odonnell
Patrick O’Donnell

It’s the end of an era at Urbanspoon, the wildly popular online restaurant recommendation service that was sold to IAC in 2009.

Patrick O’Donnell, one of the three Urbanspoon founders, plans to leave the company next Friday. He was the last remaining founder at the company.

“Everything is going strong at the Spoon and it has been a wonderful 6+ year adventure,” said O’Donnell. “I’ve worked on startups my whole career and it is time for a change. I don’t have any immediate plans, except to travel a bit with my family this summer.”

However, following in the footsteps of other Urbanspoon founders Adam Doppelt of Dwellable and Ethan Lowry of Hackthings, O’Donnell said he’ll likely test the startup waters again.

“You’ll see me tinkering with new technologies in the future,” he says. O’Donnell worked with Doppelt and Lowry at Jobster prior to Urbanspoon, and before that he was a developer at Starwave and Avogadro.

Bootstrapping their way to success, the Urbanspoon team built one of the most popular restaurant directories, riding to success in part through an innovative iPhone app that allowed users to shake the device in order to find a restaurant nearby.

O’Donnell’s announcement comes amid other changes at Urbanspoon, including the recent departure of CityGrid Media CEO Jason Finger. CityGrid is the parent company that oversees Urbanspoon as well as Citysearch.

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