If you were to come to San Francisco to visit me, I would ask a very simple question; do you want to go to the best Italian restaurant in town or do you want to have a great experience? What would you say? 

Now, if you didn’t know me but wanted to get the same good advice where would you go? Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor? Let’s take them on, one at a time. Trip Advisor is a travel app; reviews are from travelers not locals. Google is a sales platform. Yelp, simply put, is comprised of reviews people don’t trust, and restaurants especially don’t trust Yelp.

With Carizma, it is our intent to change how we go about discovering places to go. We are seeking experiences and not just the best food in town, and doing it in a way so you can trust the information. For you not knowing me, you could use the virtual concierge feature and view my map of recommendations!

Carizma has raised $300k in pre-seed investment and an additional $200k personal investment bringing the total $500k. Investors include Nicole Lazzaro, world-renowned speaker and game developer/designer expert, and Chris Larsen, founder of Ripple, Eloan and Prosper. 

Carizma is a restaurant experience discovery platform and a hospitality advertising platform. We provide an innovative means to put the trust back into the “trusted review site”.

It started with frustration, frustration in that I was unable to find a city guide that provides the information on a place that actually mattered to me. Information such as dress code, vibe, and popularity were nowhere to be found. Then, I learned how restaurants distrust the big guys in this space. They spoke about “ being shaken down”, or not trusting the reviews. They felt stuck with few places to promote their business. No one was addressing their problems, so I thought I would step up and help. 

What is our secret sauce? We talked to hundreds of businesses and thousands of people to learn their pain points. 

We don’t use stars. Using social psychology, we developed the vibe set that measures the metrics people want to know about most. Customer sentiment is done with our industry first. Serview collects the feedback the customer wants to share and the restaurants want to know, to ultimately optimize the guest experience.  

From a restaurant’s perspective, Reserve is more cost-effective, allows them to have more control over their dining room and incorporates industry feedback to make sure we are addressing the real problems and issues faced by restaurants today.

The Digital Media advertising market. With $4 billion spent alone in the quick-service restaurant sector and 13% in mobile (or $500 million)

SaaS and Advertising. There will be a base subscription fee with leveling up for more features. There is also the advertising model to give hospitality a trustworthy place to advertise and promote.

We look for investors who have common interests and care deeply about the problems we are trying to solve in the hospitality space.

Time, finding the time to run a company and raise money are two full time jobs with one person doing it. 

Timing, Tech, and Team. All that matters, but in the end, it is about results and traction.

Wow 6 months! Our plans are to continue to expand, bringing on more restaurants in each market. We need to get the word out about the app, and the more eyeballs that see Carizma the more butts we get in seats. We plan to have 1000 active users in three cities and 100 restaurants actively signed up.

Money is the life blood of running a company, without funds you run out of runway quick. Get your product done, get it validated, and show the community that they can get great value, is trading their dollars for your product.

Now? Raise the necessary funding to have runway to continue growing, expand into the next target city, promote our message so more restaurants can benefit, and as for users, continue to attract more users and provide the engaging experience they seek.