

500 Startups Announces First Winners Of Its $250K Twilio Micro-Fund - danielle17
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/21/500-startups-announces-first-winners-of-its-250k-twilio-micro-fund/

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ben1040
Hoping Textaurant takes off.

I was at a restaurant last night where they gave me one of those awful pagers.
Not only did it vibrate though, it also repeatedly shouted at me, "Your table
is ready." It was disruptive and surely annoyed the other patrons while we
settled up at the restaurant's bar and made our way down to the host stand.

It made me really wish I could just get a discreet SMS telling me to take my
table.

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patio11
I was debating doing this over AR. The value prop to the restaurant is
incredible: no $2k upfront investment, no ongoing theft or breakage of
expensive pager devices, demonstrable revenue boost, and if you're clever you
can get people to sign up for SMS marketing.

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ben1040
It also makes me wonder why OpenTable hasn't tried this already as an upsell
to their existing restaurant clients, since I'm sure they still deal with
walk-ins and are looking for something classier than a vibrating/talking drink
coaster. The advantage to the restaurant there is that then it'd be already
integrated into their table inventory tool.

OpenTable has the advantage too of already having lots of their customers'
phone numbers on file, which opens the door to some interesting
matching/analytics opportunities.

Restaurant A might want to know, for example, that many of the same customers
who walk in to their restaurant make reservations at B & C instead -- perhaps
A might want to make changes so that people plan ahead to eat there rather
than just walk in.

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danielle17
I work at Twilio on Twilio Fund, and want to make sure everyone knows we're
still accepting submissions through the end of the year at Twiliofund.com. If
you were one of the companies that submitted and was not announced today, you
are still under consideration.

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textaurant
Thanks all for the comments. I'd be more than happy to answer any questions
about Textaurant that you might have. Feel free to email me at josh (at)
textaurant (dot) com, or drop us a line on our own blog!

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vchien
Love all three!!

