It’s a common problem; you want to book a great group rate, or a once in a lifetime experience for you and your friends, but none of them can join, so you have to skip out on the fun. At Let’s Dutch, we want to solve this problem and bring more people together to share experiences.

The idea was born in 2014 after Vincent failed to get a group of friends together to book bottle service at a club. The $1500 cost was out of reach for two people, but the table accommodated ten and would be $150 per person if he had enough people to book it with. Vincent teamed up with Debora McCleary, long time friend and bike mate to figure out how to make the idea a reality and get it off the ground.

They spent the next year working with the incredible designer Mike Sullivan and development team Zenwerks on building version 1. In its first year the site had over 30,000 unique visitors and they began “going dutch” to concerts, the ballet, group dinners and sporting events. The team took all of the data collected from that year and began making improvements to the site and user experience. They launched V2 in the Spring of 2017. Both Vincent and Deb are extremely excited to help bring people together and make it easy for them to share experiences.

Meet the Founders

Vincent Paradiso, former dancer with The New York City Ballet, has always enjoyed trying new things with his friends. After retiring from the ballet it became harder to get together with them because of conflicting schedules. After skipping out on countless fun experiences, Vincent sought out a way to create a marketplace where people of similar interests can group together, get to know one another, and securely pool their money together to make anything more within reach.

Debora McCleary

Debora McCleary co-founded the Debb Report in 2012, a directory of the best beauty experts, destinations and organic skincare in New York City.