December 21, 2010
Textaurant awarded $10k from West Coast investor McClure
Restaurant mobile app startup Textaurant LLC is among the first three winners of investments worth $10,000 each from a fund run by West Coast super angel Dave McClure.
Founded in 2009, Textaurant is like OpenTable for restaurants that don’t take reservations. The Boston startup’s service provides a digital waiting list that sends diners a text message when their table is ready. End users can put their name into a restaurant waiting list via their mobile phone. After the meal, the restaurant can follow up with special offers, loyalty programs or customer satisfaction surveys.
Textaurant had been seeking an angel investment in the amount of $50,000 to $100,000, and presented at Open Angel Forum Boston in June. However, the company has put that on hold while it builds its customer base, said founder Josh Bob. “One of the three biggest mistakes I made with this company was seeking funding before we should have done so,” Bob said.
So far, Textaurant has signed deals with two regional chains and one Martha’s Vineyard restaurant, he said, and is focusing on winning more small to midsize chains with between three and 100 locations.
The prizes are the first from a $250,000 micro-fund set aside by McClure for startups that use Twilio, a software platform that lets developers place phone calls and SMS text messages from a web interface. The deals are structured as convertible notes worth one-percent of each company’s value. The other two winners among the first three were Seattle startup OrderMapper and San Francisco startup Voicendo.
Mass High Tech profiled Textaurant in 2009.
News of the winners was first reported on TechCrunch.