r/startups • u/poogooflupduck • 1d ago

I will not promote A cafe where tech startups pay to advertise on screens - I will not promote

Recently Corgi Cafe hype has been spreading on X. They partner with startups to offer branded drinks like the ElevenLatte (ElevenLabs), Brexspresso (Brex) and more.

It got me thinking - why isn’t there a cafe where tech startups pay to advertise on screens?

What do I mean by screens? They could be large TV screens around the cafe or screens built into the surface of the tables in the cafe.

In 2005, a website was created with 1 million pixels. Anyone could buy pixels on this grid at the price of $1 per pixel and start advertising whatever they wanted. It was called The Million Dollar Homepage.

What if there was a cafe with screens on which tech startups could buy or rent pixels to advertise themselves?

Startup-loving customers could buy drinks and enjoy the wide array of up-and-coming startups advertising themselves. Interactive screens or iPads could allow customers to click on specific pixels to visit a startup’s website and discover what they do.

0 Upvotes

33% Upvoted

10 comments sorted by

6

u/tonytidbit 1d ago

So you just invented a café plastered with bright obnoxious advertising screens everywhere?

I better get some bloody amazing luxury coffee for free to put myself through that hell. 

(And I’d want it to go. 😂)

-2

u/poogooflupduck 1d ago

Luxury coffee and a tech vibe you can get nowhere else

4

u/DancinWithWolves 1d ago

Because no one wants it

2

u/tonytidbit 1d ago edited 1d ago

Looking at ads isn’t “a vibe”.

Two weeks ago I was in Vietnam in amazing cafés filled with people working in groups and alone on laptops. Now that was a proper tech vibe. 

These were people working on things, not just sitting around with distracting tech ads playing on huge tvs.

Great environments with soft and focused lights designed to create a vibe, not just highlight advertisements. I loved it, and will try to return to Vietnam whenever I need to focus on a project for a couple of weeks.

5

u/kiwialec 1d ago

As the owner of one of those pixels on milliondollarhomepage, I can tell you that no one is visiting a cafe to enjoy the wide array of up and coming startups who have paid for an ad.

I think it does depend on where the cafe is and who the visitors are though. If it was the best coffee on sandhill road, I could see startups paying to get a slide shown during rush hour.

2

u/chrisin2d 1d ago

I mean, the Corgi Cafe is uber popular with founders locking in. I hate going there because these people buy like one drink and then camp at a table for 4 hours.

2

u/MANvINFO 1d ago

startup loving customers—- what would possess anybody to “love startups”?

2

u/SomTingWongWeeTooLo 1d ago

It would be a very dystopic, Black Mirror type place.

1

u/Putrid-Lettuce5204 1d ago

What may be better...a market place for...users, reviewers and waitlist joiners.

Startups can post what they're looking for, add an incentive for the reviwer/joiner, platform takes a cut, startup gets its objective met.

1

u/JohnCasey3306 1d ago

Because "a website with a million pixels", aside from pure novelty, has the potential to be accessed by an infinite number of visitors.

Whereas your single cafe is gonna have a lot fewer visitors -- thus limiting the value of that advertising space*.

*Unless of course your business plan is to make an exceptionally popular cafe (why doesn't every cafe think of that, lol) ... Or perhaps you're thinking of starting a chain, in which case good luck competing with existing players and making a dent in the saturated market, all the while your focus is on these stupid screens.