Driven by a belief in the importance of community, club culture and shared experiences, Jägermeister’s Venture Capital Investment Unit is supporting the future-facing tech startups reshaping our social interactions.

Since 2021, Best Nights VC has been investing in the startups that are innovating how we go out. Powered by Jägermeister, the initiative offers long-term funding, promotion and networking opportunities to strategically grow these companies – ultimately seeking to maximise the number of people they reach and the cultural impact they have.

To learn more about the core values behind what they do, Crack Magazine spoke to BNVC’s Managing Director Lorrain de Silva and Portfolio Manager Andrea Rosen to discuss what they look for in new partners, and the ways they enable them to grow.

Social interactions are valuable, necessary and worth investing in

The core ethos behind BNVC maintains that social interactions are central to our own wellbeing, as well as for culture and communities to thrive. Investing in the nightlife industries presents more than just an opportunity for economic gain – it is also an opportunity to safeguard the spaces that sustain and connect us.

What do you both do at BNVC and why do you connect with its mission?

L: With BNVC, I’m not only building the first investment firm dedicated solely to nightlife-tech; I’ve also grown a dedicated and passionate team with deep roots in culture and nightlife combined with strong business acumen. Over the last few years, we’ve built a strong portfolio across three continents alongside global tier one co-investors such as Y Combinator, Lightspeed and a16z. I strongly believe that our work has a societal impact – it addresses the loneliness pandemic and fosters real-life connections and exchanges, creating personal happiness while contributing to mental wellbeing and unity.

A: [BNVC’s] vision to me was so clear – at the heart of everything was community. This is one of the main values that still is intrinsic to me in the music and nightlife space. It’s still at the core of what makes music so important to me: shared communal experiences. This is the heart of Best Nights VC. I still feel exactly the same. We are standing up for the future of nightlife and trying to find innovative ways of enabling and empowering it.

Prioritising people, ideas and social impact, not just numbers

With a founder-focused approach, the BNVC team is dedicated to discovering and nurturing the pioneers that are not only moving with, but leading changes in nightlife at a crucial time for the industry. With a background and network in startups and finance, Lorrain’s own experience as an entrepreneur has shaped the company’s focus on nurturing the innovators with both the vision and tools to make real change. 

Is there a criteria entrepreneurs you work with usually need to meet? Or are decisions made more on a gut feeling and belief in the mission behind what they are doing? 

L: We invest in founders, so they have to be experts in their fields, have industry knowledge, and solve real problems for the industry and its people. And, of course, the ventures should contribute to our vision of an improved nightlife of the future – i.e. enhance the quality, quantity, diversity and sustainability of nightlife.

How do you prioritise working with ventures that provide safe, accessible spaces for diverse crowds?

A: We measure the social impact created by the companies, along with the financial side. We have developed a cohesive framework for evaluating the companies we work with since they all play a strong role in bringing people together and community, and the responsibility that comes with that – i.e. diversity, safety, and accessibility to name a few.

 

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Bridging culture, community and new tech

Despite this human-centric ethos, utilising new tech – and embracing it as an inevitable, exciting element of the future of social connection and IRL events – is key to BNVC’s vision. Within the 15 companies on its current portfolio, for example, tech is used to help foster meaningful interactions with like-minded people, to connect fans with events, to match event holders with suppliers, to provide DIY parties with good high-quality sound, to give independent artists accessible tools for growth, and more.

Lorrain, how does your role feed into the wider ethos and goals of the company?

L: Everything I do started from scratch, but builds on the original vision of bridging the gap between culture and technology by applying the tools of venture capital to the cultural space, creating a positive and measurable impact on global nightlife.

How do you define successful and sustainable growth? What are some of the things you look for that indicate huge potential for this kind of growth?

A: I’ve worked in many different startup sectors – sharing economy, agriculturetech, music tech, and climate tech – and there’s quite a few things that all businesses need and share. Successful and sustainable growth can be measured by business model resilience – those that understand the economics of culture and find ways of harnessing commercial power without compromising integrity.

When we evaluate potential, we are looking for entrepreneurs who understand the culture they are operating in and have a strong point of view on where it’s headed, and can build business models that don’t collapse when the cycle moves on – creating real value for the community all while proving scalability.

Can you give us some examples of companies in your portfolio that are using tech to challenge conventional ideas of nightlife?

A: We have a full portfolio of gamechangers. Some really great examples of this are 222 – a company based in New York that creates blind social experiences for likeminded Gen Z-ers looking to connect and network with new friends, all enhanced by their machine learning algorithm. Plots, our most recent investment based out of Los Angeles, is also helping social experiences in three areas – ticketing, hyperlocal event discovery, and connection with other attendees by providing a social media-like experience in the platform for the events. We also see so many incredible nightlife and cultural trends coming from emerging markets. We made our first investment last year in the African continent by investing in a Kenyan based startup called HustleSasa, which is a creators marketplace and platform which primarily serves as a ticketing platform across top live music events across East Africa.

Seeing challenging economic clients as an opportunity for innovation 

Nightlife businesses globally have been facing an increasingly tough landscape for years – in the UK, Music Venue Trust reported that a grassroots music venue was shuttered every two weeks in 2024. Seeing long-term, strategic investment as an essential part of sustaining the spaces where culture can thrive, BNVC are focusing on the ventures finding creative new ways to do so.

What needs to change in the industry for more businesses to thrive?

L: I can only answer this from an investor’s perspective, but I would urge cities to consider nightlife as an impactful industry and important economic driver. All over the world, the cultural offer of cities is a driver for talent retention and innovation. Those who fail to understand this will lose out in the medium term, lose their economic attractiveness as a location and lose their own and international talent to other places.

A: With every challenging time there is an opportunity. We are facing the aftermath of Covid and economic issues around the globe, but this is also when creativity should be born for new ways of going out and enhancing nightlife. I agree with what Lorrain said – nightlife is such an important economic driver and it’s crucial that all parts of the ecosystem work together to keep it alive, from public to private sector, to artists and promoters. It takes a full village here, and grant funding alone without entrepreneurship won’t save our scene. As investors, we want to do our part and we want to work with the whole community and ecosystem to help nightlife thrive.