Last Night Out Cards: real-world party games built for getting out
Gerardo Davis is founder & creator of Last Night Out Cards, the company behind activity-driven party games like Last Night Out and the table game Shoulders. He also advises Levio, an Austria-based EdTech that converts classroom materials into a verified knowledge graph for adaptive learning. The story is worth reading because Gerardo uses AI to cut through operational noise and surface opportunities, while keeping creative design and legal compliance firmly human.
Apply AI to reduce signal-to-noise in operations – automating newsletter scans, leads and admin – so founders can focus on unit economics, distribution and product quality. Do not bolt AI onto your product as a marketing gimmick; keep creativity and legal oversight in human hands.
What’s the quick origin story of your business, and what makes what you do genuinely different from the other options your customers are looking at?
I work as a Business owner as well as an advisor to other businesses.
My business, Last Night Out Cards, grew out of a long-standing tradition with a group of my high school friends. We were constantly inventing games and challenges to make regular nights out and trips more competitive. What makes this game different is that we make games for people who actually want to get away from the table and get out while playing a game. Last Night Out is played out in the real world by completing a variety of unique challenges and win points, sometimes with the help of strangers. On the other hand Shoulders is a zero-setup, rule-making memory game for social gatherings that can actually be played at a table. Together, they own both halves of a social night under one brand.
I also support tech-focused startups as a strategic advisor on privacy and data regulation. Currently, I support Levio – an Austria-based startup building an AI powered learning assistant. The platform was built because the team experienced firsthand how easily learners get lost in traditional, rigid instruction—where one pace is forced on a whole classroom. What makes Levio different isn’t just throwing an AI chatbot at students. It’s an adaptive learning coach grounded in actual pedagogy and self-determination theory. We work directly with a school’s existing materials—turning static PDFs into a verified knowledge graph—so the curriculum stays controlled by the instructor while the learning path dynamically adapts to each student’s pace and stress levels.
Where does most of your new business come from today, and where do you wish it came from?
Today, on the game side, most of our sales come directly through Amazon search, especially around peak bachelorette and holiday gifting seasons. On the EdTech side, it’s driven by institutional outreach, educational partnerships, and grant/fellowship networks across Europe. Where do I wish it came from? For Last Night Out Cards, I want our organic content and user-generated video flywheel to carry more of the load so we aren’t as reliant on Amazon ad spend. For Levio, I’d love to see more direct inbound demand from corporate learning & development programs and educators or administrators who have seen the platform in action at another school and want it deployed in theirs.
What’s one thing you’ve actually handed over to AI in the last year, and one thing you tried it on and went back to doing the human way?
What we actually handed over: Searching through the absolute noise of daily newsletters, industry alerts, and incoming emails. Running two businesses across tabletop gaming and European EdTech means an endless stream of updates, grant listings, wholesale leads, and market news. We use AI tools to parse those incoming feeds, pull out specific opportunities, and flag what actually matters for each business so we can act on it fast.
What went back to humans: Strategic positioning, legal nuance, and authentic content creation. As CLO at Alimax, legal compliance under frameworks like the EU AI Act requires precise human oversight. And on the card game side, while AI can generate generic challenge ideas, it completely lacks the genuine humor, nuance, and spark that make a party game actually fun to play with friends. The human touch stays in the creative and compliance seats.
Have you noticed a change in how customers find you or what they already know before they reach out? Is anyone arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT yet?
Customers are definitely arriving more educated. On the EdTech side, administrators and tutors are no longer asking if AI can assist in the classroom—they’re asking specifically about GDPR compliance, EU cloud hosting, and data privacy. They know what they want and they’re vetting tools deeply before reaching out.
On whether people are arriving through AI assistants like ChatGPT: Absolutely, it’s starting to happen. People are asking conversational models for ‘the best non-drinking party games for a bachelorette trip’ or ‘pedagogically backed AI tutoring platforms in Europe,’ and we’re seeing those discovery paths lead directly to our brand names.
If you were advising someone in your industry on all of this for the next 12 months, what would you tell them to actually do, and what would you tell them to ignore?
What to actually do: Use AI to streamline your operational overhead and signal-to-noise ratio—like content summarization, administrative workflows, and intent monitoring—so your time is freed up for high-leverage work. Focus relentlessly on real unit economics, distribution channels, and genuine customer experience. What to ignore: Ignore the urge to slap AI onto a product just as a marketing gimmick if it doesn’t solve a core problem, and ignore the complex, expensive agency retainers or bloated tech stacks. Keep your operations lean, let AI handle the heavy lifting on research and admin, and keep your human energy focused on product quality and real-world relationships.
If you have any other questions please let me know!
Thank you to Gerardo Davis and the team at Last Night Out Cards LLC for sharing what actually worked with Leaders Perception readers.
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