By Adrianne Jeffries 8/19/11 5:35pm

shameless rumormongering

rumormonger

Rumors & Acquisitions: Now, Flex

STRANGEST RECRUITMENT LETTER EVER. The strangest recruitment letter we’ve seen, we must say–an email from the list-happy General Assembly-based Dinevore, seeking … someone or someones “great” … for … the “evolution of Dinevore, if you will.” Biz dev folks, technical co-founders and designers all need apply! ”We’re not looking for rockstars or ninjas or jedis or any of that. Just great people with vision and killer ideas and the ability to execute on them. Drop us a line if you think we could use your skills. Make sure to include something to get us interested (a great BD idea, a link to your GitHub page, your online portfolio etc). NYC-based is ideal, but not essential.” Okay! Readers, if you’re applying, do send a tip with your impressions.

#BITCOIN-RUMORS. The mystery of the epic MyBitcoin whodunnit continues, although energy is flagging among the Bitcoin community. Word on the street is, MyBitcoin.com may have some connection to that most underground of ecommerce, the website where you can OMG buy drugs known as the Silk Road, which would give the owners another motive to build the easy-to-use wallet service in order to make it easy to get Bitcoin to spend on weed and mushies. Betabeat called our local Federal Bureau of Investigation today to file a complaint and find out if there was an investigation ongoing. “I’m sorry, I can’t help you on this,” a press representative said, declining to either confirm or deny whether the FBI was looking into the matter. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 8/09/11 4:07pm

Funding

wiley

DFJ Gotham Leads $3.25M. Round In SinglePlatform, Wiley Cerilli’s One-Stop Shop for Restaurants

Fresh off winning Bloomberg Businessweek’s vote for one of the country’s most promising start-ups, SinglePlatform just announced it raised $3.25 million in Series A round led by DFJ Gotham. New investor New World Ventures also jumped on board, as did existing backers like First Round Capital and RRE Ventures, responsible for the $1.2 million seed round raised last September.

SinglePlatform solves a problem so simple, we’re surprised no one’s mastered it already. Despite the fact that 89 percent of consumers look up a restaurant online before they eat there, very few restaurants have up-to-date websites. Founder & CEO Wiley Cerilli should know, he spent 10 years running sales for Seamless (now without the -web). With SinglePlatform, local businesses can publish their menu, special, events, and photos across a network of 11,000 mobile apps, and destination sites including 34,000 hotels, 620 universities, and, recently, Foodspotting. Read More

By Nitasha Tiku 6/23/11 1:30pm

Fashion Plate

Wiley Cerilli in native garb.

New York Start-up Dress Code: ‘Business Shabby’

The corporate world can keep “business casual.” But SinglePlatform’s Wiley Cerilli has another way to describe the start-up uniform. “I’m trying hard to coin the style ‘business shabby’” Mr. Cerilli told The Next Web.” How‘s the coinage catching on? “It’s not working, but I’m trying.”

Mr. Cerilli spent 10 years running sales at SeamlessWeb, the local online delivery hub/vacuum suction on Betabeat’s wallet, before launching SinglePlatform last January. His new service, which is hiring, lets restaurants upload info like menus, photos, and specials and then updates that on SinglePlatform’s hundreds of publishing partners like hotel and city guides and app developers.

So what constitutes “business shabby”? Read More

By Nate Freeman, New York Observer 6/08/11 1:47pm

Parties!

Drown, Internet, Drown!

Dispatch from The Transom.

The New York startup bubble burst Monday night at Jimmy, the James Hotel’s rooftop lounge, sending a spray of water toward attendees at the Geekosystem Internet Week party. It seems one former Facebook employee-turned-financier had paid a former colleague at the social network $1,500 to jump into the swank, off-limits, ornamental pool. Read More