Outdoor industry leader and famous kettle grill maker Weber has acquired June, the smart cooking startup founded in 2013 by Matt Van Horn and Nikhil Bhogal. Although the financial terms of the deal were not disclosed, Weber has confirmed that June will continue to operate as a proprietary brand of Weber-Stephen Products and will continue to both sell and develop the June Oven and related products. Meanwhile, June’s co-founder Nikhil Bhogal will take on a role as the SVP for technology and connected devices across the Weber range.
Weber had already teamed up with June, with the startup providing the technology and know-how behind its intelligent Weber Connect grill platform. This includes both the Weber Connect Smart Grilling Hub, which adds functions for connected smart grills to each grill, as well as the integrated Smart Cooking functions of the SmokeFire range of wood pellet grills. This partnership began with a cold email Van Horn received in 2018 from then Weber CEO and current CEO Jim Stephen, the son of the original founder.
“He said he was a fan, he was a customer, and he couldn’t imagine a future without June technology powering every product in the Weber collection,” Van Horn said in an interview. “I said, ‘Take it easy – what are you talking about? Yes who are you? ‘And he said,’ I’m going out, I’ll be there Monday. ‘ “I usually have my nice demo setup that I make, I like chocolate lava cake and a steak [in the June Oven]. So I got there about 15 minutes early, and [Jim] I was already sitting outside the office and ready to open the door for me. He says, “I don’t need a demo, I have this one.”
“I was blown away by his energy and ability to see things often in front of other people,” continued Van Horn. “Shortly after I met Chris [Scherzinger, Weber’s current chief executive]who as CEO and [I] was able to experience this very surprising and wonderful culture of this historic Weber brand first hand. “
As mentioned earlier, June became a Weber partner, supplying the networked cooking platform she unveiled at CES last year. Weber also led the Series C funding round in June, a previously undisclosed final funding round that Weber led in 2018 prior to this exit.
Van Horn will act as President under the new agreement in June and lead the development of its current and future products. He said Weber’s ability to help them scale and spread internationally through their existing global footprint was a huge motivating factor behind June’s decision to join the now 63-year-old company. Another key ingredient was how much Weber proved to be a place where the corporate culture was still centered on customer focus and love of food.
“Obviously Nikhil and I started in June because we love food and love to cook,” said Van Horn. “And a lot of the principles we think about how products are made are many of Apple’s principles – a large percentage of the June team are Apple. We have obviously brought that to a microscale with our small 60-person startup. But being able to work with this very eager Weber team was very excited from the start. “
As for Weber, the company is gaining a software and technology team that arose from the idea of looking at cooking from a technical first perspective – and they intend to bring this know-how to their full range of products to build on their legacy of building quality and customer satisfaction.
“Once you put in the software engineering, connected product design, and machine intelligence know-how that you have, you get those core competencies or skills, but that really undercuts it,” Scherzinger said. “Matt put together a team of superstars and we just got a first-round draft pick [in June] that takes the Weber game to another level. This allows us to accelerate a significant number of initiatives and you can expect Weber Connect to expand in terms of new consumer experiences, new services and new products as early as 2021 and 2022. ”
While Weber and June, as previously mentioned, do not provide details of the deal, Scherzinger mentioned that “Matt, his team and his investors have all done well.” Previous investors in June include the Amazon Alexa Fund, Lerer Hippeau, First Round Capital, Promus Ventures, Industry Ventures, Eclipse Ventures and more.
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