The meat startup maximizing carcass value. Newsletter guys and their private clubs. Noma is coming to NYC. Cashiers on Zoom.

Hey there, everybody. I organized this issue by subcategory while writing to identify trends. I kept them in here to see if you liked them too. Let me know what you think. Also; is it too long? Be honest. Btw I am co-hosting an event at the Mulberry Hotel and you are all invited. See you there!  😛 

RAISES 

Food (more on this later):

• Völur, a Norwegian software company that uses AI to help the meat industry optimize cutting and processing (or as they say, “maximizing carcass value”), raised $2.8M.

• REDUCED, a Copenhagen-based developer of food ingredients via fermentation, raised €6M.

Entertainment:

• Greenfly, a short-form video platform for sports and entertainment, raised $14M led by ADvantage. 

• Cllct, a sports collectibles content startup led by Former ESPN reporter Darren Rovell, raised $4M from an investment group that includes owners of 20+ professional teams across the NFL, NBA, NHL and Premier League. 

• JARS AI, a platform for producing and watching interactive AI shows, raised a $3M Seed led by Gradient Ventures. 

• Dude Perfect, yep… those YouTube guys that did trick shots, raised $100M+ from Highmount Capital.  Just some guys being bros being dudes!!

Work:  

• Alethea, detecting and mitigating misinformation for companies, raised a $20M Series B led by GV. 

• Home From College, a career platform for gen z, raised a $5.4M Seed led by GV.

• Protiv,  a pay-for-performance platform for trade workers, raised a $2.4M Pre-Seed co-led by Lightbank and Las Olas VC. 

• Summer, providing student loan solutions for employers, raised $9M co-led by Rebalance Capital and SemperVirens co-led 

NEWS  

Startups: 

• Patreon rolled out a Reddit-like moderating feature enabling creators to assign their own mods. Remember, in the last newsletter I wrote about Twitter coming out with a “not safe for work” feature. Everyone wants to be like a Reddit that actually makes money.

• AI is now in OnlyFans chats. We’ve seen this for a bit, but now it’s starting to get more popular. AI bots are trained on creators chat to replicate their dirty talk. Remember CarynAI?

• From FT:  A profile of former Tinder CEO Renate Nyborg and her AI-relationship chatbot startup Meeno that raised $4.9M… I am sensing a deeper trend.

Bigtech: 

• YouTube now shares auto-generated “key moments” for connected TV viewers. This is cute; I love watching TV with friends but I don’t really watch it by myself.

• Apple is pushing audio creators to launch paid subscriptions on its platform. This is interesting because Spotify links with Patreon now. 

• Yahoo acquired Artifact, an AI-driven news platform by the co-founders of Instagram that shut down a bit ago, with plans to integrate the tech across Yahoo services. Other than an app for Covid tracking, this was the first app the duo created since the social media platform.

• Microsoft and OpenAI are talking about a $100B project called "Stargate." Microsoft would build a huge supercomputer system to help run OpenAI's future advanced AI models. To put that $100B figure in perspective: it's > 3x what Microsoft spent on capital projects in 2023, 2x what Microsoft's expected capital spending this year, and it’s ⅔ of what Amazon Web Services plans to spend on all new data centers over 15 years… that’s a lot of cash.  

Members Clubs: 

• Hank from Liquidity told the world about Bond Life Club, a private members club he co-founded opening in East Hampton this summer. It aims to cater to people “looking for a break from stuffy country clubs”. Amenities include racket sports, saunas and cold plunges (of course), a gym, full service restaurant, and weekly events and programming. Hank isn’t the only newsletter guy making a private community. Hampton (not affiliated with the long Island location) was co-founded by The Hustle’s Sam Parr as a private community for CEOs and people that made their bag.  I don’t think they have an IRL location, but it’s still a community of rich people.

• Groundfloor is a social club that makes money through monthly memberships and fees charged for hosting community events on its proprietary marketplace. As someone who has a very tiny apartment and no real communal space available, this is interesting. Being able to promote your gathering and host it, all under one roof is cool. Similarly, I hear that the Maxwell in Tribeca also lets members host events in their space. Deep down, I think we’re just reminiscent of basement hangouts. Maybe we should just all move to the suburbs.

• Gary Vaynerchuk’s club Flyfish Club sold $14M in memberships on the blockchain but now, they’re selling things the good ol’ fashion way. “Flyfish Club offers two paths of memberships; Standard, which mimics the framework of many private clubs and Blockchain based, a new dimension in the club industry which allows our members to own their membership.” (Also, the website says that select members will get access to an exclusive omakase counter…. sir, please tell us more.)

BRAIN FOOD 

Visit: 

• Noma is coming to NYC. The world's best restaurant is coming to the big apple to promote its boujee CPG arm. It includes a book signing, pop up restaurant, collab at the Union Square Greenmarket, and a private event. The staff and René Redzep are teaming up with kitchens at Superiority Burger in the East Village on Wednesday, and Dashi Okume in Greenpoint on Thursday. Noma is closing at the end of this year with plans to become a full time food lab. Its business model will consist of products and pop-ups. Maybe I will have to buy their $27 Corn Yuzu Hot Sauce! 

• Stanley Tucci shared his favorite London restaurants with food blogger Top Jaw. Love that guy.  

• Penny will be a hot spot in the East Village. It’s from the team behind Claud, the wine bar located underneath it. Most of its seats are reserved for walk-ins, so you may be seeing me here this summer with a prosecco and some oysters. 

• A NYC chicken restaurant chain is outsourcing front-of-house roles like greeting customers and assisting with checkout to remote workers in the Philippines who appear on iPad screens via Zoom, taking advantage of lower labor cost…. and they still prompt customers to leave tips. Locations include Sansan Chicken in the East Village.

• Speaking of fried chicken… the Korean fried chicken restaurant Coqodaq in New York was designed by Rockwell Group as “the cathedral of fried chicken”. It sure is beautiful.   

Read: 

• The Publish Presh on food content: Since joining Nick DiGiovanni's food creation team as lead editor in 2022, Brandon Kaplan helped the channel add ~10M subscribers, edited videos that got over 307M total views, and overseen the expansion of the team.

• Jason Stewart, co-host of How Long Gone, dropped a substack where he will be chatting about food. I became a paying member even before the first issue dropped. HLG is a free podcast that comes out with multiple episodes a week. (My New Year's resolution was to pay for creative’s work; it’s been making my content consumption more intentional and I like that.)

• Emily from Feed Me wrote about how newsletters are increasingly becoming the place for foodies. “Sure, you can make a one-minute pasta video go viral, but can you write well enough that I allow you into my email inbox weekly?”  (I also pay for this newsletter.)

Watch: 

• Chris Black (the other co-host of How Long Gone) and The New Yorker staff writer Naomi Fry were featured in a cameo for the upcoming season of The Bear. If I was semi famous, this is what I’d want. Famous enough to be a cameo, but not famous enough that most people watching would know who I was except for my loyal Twitter fans and maybe my Mom. I’ve been a fan of Naomi for a while now; check out her recent article on Chateau Marmont.

• My friend Nate Rosen has been doing great stuff on TikTok; sharing his snacks and food related topics. Woohoo, Nate!

Apply: 

• Brooklyn Bites: Food Tech Pitch Contest: If you are a startup that has raised pre seed-series A, have a product or service revolving around food tech, and have fewer than 20 employees, check this out.  Five selected founders will pitch their ideas for the chance to win $5K in cash. 

Thanks for reading,
Rachel Braun

All spelling errors are intended to add some zest.