Mustard Initial Email

Hello Red Bear Ventures Community!

We’re reaching out because RBV has secured an opportunity to invest in an exciting early-stage company called Mustard, whose mission is to democratize access to the world’s best athletic coaching. 

The company’s overview deck is here and we have scheduled a Zoom webinar with Mustard’s Co-founder and CEO (a Cornell alum) for Friday, June 13th at 12:30pm ET. If you’d like to attend the webinar, simply reply to this email and we’ll add you to the calendar invite.

The proceeds of this round - a $2M SAFE which will oversubscribe (we are getting an allocation because of the Cornell connection) - will be used primarily to support two marquis strategic partnerships in the company’s first two sports offerings, golf (with Golf Digest) and baseball (with the Major League Baseball Players Association).

We’re excited about the investment opportunity for multiple reasons:

• The aforementioned strategic partnerships. RBV has been tracking Mustard for almost a year and is aware of elements of these strategic partnerships that are not yet public. We believe these partnerships a) speak volumes about the company’s technology and competitive positioning, and b) will materially impact the company’s growth.

• An impressive group of professional athletes already working with the company (many have also invested), including Clayton Kershaw, Nolan Ryan, Justin Rose, Drew Brees, Ronnie Lott, Mia Hamm, Kerri Walsh, James Blake and Jose Berrios - among many others (see slide 15 of the deck)

• The founding team, including Co-founder and CEO Rocky Collis (Cornell ‘06) and world-renowned athletic coaches Tom House and Jason Goldsmith.

• Existing investors in the business, including leAD (a global venture capital firm with a focus on the business of sports), Shasta Ventures, OneTeam Partners (a joint venture of the Players Associations of the National Football League, Major League Baseball, and 6 other professional sports leagues), Henry Kravis (founder of KKR), David Novak (founder of YUM Brands), Ravi Mohan (Founder of Shasta Ventures), and Adam and Conner Jacobs (Qualcomm Founder Irwin Jacob's grandsons; several members of the Jacobs family are investors in Mustard).

• The early growth of the Mustard golf app as well its key business metrics:

  • Marketing cost per download: $3.73 on google  

  • LTV of a download: $9.43 (before there’s been time for most renewals)

  • LTV of a paid subscriber: $90.53  (before any annual subscription renewals)

• Highly differentiated technology and unique access to very valuable video training data from professional athletes and coaches. The technology and training data are key drivers of the strategic partnerships and we believe they offer a long term competitive moat for the business.

• And finally, the opportunity to build a leading company in a large and growing global market. Mustard’s broader vision is to democratize access to world class coaching across all sports. We believe Mustard can get to profitability on golf alone, and will then be very well positioned to expand into many other sports beyond golf and baseball. Put another way, we think Mustard has an opportunity to build a platform-like business working across multiple sports verticals globally.

We will distribute the Mustard investment link via AngelList after the webinar, and the syndicate will close on Friday, June 27th at 5pm ET.

Again, please respond to this email  if you’d like to join the June 13th webinar. The zoom invite will come from dan@redbear.vc.   

Thanks, everyone - have a terrific rest of your week!

Dan and Gus

Red Bear Ventures (RBV) is a community-first investment platform which invests exclusively in companies founded by, or managed by, the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Cornell University, one of the world’s most innovative and entrepreneurial universities. RBV invests across stages and verticals and syndicates investment opportunities to the RBV community via special purpose vehicles (SPVs). RBV is an independent platform wholly managed by its Managing Partners - it is neither affiliated with, nor endorsed by, Cornell University.

More information can be found at www.redbear.vc.

Red Bear Ventures is a service mark used under license from its owner, Red Bear Angels Management LLC, which operates the angel group, Red Bear Angels. Please see www.RBAngels.com for information.