Inside GuestList Atlanta: The story behind the pop-up parties drawing Atlanta's millennials

Pass the Smith brother sniff test (via the application-initiated digital audit), and you'll start receiving invitations to all of GuestList Atlanta's future events and promotions.

Just don't use the word "promotion" in front of Fred Smith, the Harvard-MBA holding,  Flywheel instructing co-founder who drives the GuestList Atlanta brand and the digital strategy bolstering its growth and reputation.

"Simply put, we're not promoters," said Smith. "We see GuestList as an events-driven social club, and the experiences we curate are long in planning and thought... We scout unique locations outside of the club world and the team behind GuestList is larger than most nightclub marketing efforts."

It may be that the Smith brothers were born to run point on capitalization efforts at this intersection of luxury hospitality and savvy networking. Their father runs a hospitality company in the Caribbean, and they saw early in life what the industry looks like.

In addition to that lineage of entrepreneurship, Fred Smith gleaned from his experience working at global management consulting titan Bain & Company, where a long day ended with very smart people chatting over drinks at whatever trending bar various thriving city center.

That educational and professional background is perhaps antithetical to the wide-open nature of club and party promotions.

For Smith, it's not about packing thousands into a room while the speakers blare the announcement of "DJ Khaled!" over dance track remixes. That world, to Smith, represents a culture a bit less sophisticated than the one he's building; no matter how amazing Khaled's Instagram feed can be.

Smith is instead investing his efforts (and finances) wisely in the "private, curated experience" model made famous by the unmarked speakeasies and pop-up parties that dot New York's trending Lower East Side, Upper West Side, Greenwich Village and Chelsea districts.

"The average age of a GuestList Atlanta member is probably 27 or 28... Our host sites and vendors like that our guests are demographically the same people to whom they want to market. Nowadays, they approach us because of the quality of our membership," Smith said.

"Going out sucks"

There are generational culture shifts bolstering GuestList's relevance in modern Atlanta culture, too. Fewer millennials frequent nightclubs—according to a host of studies and media reports. The generation having discovered that 'going out sucks' —and those same would-be clubgoers instead look for experiences that represent their aspirations and world-view. Who needs crowded night clubs when you can get the same endgame from a couple bottles of Napa Cabernet, a half hour on Tinder, and the sealing of a Netflix and Chill date? Who orders bottle service running into the thousands of dollars just for the right to sit at a table, when the same investment of time (and none of the cash) could be spent hitting some indie-cultural event with friends before snagging a rooftop beer or two?

And so, GuestList is Atlanta's answer to the downshifting club trends; an exclusive entertainment group feeding the upper third of millennial culture in Atlanta with occasional, memorable events built to stand out among the young and savvy. Getting to know a pre-vetted network of smart, successful young ATLiens who are by-and-large worth knowing over a few drinks? Sure, that's worth pausing WestWorld over. Doing so at a private, invite-only event curated to impress you? Even more so.

The Smith brothers are onto something.

"It takes a more structured and thoughtful approach to building experiences that will surprise and delight our membership," Smith said. "We're only creating these experiences three to four times a year [excluding those monthly events for GuestList One members]. We want the memory of one event to last until the next... The future of GuestList is to create a well-defined community for a broader sample of Atlantans like that."

That long view vision for a defined network of top-flight young Atlantans coalescing as a unified community around quarterly GuestList events (and, hint hint, more frequent and stationary touch points down the road) might just be the long-term future of socialization in Atlanta; the millennial version of Buckhead Club or Commerce Club.

"We want it to be the upscale holiday party young Atlanta looks forward to. On the surface we do parties, but one of higher objectives we work on is mobilizing people for good causes. People -- especially younger folks -- have a hunger to give back where they can, to see and be seen while still taking part in things that matter."

To that end, the Black and White Ball will benefit charity partner She is Safe — a Roswell-based charity that "works to prevent, rescue and restore women and girls from abuse and slavery in high risk places around the world." Smith hopes that in partnering, the local visibility will bolster engagement among motivated young Atlantans. All proceeds from the Black and White Ball go directly to the charity, as well as 100 percent of silent auction and cash donations from the event.