Entrepreneur Ventures is an early-stage venture capital firm partnered with Entrepreneur Media that is dedicated to backing passionate and innovative founders as early as day one. In this series, we are profiling the amazing entrepreneurs Entrepreneur Ventures is working with to share their insights on building and growing a thriving business.

Colton Frank is the co-founder and CEO of unPLUG, an AI-powered digital growth platform designed to help restaurants scale first-party economics, increase customer lifetime value, and unify fragmented guest data across channels. 

unPLUG launched in 2025 and now operates in 1,000+ stores. It has grown more than 10× over the past year, an achievement driven by its success in helping clients grow. Clients of unPLUG have seen 20–70% YoY lift in first-party digital sales, 15–25% increase in monthly active users and 15–25% lift in customer lifetime value.

Entrepreneur connected with Frank to find out the big thinking and granular focus he and his team have used to find success. (Answers have been edited for length and clarity.)

Please give us the elevator pitch of your business.
unPLUG is the “Palantir for Restaurants,” combining digital systems intelligence with human decision-making. unPLUG connects ordering, loyalty, marketing, and analytics into a single, decision-ready system, enabling restaurants to move beyond transactional digital sales toward personalized, high-converting, end-to-end guest experiences across web, mobile, and in-store touchpoints.

What separates you from other systems?
Delivered through forward-deployed engineers and digital growth partners, unPLUG operates as a hands-on growth system, doing the heavy lifting to unlock bionic restaurant operations and deliver tangible, measurable results. By addressing the industry’s core challenges, including fragmented systems, limited data visibility, and overreliance on third-party marketplaces, unPLUG helps multi-unit and enterprise restaurant brands transform digital ordering into a scalable, high-margin growth engine.

What inspired you to create unPLUG?
I am a CPA and CFA charterholder and began my career in investment banking. While the work was valuable, I did not feel a strong sense of purpose and knew I needed to make a move more aligned with my long-term plan.

Not knowing exactly where to begin, I was having dinner one night at Pizano’s in Chicago. I had forgotten my phone at home, which forced me to be present and engaged, and it turned into a genuinely enjoyable dining experience. In college, many students used an app called PocketPoints, which rewarded them for not using their phones in academic facilities. I realized that this concept could have real utility in a restaurant setting, and that moment sparked the very first idea for unPLUG.

The concept created an opportunity to combine two of my core passions, food and mental health. While there was still much to be done before pursuing it full-time, I joined a private equity firm to build the skills needed to grow and scale businesses.

Please tell us one “holy @#$!” moment about building this business — something you didn’t see coming.
My co-founder and I originally entered the restaurant technology space with a contrarian idea: use technology to encourage less technology at the table. Our early vision focused on promoting tech-free socialization and human connection during dining, bringing people back to shared food, conversation, and genuine bonding. Guests who aligned with that mission were rewarded with perks through our platform, creating value for both diners and restaurants without distracting from the experience. We initially bundled this concept with a reservation aggregator.

Then COVID changed everything. Overnight, human touch and in-person socialization were no longer viable, and restaurants were forced to digitize quickly. Many were also backed into a corner and placed at the mercy of third-party marketplaces like DoorDash and Uber Eats.

We pivoted quickly, while staying true to the same underlying goal: helping restaurants build stronger, more valuable relationships with their guests. Today, unPLUG operates in the restaurant technology space as a B2B2C platform focused on enhancing the digital guest experience and unlocking measurable first-party ordering growth. By unifying a restaurant’s existing vendors and technology stack, and connecting pre-sale through post-sale guest data, unPLUG enables high-converting, end-to-end ordering journeys. This allows restaurants to move beyond transactional digital sales and execute informed initiatives that increase customer lifetime value, visit frequency, and margins.

What advice would you give entrepreneurs looking for funding?
It is cheaper and faster to build technology than ever before. Ask yourself what you truly need capital for, and whether some or all of it can be done bootstrapped in the early stages.

One of the most challenging internal battles I face is financial insecurity. The moment you take in your first dollar of outside capital, the shot clock starts. You do not need funding to conduct diligence on the market you intend to serve. Go talk to potential customers and ask them what their problems are. Do this hundreds of times.

Once you identify a common pattern, find a pioneer customer who will allow you to build an MVP. Do not wait until it is perfect. Get it into the wild, gather feedback, and continue to iterate. Only after you see early signs of validation should you consider raising capital and expanding the team.

What does the word “entrepreneur” mean to you?
To me, entrepreneurship closely aligns with personal self-discovery. The company is merely a muse, while the true product is the self.

As an entrepreneur, you must learn to appreciate the lows and rock-bottom moments, as those are what truly define you. Do you crumble under the weight, or do you metamorphose into a new and improved version of yourself? An entrepreneur chooses the latter.

What is something many aspiring business owners think they need that they really don’t?
A million-dollar idea. If your first idea for a company is your last idea, it’s most likely a bad idea. The 100th evolution of your first idea is the golden idea.

The key is to get started, seek feedback, listen deeply, and iterate quickly. You will not always have the luxury of extensive data to guide your decisions. Often, you need to trust your gut.

Is there a particular quote or saying that you use as personal motivation?
I am Him. He is me. “Him” or “He” refers to the version of myself five years in the future. I can clearly visualize that person and hold the utmost respect for him. This is a mantra I return to in meditation, yoga, and moments of reflection. It reminds me that the person I trust and look up to already exists within me today.

When times become hard or uncertain, this mantra grounds me. It reassures me that I am on the right path, and that the future version of myself is already here to support me.