Mike Weinberg of Nightscape: Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup

… Being humble. You can very quickly get swept up in raising money, having ideas, talking to investors, getting an attitude, and thinking you know everything. Everyone has a moment where you think you know so much more and know everything right now. And then two years later you realize you knew nothing. Recognizing that you don’t know anything and asking people for help and being willing to listen and admit that you don’t know everything is crucial. That’s been a big success of mine. I’m always willing to let other people tell me their thoughts and being open to listening and learning…

Startups have such a glamorous reputation. Companies like Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Uber, and Airbnb once started as scrappy startups with huge dreams and huge obstacles.

Yet we of course know that most startups don’t end up as success stories. What does a founder or a founding team need to know to create a highly successful startup?

In this series, called “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup” we are talking to experienced and successful founders and business leaders who can share stories from their experience about what it takes to create a highly successful startup, I had the pleasure of interviewing Mike Weinberg.

A life-long entrepreneur, Mike Weinberg’s wide-ranging background includes experience in audio/video production, event promotion, marketing/branding, concert touring, and more. Mike ran his own lighting, DJing, and production company for several years in his hometown, Los Angeles, before heading off to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. After graduating, Mike joined the music touring department at Creative Artists Agency in Nashville. In November 2018, after more than 3.5 years at the company, Mike conceived of Nightscape and decided to forgo a promotion to work full time on launching the concept. Mike is also a licensed real estate broker. He co-launched the boutique commercial real estate firm, Ojas Partners, in 2020 and serves as Strategy Director.

Thank you so much for joining us in this interview series! Before we dive in, our readers would love to “get to know you” a bit better. Can you tell us a bit about your ‘backstory’ and how you got started?

There have been very different iterations of my life that have all focused on entertainment and creating things for others with a desire to make people feel a certain way. I’ve always wanted to increase people’s enjoyment in whatever I’m doing which took several iterations from my acting career as a kid from when I was six to fourteen. Rather than watch movies or TV shows, that was my first experience of entertainment, creating things for other people.

This mindset later changed when I started my own lighting and DJ business throughout high school and into college. I recognized that lighting provided an opportunity for me to add to the experience everyone was used to having. This was a big moment for me to realize that there’s more than what you just see in front of you and there can be other ways of approaching things. This followed me to college where I started a movement to create a new song for my school which then included a documentary and a music video and other things around it with the idea of galvanizing the student body and the alumni base to make you feel even more incorporated into the school. I then began working in a talent agency and on music tours learning how that core part of the business functions and how people related to each other in entertainment and music specifically.

Through these experiences, I recognized that I love creating for people, and I love to disrupt the status quo. I learned a corporate environment wasn’t where I would be able to do this best and needed to leap into my own world and trying it out myself was the most important thing.

I’ve had a lot of good ideas over the years, but I’m usually on the money in terms of timing. The idea for what we’re doing now was the first idea where I knew immediately that we were way ahead of our time. This is when I knew it was the one, I needed to jump fully into.

What was the “Aha Moment” that led to the idea for your current company? Can you share that story with us?

There are a few moments that stand out to me along the timeline of my teenage years, growing up in Los Angeles, and going to movies every weekend with my friends. This was the first time I remember thinking, “Why aren’t there more things to do? Why aren’t we doing more things? Why do we do the same thing every weekend?” An idea was instilled in me along the lines of places being very similar to each other, and I wanted to create something different. I felt like there should be more things that are different, which is what created the framework and mindset I had for a long time.

When I first moved to Nashville after college, my initial idea sparked — to create a space that was modular in the sense where the programming was always different with multiple parts of a modular space changing and all physically modular, everything and that the programming during the morning moving to midday night and depending on weekday or weekend could be different in the placements almost shapeshift to be different things. That was something I got really excited about, and it was a really good idea. But I was so busy with work, I ended up tabling it.

It wasn’t until an “aha” moment on my birthday when I was with two of the closest people in my life at the time and had moved into a house where I wanted a space to curate and create to feel like it was an extension of my brain what I do. Part of that was creating a mini-movie theater-type experience where we had a big projector, surround sound, comfortable seating, with scents of the candles, and overall making it feel like you’re really in this lovely space you actually want to be in, and you want to spend time with people in.

