The story
EZTABLE was co-founded by Alex Chen, Brooky Yen, Jerry Yen, and Peter Hsieh in April 2008. They were inspired by OpenTable, the online restaurant reservation company in the U.S. They found out that consumers in Asia still made reservations via telephone and decided to start their own online restaurant reservation business in Taiwan.
In August 2008, the website began operations, serving a limited selection of restaurants. EZTABLE focused on online-to-offline (O2O) strategies. EZTABLE opened its first brick-and-mortar store in Taipei’s Nankang Software Park in March 2016. In the store, customers can make reservations, learn about the company’s two apps, and scan QR codes for EZTABLE gift cards.
In 2012, AppWorks, a famous accelerator in Asia, and Rose Park Advisors, an investment firm founded by Harvard Business School professor Clayton M. Christensen and his son Matthew Christensen, invested US$1.5 million in EZTABLE.
In January 2015, the company disclosed that it had raised a US$5 million funding round led by MediaTek, with participation from UMC, food conglomerate I-Mei, AppWorks, and Rose Park Advisors.
In 2016, Japanese hotel and restaurant reservation company LKYU invested US$8.8 million in EZTABLE, and the companies hope to promote tourism between their two countries.
From Wikipedia’s article on EZTABLE, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.4