Startups To Watch: CH4 Global, Mustard, Undock, LaunchNotes

Crunchbase News typically covers larger funding rounds, however we think these startups are worth highlighting for their interesting approaches despite their smaller raises.

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CH4 Global

We wrote earlier in the week about Climax Foods, which is developing sustainable foods. CH4 Global is doing the same, but for cattle.

CH4 Global raised $3 million in seed round funding this week to turn seaweed into livestock feed to reduce ruminant methane emissions by up to 90 percent, Steve Meller, co-founder and CEO, told Crunchbase News.

Investors included unnamed family offices, private investors and government innovation groups, including the New Zealand Provisional Growth Fund, South Australian Research & Development Institute, the Australian Fisheries Research Development Corporation, and the South Australian Landing Pad.

The San Francisco-based startup is using sustainable aquaculture growing and processing methods to grow the seaweed species Asparagopsis armata in South Australia and New Zealand to mitigate climate change.

“We are focused on starting the optimization process of scaling growth,” Meller said. “We aim to be the world’s first commercial-scale facility on the planet.”

Mustard

While the sports world is still figuring things out due to the pandemic, Mustard, an elite-level motion analysis app for broad athletics coaching, is out in beta mode. The startup has raised $1.7 million in seed funding from investors including Shasta Ventures, Intersect VC and angel investors David Novak, Mike Dixon, Drew Brees and Nolan Ryan.

The startup was founded by Major League Baseball and National Football League throwing coach Dr. Tom House, mental performance coach Jason Goldsmith, and former minor league pitcher, Rocky Collis. The company will use the funds for technology development, to expand into additional sports, and to build out a robust mental performance training platform for all athletes.

“We are out to revolutionize coaching,” Collis said in an interview. “There is a huge problem with kids not being able to play sports because they don’t have access to coaching. We put the coaching in kids’ pockets.”

Launching with a focus on baseball, the initially free Mustard app provides baseball pitchers of all levels with motion analysis and personalized instruction to eliminate guesswork.

Undock

Thanks to The Plug, I learned about Nash Ahmed’s 2-year-old startup Undock. The New York-based company announced a $1.6 million seed round to advance its video conferencing platform that helps people instantly schedule, host and document meetings.

Investors in the round included Lightship Capital, Bessemer Venture Partners, Lerer Hippeau, Alumni Ventures Group, Active Capital, Arlan Hamilton and Sarah Imbach.

“Our AI-powered calendar solution helps connect people across teams, time zones and different organizations,” Ahmed said via email. “We’ll be adding to our development team to build a world-class user experience and extend work on our patent-pending AI for scheduling. Undock will come out of Beta in October and introduce its full meeting and calendar product during a special launch event.”

LaunchNotes

LaunchNotes, a San Francisco-based company, is developing a tool that keeps internal teams and customers informed of product changes and updates in real time. It closed on a $1.8 million seed round with plans to rapidly advance its product development and meet demand.

The company was started by three former Atlassians, Jake Brereton, Tony Ramirez and Tyler Davis. After its launch in May, the company now has more than 100 companies using the product.

The investment was co-led by Cowboy Ventures and Bull City Venture Partners with participation from additional individual investors.

Brereton told Crunchbase News that LaunchNotes plans to invest most of the seed funding back into hiring people so the company can work on new functions and features.

“We are building out our small engineering team and hiring a product designer,” he added. “We are receiving a lot of in-bound requests from larger enterprises and there are still a couple of boxes to check before we can go deep into enterprises.”

Company photos courtesy of CH4 Global and Undock.
Illustration: Dom Guzman