Hoofprint Biome boosts cow nutrition while slashing methane burps
Take methane from cows: For years, people have been trying to eliminate the gas from cow burps in an attempt to limit the livestock's impact on the climate. But they haven't made a dent. That's in part because they were looking at the issue from the perspective of a climate scientist, not a farmer.
Kathryn Polkoff, co-founder and CEO of Hoofprint Biome, has been thinking about the problem more like a farmer, though.
'The first time I heard about this methane problem was animal science 101,' Polkoff, who has a PhD in animal science, told TechCrunch. It wasn't in the context of climate change, but of animal health and productivity.
Polkoff and her co-founder Scott Collins have stumbled upon a novel way to modify a cow's microbiome using enzymes, slashing methane while boosting the nutrients available to the cow.
That discovery has netted Hoofprint a $15 million Series A round led by SOSV, the startup exclusively told TechCrunch. Other participating investors include AgriZeroNZ, Alexandria Venture Investments, Amazon's Climate Pledge Fund, Breakthrough Energy Fellows, Good Growth Capital, Ponderosa Ventures, and Twynam. The new round will help the company trial its enzymes on farms.
'We've spent thousands of years breeding the animals to make them as efficient as possible and to increase the yield, and but there have not really been that many attempts to change a microbiome,' she said. 'That'd be like if you were engineering a car but had never changed the engine — that's where all the energy comes from.'
Hoofprint's feed additive tweaks the microbiome in a cow's rumen and suppresses the growth of microbes that generate methane, a potent greenhouse gas that warms the planet 84 times more than the same amount of carbon dioxide.
Rumen is a 'hodgepodge assembly line,' said Po Bronson, the SOSV general partner who led the firm's investment in Hoofprint. The stuff cows eat tends to be very hard to digest and extract nutrients from. Over the millennia, cows have evolved alongside a complex microbiome in the rumen that helps break down the forage, releasing nutrients in the process.
The cow absorbs some of those nutrients, but not all. Another group of microbes steals some of those nutrients to drive their own growth at the expense of the cow's, generating methane as a byproduct. 'It's a very specific subset of microbes that are making the methane,' Polkoff said.
Hoofprint's enzyme suppresses those microbes. The startup will use yeast to make the enzymes, similar to how other industrial enzymes are made, including those used in cheese, detergent, and other products.
For Bronson at SOSV, the fact that Hoofprint's enzymes are derived from the rumen itself was key. One previous methane-reducing product, Bovaer, faced a wave of disinformation when a large food company announced trials in the UK in December.
He doesn't think that Hoofprint will face the same backlash. 'The core concept is that their product is a natural protein. They degrade just like any other protein an animal would eat. They're sort of natural to the rumen.'
Hoofprint is targeting a 5% improvement in 'feed efficiency,' Polkoff said, or how many more pounds a cow can put on for a given amount of feed.
By improving the efficiency of a cow's rumen, Bronson is confident Hoofprint will be able to succeed with farmers where other startups have failed. 'Knocking down methane is table stakes,' he said. 'To make it a more productive thing is what they will pay for.'

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'Since then, I've had deep conversations with him about his change of heart that led him to be in the position where he is today …Knowing his story increased our respect for him personally.' Thorpe is part of an experimental program in the Maine state prison system that allows incarcerated people to work remote jobs from custody. Though unconventional, these opportunities have proven immensely rehabilitative. Kicked out of his home as a teenager, Thorpe resorted to selling drugs that he bought from the dark web and ended up in prison by the time he was 20. He got out a few years later, but with no money to his name and nowhere safe to live, he was arrested again 14 months later. 'I was a complete idiot,' Thorpe told TechCrunch over a video call from prison. 'I had given up on my life, completely written it off, and just accepted that this was my life and just had no hope.' Second chances Thorpe had given up, but chance had different plans. 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'After consideration, I allowed that to happen, and over time, it's been very successful,' Commissioner Liberty told TechCrunch. 'His students are able to come visit him at the prison, and he can tour them around. It provides for a real diversity of opinions, thoughts, and backgrounds. It makes for a rich environment to learn.' Now, about 30 inmates, counting Thorpe, are employed while living in the Earned Living Unit, a less restrictive prison facility for inmates who have exhibited a long track record of good behavior. All inmates with remote jobs surrender 10% of their pay to the state, plus any other payments that may be required for restitution, legal fees, or child support. 'Maine has been a real groundbreaker in this area,' Haley Shoaf, co-executive director of Unlocked Labs, told TechCrunch. Unlocked Labs, where Thorpe worked prior to Turso, hires incarcerated and formerly incarcerated engineers to make educational software for use in prisons. 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Yahoo
5 hours ago
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How a Y Combinator food delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store
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TechCrunch
5 hours ago
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How a Y Combinator food delivery app used TikTok to soar in the App Store
The internet trend is simple: A friend or family member looks into the camera and tells viewers, in a slightly aggressive tone, that they are about to witness a presentation and that they had better be nice. That's what Kendall, the sister of Lucious McDaniel IV, did, and after she stepped aside, her brother pitched his company, BiteSight, a food delivery app that lets users watch videos of food before ordering. It also lets customers see what their friends have ordered and bookmark places to try out. The app plays on how young people engage with content — through short-form videos and recommendations from friends. McDaniel posted the video and went back to work. Fifteen minutes later, his sister texted him that their post was going viral. 'We were at 20,000 views in 15 minutes,' McDaniel told TechCrunch. Excitement came, but then chaos ensued as 'parts of our app started to break as we got more users.' 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'I'd hit this wall of identical-looking restaurants with stock photos, and somehow every place had 4.6 stars.' Techcrunch event Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. Tech and VC heavyweights join the Disrupt 2025 agenda Netflix, ElevenLabs, Wayve, Sequoia Capital — just a few of the heavy hitters joining the Disrupt 2025 agenda. They're here to deliver the insights that fuel startup growth and sharpen your edge. Don't miss the 20th anniversary of TechCrunch Disrupt, and a chance to learn from the top voices in tech — grab your ticket now and save up to $675 before prices rise. San Francisco | REGISTER NOW He started keeping a spreadsheet of restaurants he'd found on Instagram and TikTok, tracking actual reviews, and seeing what his friends thought about said places. 'When I realized other people were doing the exact same thing, my co-founder Zac and I decided to build something better: an app that actually reflects how we discover food today,' he said, referring to Zac Schulwolf, the company's CTO. McDaniel is no stranger to the tech industry. He previously worked at General Atlantic, where one of his main focus areas was restaurant technology. He previously founded a payments company called Phly, led product for a recruitment software, and has even angel invested in a few companies, including the fintech Mercury. McDaniel and Schulwolf, 25, spent over a year building BiteSight, including participation in the Winter 2024 cohort of YCombinator. They then did a limited beta around New York University in April. In mid-May, the company launched an early version and did a bit of social media marketing. In June, they made their viral video. 'What made our video stand out was that what we are building resonates,' said McDaniel, who is BiteSight's CEO (also known as chief eating officer). He added that 'it's clear that consumers, and especially Gen-Z, are ready for something that feels fresh and built for the way they engage.' After the video, BiteSight briefly became #2 in the App Store's Food and Beverage category, bypassing Uber Eats, Starbucks, and even McDonald's. McDaniel said the app also gained more than 100,000 new users and, though the app is only available in New York at the moment, people in other cities started messaging for a nationwide release. On the restaurant side, McDaniel said everyone from small family-owned spots to chain restaurants has reached out to partner and, of course, 'we've had a surge of investor interest from folks who see that this is where food delivery is going.' He declined to comment on the size of any upcoming funding deals, except to say he expects to have news to share soon. Of course, BiteSight has a lot of big, well-funded competition like DoorDash and UberEats. McDaniel believes, however, that being a startup in the age of AI will be his advantage. For example, while most of its competitors needed hundreds of engineers in their early days, BiteSight can work with AI tools that perform 10x the work of a human for much less of the cost. 'By using AI to avoid massive overhead and infrastructure costs, we can do much more with much less and pass on the savings to the small business owners and customers who need it most while still maintaining healthy margins,' he said. What also differentiates BiteSight is its focus on food and video, rather than other categories at the moment. 'We're trying to be the go-to app for the generation that discovers everything through social recommendations and short-form video.'