On Earth Day of the same year, a group of us were sitting watching shows about nature and the Earth, and it was this moment where I was staring at the show and thinking to myself, this experience I’m having with the closest people in my life is an experience I want to have on a larger stage. And it was the moment where something clicked and I recognized that the concept in combination with the idea of physical modular space was something, but I didn’t quite have the full idea yet. I knew there was something in it that needed to be talked about and I then told my friends I needed to tell them all about this idea I had. It was at that moment that we started working on it.

About two months later I was having another conversation where the idea of projection mapping came up almost completely independently, and it was the exact moment where I knew, the second I recognized projection mapping could connect with a physical modular idea. That was the moment when I knew the concept was born, and I knew I was going to do everything I could to make this happen.

Was there somebody in your life who inspired or helped you to start your journey with your business? Can you share a story with us?

2007 was the most instrumental year in my life for a number of reasons. There are a number of things that happened during that year and a number of things that connected a bunch of dots for me. My favorite band was Muse and I saw them live which was a moment from a fan perspective where I was first able to experience the passion people have for something in an entertainment sort of way and it knocked this first wall down for me where I felt connected to something on a larger level. This was a big moment for me but didn’t even compare to the even bigger moments that came three months later when I saw Daft Punk live. This was truly the most important thing to happen in my life because I realized while people sometimes focused on the music, the entertainer or the lights, or whatever aspect of any kind of show that is put on, Daft Punk completely changed what was possible. The tour Daft Punk did, being in front of it and being young, standing there, and always loving lighting and being interested in all of it, watching it all happen, just made me realize that what people thought was possible, could be completely outdone just by someone taking a leap and thinking about it differently. It had such a strong impact on me, one because the visual and the audio were things I loved so much, but it was also the moment of realization that there was more out there people hadn’t seen that could be created. This was elevated by another event that happened right before the Daft Punk concert, and it’s a completely different thing. It was the release of the first iPhone.

This was also in the summer of 2007. The idea of the unique keyboard and Steve Jobs and Apple saying keyboards aren’t needed on phones anymore, and how it completely changed the trajectory of the world, in almost every way. You think about those different things and the fundamental underlying connection to something bigger and being able to connect dots and feel related to something combined with the idea that what you see does not have to be the way it is, and it can be something greater.

Those two feelings of intersecting with the feeling of the crowd, and the feeling of being at events you love, and the idea that I can bring that passion into something you don’t know or haven’t seen and can almost disrupt something because of that. When those things connected that was probably the moment in my life when I knew I wanted to do something different, and I think that’s what set me on this path.

What do you think makes your company stand out? Can you share a story?

This idea was developed almost four years ago, and about three and a half years ago was when it really started to take shape. This is before the Van Gogh exhibit was touring, this is before most places had any kind of projection mapping, there were a couple of places in Europe, a couple of places in Asia, one or two in the US that were doing some version of a projection mapping and whatnot, but now, it’s become complex now since people know what it is and how it’s used. But the key to what we’re doing, the key to our company’s success is that the projection mapping aspect isn’t where we started. It wasn’t us wanting to create a projection map space. It was the opposite — projection mapping is a catalyst. It is an answer, it’s a solution to creating a modular experience, to be able to create something different repeatedly. It’s a huge piece of it, there’s no question about it. But I really want to start by creating something that disrupted what people thought of space and could experience, which has grown tremendously into different verticals we didn’t anticipate earlier.

Understanding that while people look to create something and copy just so something succeeds, what we look to do differently is to start from a completely different place and use the place to think differently than how other people are. We’re not afraid to try something that may be different, and no matter what, we’re not going to stoop down and just copy something else and think of the same thing as someone else. This stems from everything even from how we create the content, how we project it, how people experience it, what the layouts are like, what the experiences look like, every aspect of it, we want to think, what is the best way to do this? Not how is it done before? The idea of ingenuity and intentionality from every aspect of what we do makes it very challenging because it’s easy to default to what other people have done. Our desire to break that status quo, break that mold, create something new, and not be afraid to use different things and think outside the box to achieve it is what separates us from everyone else.

How have you used your success to bring goodness to the world?

In two very different ways. The first way is at the end of the day, what we’re trying to do is excite people and entertain, and make them feel special and unique, and like they’re enjoying an experience they wouldn’t have gotten elsewhere. That’s really what we want to do. Whether it’s a client we’re working with on a private experience or an activation somewhere for a brand, or whether it’s working with hundreds of people coming, experiencing something we’ve developed, we want people to be wowed, we want people to feel excited, we want people to feel like they’re a part of something bigger and unique and are experiencing something that changes their mindset of what’s possible. That moment of elation, the moment where people forget about what else is going on in their lives, the moment where they are truly just enjoying what is happening around them or experiencing something that adds a little bit more joy to their life, bringing joy to people, that’s a huge part of what we do. Ultimately, that’s the end game. We want people to enjoy themselves when they’re experiencing anything we do wherever it might be.

On the flip side, is when I started this business several years ago the end goal was creating what we’re doing. But what I didn’t know at the time and what I’ve learned as I’ve gone long is that there are so many other pieces of this you don’t realize. You don’t realize what it takes to run a team and a company and there are so many aspects. The most fulfilling part of this entire experience is not just what I’m getting to achieve, but what the people around me, my team, people I’ve known for years, people I love and care about being able to join me on this journey and go after what their dreams are and giving them a platform to achieve those dreams. Everyone from someone who’s doing events and developing those specifically to doing the sponsorships or business development or marketing or whatever it might be people get you to create what they want to do and develop what they want to create. This has given them a platform and even to the content developers themselves, being able to give people a chance to showcase what they can do. I never realized this until I got as far into it as I am now and the two-part of how you engage and excite people that are on the external side of the company and that are experiencing what we’re doing and the people that can create deliver those experiences. It’s an exciting feeling that I knew what I would be doing and was the goal from the beginning and then what came out of it that I didn’t expect I think those two things are really awesome.

You are a successful business leader. Which three character traits do you think were most instrumental to your success? Can you please share a story or example for each?

1. Perseverance, with the idea that no matter what happens, staying the course, staying focused, and moving forward. The story behind perseverance is, there have been several times where we have almost been knocked down by COVID. But then we used COVID pivot and now we have a business that is potentially exponentially bigger and better in every way, because of the things that were thrown at us. The ability to pivot and find the silver lining in everything, and no matter what, persevere and be determined to get to the other side, no matter what it takes, is hugely important to me. That is the only reason why I’m even here today — if I didn’t have this trait, I would have given up three years ago.
2. I am passionate and inspired and I bring 100% belief in everything I do. This passion has driven people to want to be a part of what I’m doing because they know if I’m this excited about it, other people will also be as excited about it and motivated to also achieve the same goals.
3. I am empathetic and really focused on relationships and people, and having that understanding is the most important thing — without other people, you can’t achieve anything. You can put those three things together; of being passionate, being determined to persevere no matter what, and being able to connect those things with other people, that’s how you cultivate a team and mentality of people who want to achieve something together. The underlying connection of this is that I truly try and bring authenticity to everything I do from the moment I wake up to the moment I go to sleep. I want other people to believe that I am being me in every aspect, and I believe those three qualities really pick up that authenticity.

Often leaders are asked to share the best advice they received. But let’s reverse the question. Can you share a story about advice you’ve received that you now wish you never followed?

I have a good gut on things generally, and I’m very good at taking advice and dissecting it to decide what to take and what not to take from it. But there have been times where I’ve trusted someone and others told me that they trust somebody, and it’s a good thing to have and a good problem to have. I sometimes need to be a little more vigilant as sometimes I’ve taken advice and sort of just gone blind with it without doing my own research and digging and that’s something important, I need to be a little bit more vigilant about at times, and not just take blindly what other people say.

Can you tell us a story about the hard times that you faced when you first started your journey?

