More Info
Take a SeatThe company: Get SeatedFounded: 2014Founder: Andrew Byrum, 24The Team: Andrew Byrum, president; Macy O’Neal, vice president; Matthew Price, lead developerAbout the Company: Get Seated is the name of the company’s product, a phone application that updates people on wait time at eateries. It uses Estimote Beacons, wireless sensors that can keep track of people for up to 300 feet, keeping tabs when crowds swell or die down. Get Seated’s technology has a one-time installation fee of $100 to $150 (depending on number of sensors) and a monthly subscription fee of $70 to $100. There are no contracts.The Pitch: Byrum plans to launch this fall with 35 Chattanooga restaurants in his system. Each eatery will get a free two-month trial. The company will spend an estimated $10,000 to get started in the city. After that, Byrum will seek about $200,000, mainly to pay for a patent and expand technology to other cities, beginning in the Southeast. (The company currently has a provisional patent.) He has invested $3,500 of his own money in the venture.Contact: andrew@getseated.org. Twitter @getseated. www.facebook.com/getseatedapp
A hungry belly got Andrew Byrum going on his startup, Get Seated.
“My friends and I wanted a place to eat, and everywhere we went there was a wait,” says Byrum, 24. “Several other occurrences happened over the next few weeks where I would find myself saying, ‘Why is there not an app that lists restaurant wait times? That would save a lot of frustration!’ “
That was in 2014, when he also was pursuing an entrepreneurship major at University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, from which he graduated this year. The program helped him hone his concept for the company, and The Company Lab’s spring accelerator helped him refine it.
Get Seated, which updates patrons on wait times at restaurants, is a phone application Byrum plans to launch to the public locally this fall. A July beta launch revealed a few bugs that are now being tweaked.