I'm very happy to announce today that my software startup Tripleseat has raised $500,000 in funding from Omaha-based venture firm Dundee Venture Capital.

Tripleseat is a web-based sales, lead generation and event planning service for restaurants which helps them to manage their "private dining" spaces. Restaurants often times rent out their facilities for events such as holiday parties, wedding rehearsal dinners, birthday parties and more. Tripleseat simplifies the planning of these events by providing event management, document generation, menu planning and more (see: Tripleseat Product Tour). Ultimately, Tripleseat helps restaurants increase revenue, save time, capture more inquires and streamline the planning process.

Screenshot of the Tripleseat Booking Calendar, taken from Tripleseat Product Tour.

Tripleseat started in 2008 as a joint-venture between Brightmix (based out of Omaha) and 20-year hospitality industry veteran Jonathan Morse (pictured left, current CEO, residing in Boston). The funding will allow Tripleseat to beef up its engineering team in Omaha and scale sales and marketing operations in Boston and around the country.

Given the fact that Tripleseat is based out of both Boston and Omaha, it brings me great joy to see this type of funding activity take place here on the Silicon Prairie. One of the major hurdles for companies in this region is access to capital, and our hope in building the Silicon Prairie News community was to provide greater access and transparency of both investors and entrepreneurs. I was introduced to Dundee VC founder Mark Hasebroock through my involvement with Silicon Prairie News, and our hope is that we can foster more introductions and connections such as these with the work we do every day.

This is also the first company that Dundee VC has invested in (see Dundee VC Blog: Investment in TripleSeat.com) and we're excited and honored to be in that position. Silicon Prairie News covered the launch of Dundee VC just a few short weeks ago (see: Dundee Venture Capital opens with $2M fund), and they're already starting to make waves.

Read more about Tripleseat in a TechCrunch post published today: Tripleseat: Building the Next OpenTable Outside the Valley System.

Note: Because of this investment and my relationship with both Tripleseat and Silicon Prairie News, we will be disclosing this investment in any future posts about Tripleseat and Dundee Venture Capital, as well as updating our About page to reflect current disclosures.