Loco for Locu; Cambridge Startup to Launch Online Menu Service, Receives Funding From Some of the Biggest Names in Tech

Facebook co-founder Andrew McCollum, HubSpot co-founder Dharmesh Shah and Twitter’s VP of Engineering, Michael Abbott, are just a few of the angel investors who helped pile $623,000 in funding on to the plate of Cambridge-based startup, Locu, Inc.

Founded by a team of computer scientists and MIT graduates, Locu promises to be the world’s largest “semantically-annotated repository of real-time small-business data.” Let me help you translate: the startup has developed technology that can scan and digitize documents — regardless of format — so that you can edit those documents online, in real-time, whenever you want. Locu’s patent-pending technology improves upon prior technologies by incorporating classification layers that mimic the way humans recognize patterns.

“So what could this technology be used for?” you might be wondering. Locu’s flagship product, the online menu service, MenuPlatform, offers an innovative example.

As Locu Co-Founder and CEO, Rene Reinsberg, told me in a recent interview, MenuPlatform will allow restaurants to automatically import their menus to the Web without having to retype all of their menu items. In addition, MenuPlatform will make it easy for restaurants to update their menus on their websites, Facebook and on other websites throughout the Web.

“We have shown the prototype to some Boston restaurants and the feedback we have received has been very positive,” Reinsberg told me. “Our focus is on the small, family-owned restaurants or smaller restaurants groups. We are also planning to release a solution for chain restaurants with a slightly different feature set in the future.”

MenuPlatform will launch officially this fall. In the meantime, Locu will be using its latest round of funding to “continue development of technology and products” and to “hire top talent to help use achieve our ambitious goals,” said Reinsberg.

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Posted by erik devaney on Sep 8 2011. Filed under Featured - For home page featured article, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry