During his career days, San Francisco 49ers great Joe Montana was known as “Joe Cool”.
But the NFL legend and pro-footballer Hall of Famer knows that he is on to a white-hot investment in the Australian industrial technology start-up, GreaseBoss.
Montana now spearheads the San Francisco based venture capital investment fund Liquid2 Ventures which is specializing in seed investments in early-stage technology companies.
GreaseBoss attracts investment from Joe Montana
“Anyone doing anything wants to become the best. At Liquid2 Ventures, we saw this spark in GreaseBoss and believe they will become global leaders in their field,” Joe Montana said.
GreaseBoss is a business that verifies industrial machinery is correctly maintained.
Its first installation was with the Australian mining giant, Glencore and has brought on many more customers across Australia and overseas since initially starting in 2020.
GreaseBoss work across multiple industries like mining, marine, utilities and manufacturing.
Steve Barnett, the GreaseBoss co-founder and CEO said, “Montana heard about GreaseBoss from other Y Combinator Alumni. He instantly saw the potential of the business.”
“Apart from being a legend on the American NFL sporting field, Joe Montana now has a similar reputation in regard to his ability to pick companies with tremendous upside.”
“It did not take much convincing to get the great Joe Montana to invest in GreaseBoss. He got what we were trying to achieve from day one,” Mr Barnett said.
“GreaseBoss is a scalable tech solution to a problem experienced by all industrial operations.”
“Our vision is for GreaseBoss to ensure that every grease point receives the right grease quality, at the right time and in the right quantity, effectively eliminating lubrication failure.”
Investors joining the GreaseBoss seed round
Fresh from graduating from the Silicon Valley accelerator program Y Combinator, the Sunshine Coast-based business has just closed its seed capital raising round of $2.5 million.
Joe Montana followed GreaseBoss’ leading investor Michael Dempsey from Pipeline Capital, who sold his first technology business, Ezidebit, for over $300 million.
They are joining GreaseBoss’ original investors Trent Bagnall from The Melt and Brent Watts from 77 Partners. Leading VC players PioneerVC and Cathexis also participated.
Pipeline Capital’s Director Michael Dempsey, a former mechanical engineer was excited that GreaseBoss is finally solving the age-old problem of “Have you greased the machines?”
“We’ve all been there when the machinery has seized up and production shuts down.”
“Pipeline Capital is very happy to announce its investment in Grease Boss. We believe it has global applications and will be another Australian Unicorn,” said Michael Dempsey.
Mark Friday from Cathexis said GreaseBoss had built something truly unique.
“The GreaseBoss product is one of those exciting and intuitive innovations that just seems so obvious in hindsight, just like a ‘why didn’t I think of that?’ moment.”
“With an experienced team going after a big industry with big machinery and equipment, we are excited for the opportunity to help GreaseBoss grow and expand,” said Mark Friday.
GreaseBoss grows team and global footprint
GreaseBoss has established its global headquarters in Queensland’s Sunshine Coast.
It now has a full time employee headcount of seven engineers who are responsible for conducting research and development, prototyping and continuous product improvement.
“We have launched our fourth generation GreaseBoss system and it is already installed successfully on industrial sites around Australia and in the overseas client infrastructures.”
“GreaseBoss is constantly working with both Australian and international customers to facilitate them in solving their problems and improving their operations,” Mr Barnett said.
“This capital raise enables GreaseBoss to keep close to our customers, remain agile and build capacity so as to deliver new products and services that they will come to depend on.”
“There are billions of grease points globally and ensuring they are all greased is just the start.”
GreaseBoss aims to eliminate unplanned downtime
Unplanned downtime is a jargon for lost operational time due to a piece of machinery that has unexpectedly broken down because it has not been correctly maintained.
The cost of unplanned downtime is estimated at a staggering $50 billion per year.
Despite the high costs involved with machine failure, it is a surprising fact that the industry still contends with the challenge of regularly unplanned downtime in this era.
Even though heavy machinery are built to last, there is often no way of checking whether grease has been properly and adequately injected where its necessity is vital.
Compounding this issue is the fact that machinery maintenance procedures, for example, regular grease application are prone to a bunch of catastrophic human errors.
GreaseBoss’ technology opening up opportunities
Barnett said that while the industry is focused on continuous improvement and cost reduction, many technology opportunities can enable previously unobtainable efficiencies.
“The majority of unplanned downtime is due to humans incorrectly greasing the equipment.”
“GreaseBoss provides operators using the grease gun with up to date information to complete their job more effectively while greatly reducing the potential for human errors.”
“It is not a surprise that heavy machinery will sometimes fail.”
“When we attempt to envision this disastrous scenario, we imagine a particularly tough rock stopping an excavator in its tracks or an excessively heavy load applied to a crane.”
“Most of the unplanned downtime is due to humans failing to maintain the equipment.”
“These enormous, expensive and vital pieces of equipment are surprisingly brought down by the loops in maintenance like failure to grease them rather than a dramatic incident.”
“Further still, it is a startling fact that the industry is willing to accept the costs associated with unplanned downtime and is content doing things the same way as in the past.”
“We are launching the advanced and pioneering GreaseBoss track and trace technology into the hands of heavy machinery maintenance teams all around the world.”
“This will enable safer, cost-effective and more productive industrial operations,” Mr Barnett concluded.