One of the very early hardships I had along this journey was when I first decided I was going to leave my job to start this company. I had been at the job for a few years and worked my way up the ladder and was about to get promoted. The nature of the company is just very close-knit, so the risk of taking this leap after spending years building my relationships and building my rapport there to have to take this leap of faith and see what would happen was very scary and was difficult. The hardest part was knowing you had the right idea, but then telling some of my best friends I was going to take this leap, but I couldn’t tell them the specifics because it was so secretive. Actually then taking the leap and realizing I had been sort of working myself into the ground for so long and how hard it was to stand back up on my feet and figure out how to do this on my own, after being an assistant for so long and having to figure this out from start to finish. That whole stretch of time was much more difficult than I thought and showed me gave me my first glimpse of how hard things were going to get, and I didn’t realize it yet.

Where did you get the drive to continue even though things were so hard? What strategies or techniques did you use to help overcome those challenges?

I surrounded myself with people that gave me the courage and the belief that I could do what I put my mind to. When there were moments that I broke down, crying not knowing what to do, moments where I didn’t know how I could possibly overcome something, there were people who gave me a few lines of encouragement, a few thoughts to help me push myself, and believe that if I didn’t give up, I’d figure it out. That mentality is everything because on the worst days, all you want to do is quit and you ask yourself almost every day, “Why am I doing this?” But the idea that you just don’t stop doing it, that’s everything.

Additionally, it’s important to do everything you can to try and keep your mental health where it needs to be. For me, I’ve had ups and downs with anxiety around this and with extraordinarily difficult times, but I’ve always tried to bring it back to meditation or to bring it back to working out through the ups and downs.

Lastly, I didn’t really give myself a Plan B. There is no out. There’s no quitting. There’s no ability to give up. It can’t happen. When you give yourself no other option that’s all there is to it. I decided I believed in this more than anything I’ve ever believed in my life, and I would literally do anything in my power to make it happen no matter what it takes, no matter what I have to give up, and that has just been my baseline for everything.

The journey of an entrepreneur is never easy, and is filled with challenges, failures, setbacks, as well as joys, thrills and celebrations. Can you share a few ideas or stories from your experience about how to successfully ride the emotional highs & lows of being a founder”?

The greatest tool I’ve had throughout this journey is therapy and it is a stigma that needs to be broken as it is already breaking somewhat, but it’s something I talk about more than just about anything, and everybody on my team knows how much I love my therapist and I’m not afraid to share it consistently. The ability for someone to listen to you with no judgment other than trying to help you succeed is one of the greatest gifts you can have and too many people don’t realize it. That has been a huge asset of mine.

Another tool is advice I received from some of my advisors. Don’t try and ride the highs too high, and the lows too low. It’s much easier said than done, but when you really think about it and when you kind of bring yourself back to the question, “Why am I doing this?”, you realize when the really good things happen, you celebrate them but you recognize that the down is going to come and you have the understanding that once you get used to the roller coaster, it’s not ups and downs by days or weeks, it’s ups and downs by hours and sometimes minutes, I always remember and remind myself every time I’m not that low and the high is coming and it always comes back. Yes, there might be repeated lows, but the high will come back. The knowledge that it’s coming back keeps me grounded and keeps me from going off the rails in one direction or another.

The last thing I would say is gratitude. I consistently come back to gratitude and how being grateful for what I’m doing and the fact that I get a chance to do this. One of my mentors said to me it feels like you’re getting punched in the face, but at least you’re in the ring. How many people would give everything just to have a shot in the ring? Sometimes when I ride the high and the low, I think, “You know what, this is really difficult, but I have my shot and I’m getting my shot.” That keeps me focused, and if it was this easy if it was easy, everybody else would do it.

Let’s imagine that a young founder comes to you and asks for your advice about whether venture capital or bootstrapping is best for them? What would you advise them? Can you kindly share a few things a founder should look at to determine if fundraising or bootstrapping is the right choice?

