Participated · Equity · Mar 2021

Copper Labs makes in-home and neighborhood-scale hardware and a mobile app that connects existing smart meters to an internet connection to deliver near-real-time meter data. Its in-home bridge plugs into a power socket and can collect data in roughly 30-second intervals from meters with ZigBee HAN; its neighborhood device can pull one-minute-interval data from hundreds of homes from a single pole-mounted unit. The system can also track rooftop solar production and provides anomaly detection, usage data and other insights via the app. Copper positions the solution as a lower-cost, quicker alternative to wholesale meter replacement, enabling utilities to get higher-frequency visibility into distributed loads like EV chargers. With the new funding, the company plans to grow sales, engineering and marketing teams over the next year to accelerate national adoption across utility territories. Copper Labs develops patent-pending wireless real-time energy management (WREM) solutions that deliver electric, gas and water usage data to utilities with or without smart meters. Its flagship wireless energy monitor provides grid-edge intelligence to help utilities engage consumers and manage demand in near real time. The company announced an oversubscribed $2 million funding round led by National Grid Partners. Copper will use the financing to expand marketing, sales and product development efforts. National Grid is piloting Copper’s technology to access gas usage data every 30 seconds to support demand management programs in New York. Copper’s latest hardware release includes real-time residential voltage detection and the company positions its products to reduce cost to serve and improve grid resiliency. Copper Labs partners with utilities to deliver revenue-grade energy usage data and real-time customer engagement to support enhanced demand management. Its flagship wireless energy monitor, Copper, collects revenue-grade data from electric, gas and water meters and generates actionable, real-time measurements and insights. These insights can be immediately shared with consumers to achieve cost and energy savings, including practical value alerts during peak periods. The company began commercial sales earlier this year. Copper Labs intends to use newly raised funds to continue expanding operations. Founded in 2016 by CTO and founder Jeff Mathews and led by CEO Dan Forman, the company focuses on providing utilities and their customers with practical, real-time energy measurements and alerts.

Participated · Seed · May 2019

Backtracks is a B2B monetization and analytics platform for audio that helps podcast publishers, listening apps, aggregators, and ad networks extract value from spoken-word content. Its Open Podcast Analytics (OPA) based platform collects behavioral and performance metrics that podcasters and advertisers need to make informed decisions. The company offers tools for analytics and monetization across the podcast ecosystem. Backtracks was co-founded by Jonathan Gill and Kevin Wright and is based in Austin, Texas. It recently closed a $2.1M seed round to fund product innovation and hiring for key positions to drive growth. As part of the round, Kelly Perdew of Moonshots Capital will join Backtracks' board.