Participated · Series A · Sep 2022

Flair develops smart home heating, cooling, and energy-efficiency solutions centered on its hvacOS platform, which integrates the Flair app with devices, thermostats, and common HVAC equipment. Its product set includes Smart Vent zoning and air balancing for central/ducted systems, ductless controls, staged heating/integrated controls, and smart heating control for boilers and electric baseboard heat. The company serves contractors, homeowners, and utilities and has expanded its product portfolio and market position since its Series A. Flair plans to use new Series B capital to accelerate product innovation, expand its professional channel, and scale distribution through strategic partnerships. The company emphasized deepening collaboration with RectorSeal to scale next-generation HVAC control solutions across North America. The press release was issued from San Francisco, CA.

Participated · Seed · Mar 2022

MeliBio produces Mellody, a vegan honey that replicates honey using fructose, glucose, plant extracts, gluconic acid and natural flavours. The company has expanded distribution across the US via foodservice, D2C and retail partnerships (Eleven Madison Park online, independent retailers, KeHE, UNFI, Greco and Sons, ACE Natural) and launched in Europe through a partnership with Slovenia’s Narayan Foods. It can produce 10,000 lbs of Mellody per day and has a $10M, four‑year deal intended to place its product into 75,000 stores. MeliBio began as a precision‑fermentation company and continues to develop fermented versions of honey, having increased the titer of its main enzyme target by 1,300% and moving multiple protein/enzyme targets from ideation to bioreactors. The company recently won a German patent for its plant‑based honey technology and is working with AI‑led biomanufacturing partner Pow.Bio while evaluating additional scale‑up partners. Since founding in 2020 it has raised around $10M in total and plans to reopen a Series A next year after shifting to a pre‑Series A amid a tougher food‑tech fundraising environment. MeliBio produces plant-based honey formulated with ingredients naturally found in honey to match the taste, quality, and nutrition of conventional honey. The product performs and tastes like standard honey and can be used as a direct 1:1 substitute in culinary applications. MeliBio’s plant-based honey was selected for the SIAL Innovation Selection 2022 and its earlier ingredient product was named to TIME’s Best Inventions 2021; it has been featured at restaurants including Eleven Madison Park and BAIA. The company plans a European rollout through a partnership with Narayan Foods, launching under the Better Foodie brand across 75,000 stores beginning in Q1 2023, and is offering private-label opportunities. MeliBio ships its consumer product in early 2023 and positions the product as a sustainable alternative addressing pesticide use, adulteration, and bee population declines. The company was founded in 2020 in Berkeley and is headquartered in Oakland, California; it has received additional funding to support scaling. MeliBio engineers honey without bees by combining plant science and precision fermentation to recreate and scale the molecular composition of honey. Founded in 2020 by Darko Mandich and Aaron Schaller and based in San Francisco, the company aims to address sustainability and supply-chain issues in the $10 billion global honey market. Its product has been tested in four New York restaurants and the company reports 30 partner companies have signed letters of intent for validation studies. MeliBio is pre-revenue but plans a product launch in April and intends to expand into foodservice and B2B applications. The company also plans to explore the $500 billion ingredients market using its precision fermentation platform. Current headcount is four full-time employees plus 14 contractors, with plans to grow full-time staff to 10 by year-end. MeliBio develops real honey without bees using a proprietary scientific approach and after extensive R&D has scaled the method to a manufacturing level. The company offers plant-based honey as a B2B ingredient for foodservice and other product categories, and began taking orders for deliveries starting late 2021 and into early 2022. It showcased samples at an event in the San Francisco Bay Area and is positioning the product to serve multiple clients. MeliBio frames its product as a sustainability solution to a $9 billion honey industry facing bee biodiversity loss and climate-driven yield volatility. Founded in 2020 by Darko Mandich and Aaron Schaller, PhD, the California-based company aims to replace honeybees in production and help restore wild bee biodiversity. The company is venture-backed and has raised $1.5M in pre-seed funding from investors across the US, Europe, Asia and Australia. MeliBio develops real honey without bees using a proprietary mix of synthetic biology, precision fermentation, and plant science. The company was founded in 2020 by Aaron Schaller, PhD, and Darko Mandich and is based in Berkeley, California. MeliBio aims to recreate honey’s composition and flavor to provide a vegan, sustainable alternative to traditional honey. It plans initially to supply food‑service companies with plant‑based honey as an ingredient and to soft‑launch its first product at the end of the year, fulfilling orders from its accelerator program. The company says it is in talks with international partners and expects broader commercial rollout in the first half of 2022. MeliBio emphasizes environmental impact, citing the $9 billion global honey market and a goal of helping to save some 20,000 wild and native bee species.

Participated · Seed · Feb 2016

ClearMetal builds a Continuous Delivery Experience (CDX) platform for supply chain and logistics that uses proprietary machine learning to cross-reference inputs, enrich data, and surface trustworthy, actionable information. The platform continually learns and adjusts to drive constant improvement in delivery and customer experience, and the company has multiple patents pending. ClearMetal says the new funding will enable further development of its CDX Platform and accelerate go-to-market efforts with top-tier clients. Financially, the company reported 400% year-over-year revenue growth and has raised more than $31M to date after an additional $15M round. ClearMetal doubled its workforce, expanded its San Francisco headquarters, and opened offices in New York, Chicago, Houston, London, and Switzerland. It serves customers on four continents and has added senior sales and marketing leadership to support growth. ClearMetal offers a SaaS platform that uses artificial intelligence to canonicalize freight data and provide end-to-end visibility across supply chains. Its technology delivers predictive insights to help companies make inventory decisions, predict transit delays, and select ocean carriers by analyzing service reliability. The platform aims to replace spreadsheets and legacy systems by standardizing freight data and surfacing actionable predictions to avoid emergency air shipments and cut costs. Customers have cited tens of millions of dollars of value potential; named customers include Panalpina and Georgia‑Pacific. The company was founded by CEO Adam Compain with Diego Canales (head of engineering) and Will Harvey (head of technology). ClearMetal is based in San Francisco and has raised a total of $12 million to date, including a $3 million seed in February 2016 and a $9 million Series A. ClearMetal provides large shipping carriers with a Predictive Intelligence Platform that uses artificial intelligence to predict equipment, trade, vessel and shipper needs. The platform is designed to help users improve asset allocation and predictive trade management processes. ClearMetal is based in San Francisco, CA and was co-founded by Adam Compain (CEO), Diego Canales and Will Harvey. The company closed a $3m seed financing to support its growth. Management says it intends to use the funds to expand operations.