It depends on the business because some businesses can handle more bootstrapping, and some need more funding. It completely depends on the business to start. However, it really is a double-edged sword, either way. If you bootstrap it, which is more in line with what I’m doing, it’s fundraising but bootstrapping, not venture, it allows you to retain control, it allows you to feel confident about what you’re doing, it allows you to bring your vision to life, while with investors, you’re still bringing a group of people along for the ride but you’re not being told what to do all the time. You are figuring it out for yourself, which is the greatest thing I could ask for it.

Venture capital. I have angel investors, so I don’t have venture capital. I sometimes ask myself, why didn’t I do go that direction, because I know other companies, I work with that have and they don’t have this continuous, cash concern. The freedom of money is really a luxury and something for certain companies 100% makes sense and for other companies, you could do it without it, but have to understand that it also comes with a different kind of restriction on bringing division to life. It completely changes what you’re able to do or not do. It isn’t necessarily one or the other that always makes sense. There’s a time and place for both and sometimes you wish you did one, but the other was better. Ultimately it comes down to what’s the most important thing for the specific company, and for my company, specifically, the vision and the ability to bring that vision to life, I think is the most paramount thing. With that, it needed to be more of a bootstrap fundraising, rather than having a ton of money but having a ton of strings attached. That’s been right for me, overall. It doesn’t mean at times I wish I went a different direction. But it really does come down to assessing your business and what you believe the Guiding Light is of the business and how you need to nurture that.

Ok super. Here is the main question of our interview. Many startups are not successful, and some are very successful. From your experience or perspective, what are the main factors that distinguish successful startups from unsuccessful ones? What are your “Five Things You Need To Create A Highly Successful Startup”? If you can, please share a story or an example for each.

1. Determination and perseverance. If you have any inkling that you might give up, you will fail. I think it was a Steve Jobs quote that says something along the lines of half the reason why startup founders succeed is by sheer determination — there’s nothing else other than they refuse to quit. A good friend and colleague once referred to me as a cockroach, because I just won’t die no matter what I do. COVID is an example here, I could have quit during COVID around five times, but I did not and kept raising and kept just figuring out months and months and years of slugging it out which was pure determination and not willing to fail.
2. Being humble. You can very quickly get swept up in raising money, having ideas, talking to investors, getting an attitude, and thinking you know everything when really you know, nothing. Everyone has a moment where at every juncture in your life, you think you know so much more and know everything right now. And then two years later you realize you knew nothing. Recognizing that you don’t know anything and asking people for help and being willing to listen and admit that you don’t know everything is crucial. That’s been a big success of mine. I’m always willing to let other people tell me their thoughts and I’m open to listening and learning and not saying I know everything because I really don’t by any means.
3. Stay true to your vision. There’s a lot of pressure to sometimes change do different things and I felt that, and I have adjusted my vision. However, I always try and come back to why ultimately, I’m doing this and use that process as my roadmap. I’ve gotten calls to new venture funding, and the way it was presented to me, there might have been a lot of money in it, but I didn’t feel like it was the right partner. There’s been a couple of times where I didn’t feel like it was the right investor, or the right opportunity. Sometimes it’s hard to say no, but you have to stay true to whatever it is because ultimately your integrity and your vision are everything in going after something that doesn’t exist or hasn’t existed before.
4. Building a great team. Trust is paramount, and you can’t do it yourself and it’s so important to have people that can work with you, respect you, understand what you’re trying to do, get the bigger vision, bring what they bring to it, and help guide the dream and help it come to fruition. It’s so important that everyone has the right mindset and is working towards the common goal and working with each other. It’s not about the ego and about your success individually, it’s about the team’s success and the team’s success becomes your own individual success. My team is close, and some people would knock the fact of how close everyone is and how close I am to them; however, I believe in what I’m doing, and this vision and this dream requires that. This approach might not be right for everybody, but it is right for me. There have been times where things have been hard, and people didn’t believe in me and believe in this as much as they do would have left and it would have all gone down but instead, we’re still here.
5. Honesty and transparency are so important. To be able to ask for help and to be unsure, to cry on someone’s shoulder, to tell them you’re not sure how you’re going to make it through, to tell them how alone you feel in this, and they’ll understand it, but they won’t know what it feels like, and that has been hard at times. But I think the fact that I’ve been able to call people and say I just need to hang out with you because I don’t want to be by myself right now because I got too lost in my own thoughts has been, at times, been what’s gotten me to the next step. Sometimes you don’t want to do it, there’s been a number of times where I wanted to cancel on plans and I really didn’t want to do something, but I knew if I just had to go and just do something and put yourself in the position to remove yourself from the never-ending thoughts is incredibly important in a time where you can get really lost in the fear of the whole endeavor.

