Mixmax, Which Adds Rich Media, Polls, Scheduling To E-mail, Integrates With Google Inbox

Mixmax, an e-mail startup that recently raised $1.5 million from Harrison Metal and Floodgate, integrated with Inbox to turn e-mails into much more than just a text-heavy experience. With Mixmax, you can schedule calendar availability directly from where you’re composing your e-mails from Google Inbox among other features.

Mixmax was founded in the past year to turn e-mail from a static and plain experience into a more interactive one. Olof Mathe, the company’s co-founder, argued that other communication mediums like chat and messaging have become far more expressive while e-mail has largely stayed the same.

“We’re very, very focused on e-mail triage,” said Mathe. “We’d want to make e-mail work with one click to seamlessly all this additional functionality in the compose window that looks like a fluid website editor.”

The company’s initial product, a Chrome plug-in, lets you do everything from embed polls and surveys without leaving your e-mail compose window to track e-mail opens and downloads. It can also send automated reminders so that you don’t miss follow-ups.

In addition to Harrison Metal, the company raised funding from Floodgate’s Mike Maples and Ann Miura-Ko, Ram Shriram of Sherpalo Ventures and angels Eric Ries, Soundcloud CEO Alex Ljung, Nuzzel CEO Jonathan Abrams, Inkling CEO Matt MacInnis and Soundcloud’s Eric Wahlforss. Mathé and his co-founders Chanpory Rith, and Brad Vogel came out of Inkling where they built an e-book authoring platform called Habitat. They’ve also done stints at Skype, Google and Apple on communications products.