Fresh off winning Bloomberg Businessweek’s vote for one of the country’s most promising start-ups, SinglePlatform just announced it raised $3.25 million in Series A round led by DFJ Gotham. New investor New World Ventures also jumped on board, as did existing backers like First Round Capital and RRE Ventures, responsible for the $1.2 million seed round raised last September.
SinglePlatform solves a problem so simple, we’re surprised no one’s mastered it already. Despite the fact that 89 percent of consumers look up a restaurant online before they eat there, very few restaurants have up-to-date websites. Founder & CEO Wiley Cerilli should know, he spent 10 years running sales for Seamless (now without the -web). With SinglePlatform, local businesses can publish their menu, special, events, and photos across a network of 11,000 mobile apps, and destination sites including 34,000 hotels, 620 universities, and, recently, Foodspotting.
In a press release, DFJ Gotham principal Thatcher Bell,who also sites on SinglePlatform’s board, hints that the start-up will make the obvious choice of expanding beyond its core base in restaurants, “Local businesses represent an enormous potential customer base and restaurants are the most sought after targets in this category. SinglePlatform has found a way to capture this market with a product that meets the needs of restaurants and other local businesses alike.”
Maybe now Mr. Cerilli can afford to upgrade from “business shabby.”
