For the second night of their Founder Stories series, 1871 brought in Chuck Templeton, founder of real-time restaurant reservation service OpenTable. Last night, Templeton shared his inspirations, experience working with a two sided network, fundraising tips and future plans with the audience of more than 300 people.
The biggest news of the night, from the Sillicon-Valley based entrepreneur, was that his newest project, Impact Engine—a 12-week social venture accelerator that provides funding, resources and support to social entrepreneurs—will be hosted out of 1871.
Templeton kicked off the night by explaining his initial inspiration for OpenTable: it was 1998 and he had just spent three-and-a-half hours watching his wife calling restaurants, getting voicemails and leaving messages. His in-laws were coming into town (with a father-in-law who happened to be a co-founder of Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises, a group of approximately 70 restaurants founded in Chicago) so the pressure was on.
Read more about Founder Stories and how OpenTable got its start at Doejo.com/blog