What are the most common mistakes you have seen CEOs & founders make when they start a business? What can be done to avoid those errors?

Don’t overshoot on your financial projections, your pro forma. No matter what you think you’re wrong, and t can’t do anything about it. You can only do is do your best. I did a really good job of being thoughtful and articulate, but even I was ambitious and learned a lot from the process of building. People say hire slow fire fast, I would say hire with the belief that people are there for the long haul, and yes, they’re hired for a position, but I think it’s also hiring for the integrity of the person, and one bad apple can rot the whole pack. If you have a good apple that needs some work, that’s easier than a bad apple you can’t fix. Being thoughtful about how you hire and not hiring just for a resume is important.

Additionally, soak up as much knowledge as you can, from anyone you can ask, anyone you can talk to, anyone that will give you some thought. The best thing you can do is figure out how to discern what is good information from bad information, and the more information you intake, the better chance you’re going to get good information that’s going to help you get better. Then you have that skill you have to learn. But if you do that and you’re good at it, you’ll become very knowledgeable very fast. And if you don’t and you think you know everything you will fall on your face.

Startup founders often work extremely long hours and it’s easy to burn the candle at both ends. What would you recommend to founders about how to best take care of their physical and mental wellness when starting a company?

I would say therapy, obviously. Meditation is huge and breathwork is an amazing exercise. Breaks and anything that’s also a mental break. Some people would shame video game playing for example, but there were times when playing video games was the one thing that took my mind off everything and I was so engrossed in what I was doing, I forgot about all my other problems. Golf and sports you like playing, or anything that stimulates your brain where you have to think about the thing, you’re doing rather than your work. What you don’t realize is that at some point your brain is so fried, and even though you can get to keep going, if you don’t take a break you’re going to be out of gas.

You are a person of great influence. If you could start a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

Therapy. I think about the number of people and relationships I have where I’ve either seen people who have not been in therapy and if they had been, the way our relationship would have developed. I see people that did go into therapy and some of my relationships were exponentially better once we were both in therapy and able to work on it together and separately, but together. I would love to start the mental health awareness movement because so many times, and I know any founder that reads this will know what I mean, so many times everyone has the mindset of, “I’m sure you’re so excited and so happy and this is so great and look at this and all the things you do.” While the founder, in their minds, can’t think about anything other than the fear and misery and difficulty of those things and it’s so hard to compartmentalize everything, therapy is one of the best tools to be able to look at everything and to go to in a time of worry. Sometimes you have to acknowledge that things are going to be okay, and you have to understand how to understand them, and therapy is the key to that. It’s one of many tools but I would say if there’s a movement, it would be everyone in therapy, some kind of therapy.

We are blessed that some very prominent names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world, or in the US with whom you would love to have a private breakfast or lunch, and why? He or she might just see this if we tag them.

I would have breakfast with Derek Jeter. There are a few people that I think embody what Derek Jeter brings to the table, on every level of being a wonderful person being talented, being a hard-working person, caring about others, succeeding, being clutch, coming through for others, not being about himself, but being about the team.

There are few people I respect more in this world than Derek Jeter. So much so that I have a little locker in my house that I’ve had since I was five years old, and it used to say “Mikey Jeter” before it fell off. He’s a wonderful soul, and I have met him before, getting autographs and watching baseball games, but I would love just to be around him.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

You can find Nightscape on:

Facebook: /explorenightscape.com

Instagram: @explorenightscape

You can follow Mike Weinberg on:

Instagram: @mikeweinberg

This was very inspiring. Thank you so much for the time you spent with this. We wish you continued success and good health!