When Hamilton, Ont.-based MesoMat spun out of McMaster University in 2018, founders Paul Fowler and Kari Dalnoki-Veress were seeking product-market fit.
They looked into construction and heavy industry, but when your intellectual property is based on a proprietary method to integrate sensors into rubber materials, there’s probably one thing that comes to mind.
“If you think about rubber all day long, eventually your mind is going to drift towards tires,” Fowler told BetaKit in an exclusive interview. He described how, when speaking with large tire manufacturers, they discovered a “significant gap” in the industry that led them to focus all their resources on optimizing their product for tires.
“For the most part, the tire is still a fairly unsophisticated, dumb piece of rubber.”
Paul Fowler
MesoMat
MesoMat claims that, of the hundreds of millions of commercial tires on the road worldwide, almost all are conventional, non-digitized, rubber.
Commercial fleet operators go through tires like tissues (they’re the second-biggest expense, after fuel, according to Fowler), yet they are largely being managed by simple pen and paper, with no insight into how tires fare in different conditions.
“For the most part, the tire is still a fairly unsophisticated, dumb piece of rubber, for lack of a better terminology,” Fowler added.
MesoMat’s hardware-as-a-service platform aims to help operators get more than a pressure warning out of their tires. Its sensors monitor the tires and provide insights on safety status, potential leaks, fuel cost, mileage, and temperature. The company claims the tech lets fleet operators know how their tire performs in different climates, or on different routes, helping them understand what kind of tires to buy and how many, Fowler explained.
“It’s one thing to know the pressure of the tire, but a more interesting question to ask is: how is the pressure of my tires directly impacting fuel efficiency, and what can I do to improve that?” Fowler said.
MesoMat tallied more than five million miles of driving on its hardware last year across its customers, which Fowler said include “some of the largest” North American vehicle fleets and global tire manufacturers. He said he could not disclose details due to non-disclosure agreements.
Most of those sales have been founder-led to date, Fowler said, but now it’s looking to use the proceeds of a recent seed round to build out a sales team, and maybe a few more engineers.
“We’re really at the point now where we have a quite exciting customer base, and [we’re] really focused on scaling with those customers and adding new customers,” Fowler said. “That’s the bulk of what we’re going to do with the fundraising, is build out the sales and commercial operations side of the business.”
MesoMat declined to disclose how much it raised with the seed round, which converted an undisclosed amount of previously raised convertible instruments, but said it brought MesoMat’s total funding to date up to $3.8 million USD ($5.2 million CAD). Fowler said the startup previously raised a total of $2 million USD through convertible instruments across multiple rounds since 2019.
The all-equity round was led by Memphis, Tenn.-based venture capital firm Ridgeline, which Fowler described as quite experienced in the trucking and logistics space, having made other investments in the area with strategic ties to a number of MesoMat’s target customers with large vehicle fleets.
“We believe Paul and his team have the expertise to redefine how fleets manage tire-related costs in a sector that’s overdue for modernization,” Ridgeline managing partner Ryan Clinton said in a statement.
The round also included participation from RISC Capital, RPV Global, Extra Innings Ventures, and angel investors from Waterloo, Ont.-based Golden Triangle Angel Network, and the Archangel Network’s Adrenaline and Starforge Funds.
As connected vehicle startups nab funding and support for integrating their tech in all parts of the vehicle, Fowler claimed he can “pretty much guarantee” the tire will become a digitized device within the next 10 years.
“Every single good that is transported in the world relies on a tire to get to the customer,” Fowler said. “It’s a mundane and boring thing, but if you think about the ubiquity of tires and how important they are in our everyday life, it’s actually quite staggering.”
Feature image courtesy MesoMat.