Their earnings per person would be lower, but volume would likely be higher since I suspect more people would be willing to pay through an app when prompted rather than taking the initiative to grease a bouncer with cash.

Perhaps. The company I helped out built out rev share as well as other things to help encourage bouncers to use the app, like a shared capacity counter so that multiple bouncers on multiple doors (maybe one person doing an "in" door and someone else on an "out" door around the corner) could keep an accurate capacity count. Was still a tough sales problem. Had to sell the club owner, had to sell the bouncers, and then had to reach and sell the club-goers.

FWIW the company closed down because they couldn't solve the business problem.

Edit: This is also a concept I've seen at like Startup Weekends before. IMO for Qwest to make this work, they need some really strong business connections or a really fresh take on it, which they may have.

You pay money to skip the line. So, the event organizer gets money, plus gets a pre-qualified lead. You know that someone who pays $20 to get into club is more likely to spend money on alcohol than someone who waits in line for an hour to get in for free.

Most places in NYC with a line + bouncer situation you can usually slip them a $20 or something and skip the line anyway. So I guess this is a way to put control of this kind of situation in the hands of the venue itself.

Could solve the problems you're describing by charging people to move to the front of the line rather than charging for immediate entry. Could even have people bid for next entry to encourage competition.

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