What do all 8 billion people on the planet have in common? Everyone needs access to the core utilities of human flourishing – housing, healthcare, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment. And what else do WE ALL have in common? We all want easier access to higher quality, lower cost versions of those core utilities.
Goodwater’s mission is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. We believe deeply in the power of startups to accelerate humanity, and today we are announcing $1 billion in new funds to support the next generation of ambitious, focused, and relentless entrepreneurs and teams.
Impacting Hundreds of Millions of Lives
With over $3.3 billion of committed capital across our 9 funds, Goodwater is the largest venture capital firm in the world focused exclusively on consumer tech. We only invest in founders building digital utilities to solve everyday consumer problems. Over the last decade, we have grown to support the largest active ecosystem of consumer tech companies and founders in the world, and our support is not limited to founders in our backyard. Within our early and growth stage portfolio, we have invested in 79 companies across 4 continents and 19 countries. Our 600+ company seed portfolio, Genesis, extends our reach to 6 continents and over 50 countries. Our portfolio includes companies such as Toss (S. Korea), Monzo (UK), Stash (New York), Xendit (Indonesia), Stori (Mexico), and Momo (Vietnam) in financial services, Everly Health (Texas), Reframe (Georgia), and Rise (Georgia) in healthcare, Weee! (California) and Getir (Turkey) in food, Photomath (Croatia) and Ello (California) in education, Fever (Spain / UK) and PocketFM (India) in entertainment, and Pinhome (Indonesia) and Zumper (California) in housing.
A Common Set of Challenges
Consumer tech startups are solving a diverse set of consumer pain points across a variety of geographies, but regardless of their focus, all consumer tech companies must answer the same four questions on their path to success:
- How do I acquire customers?
- How do I engage them deeply in my product or service?
- How do I retain those customers and keep them happy over time?
- How do I build a healthy and scalable business through eCommerce, services, or ads?
Goodwater was purpose-built to help founders answer these questions with expertise and concrete solutions that have helped scale more than a dozen consumer tech unicorns from early stage to market leadership. In today’s challenging market, startups need a partner with a proven track record of helping entrepreneurs build enduring platform companies across economic cycles. Our people, platform, and programs are dedicated to supporting consumer tech founders from seed stage to IPO.
Our People
Goodwater’s partners have decades of experience investing in, advising, and operating multiple generations of consumer tech platform companies including Activision Blizzard (ATVI), Chegg (CHGG), Coupang (CPNG), Everly Health, Facebook (FB), Kakao, Monzo, musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance), Stash, Spotify (SPOT), Toss, Twitter (TWTR), and Weee!. This hands-on experience supporting entrepreneurs to build some of the most iconic tech companies in history is invaluable in a market where product excellence, innovation, and operational excellence are the core requirements for winning.
Our Platform
Goodwater’s unique platform approach is designed specifically to accelerate growth across our portfolio companies. Our team of engineers, data scientists, and product managers builds software tools to help founders boost performance across their most important KPIs. We start by benchmarking a company’s performance against best-in-class metrics for its specific stage and sector. If there are areas of weakness, we help founders identify key levers for improvement and learn best practices. In parallel, Goodwater selectively deploys a set of tools and services that help companies reduce CAC, improve retention, and drive LTV. We then equip management teams with concrete, actionable benchmarks that define clearly what they must deliver to achieve market leadership and successfully raise their next round.
Our Program
Goodwater’s comprehensive best practices program is dedicated to helping founders solve common consumer tech startup challenges. This program consists of one-on-one coaching, cross-company functional squads, and a full curriculum of Masterclasses. Our most popular classes address topics including:
- Innovative ways to reduce CAC through customer referrals or SEO
- Developing and executing an operating plan
- Maximizing funnel conversion to a subscription product
- Prioritizing product features in an early stage startup
- Leading a turnaround to achieve 10x growth after a down round
- Product improvements to boost retention and drive organic growth
- Achieving maximum impact with small software teams
- Scaling culture in a rapidly growing company
In the last year alone, over 1,400 Goodwater founders and executives attended or viewed Masterclasses taught by Goodwater partners and industry leaders including Jeff Wilke (former CEO of Amazon Worldwide Consumer), Jon McNeill (former President of Tesla and COO of Lyft), Scott Cook (Co-Founder and Chairman of Intuit), and Sean Rad (Founder & former CEO of Tinder), along with the CEOs and executives from market leaders Stash, Toss, Weee!, Monzo, Zumper, and Jerry.
The Opportunity
While the environment has undoubtedly gotten tougher for startups, the opportunity is larger than ever. There is no shortage of unsolved problems facing everyday consumers around the world. 8 billion humans need solutions for daily living and their lives haven’t gotten any easier as economic pressures have increased. We believe that great companies will rise during this challenging time to deliver better access to higher quality, lower cost digital consumer utilities that will be used by billions.
These next few years will favor ambitious, focused, capital-efficient founders who can build 10x better solutions that meet consumers’ biggest needs. Our team at Goodwater looks forward to meeting you and empowering you to change the world for good.
To join the largest consumer tech platform dedicated to serving founders and teams globally, reach out at info@goodwatercap.com. Founders of seed stage companies can apply to our Genesis program directly through our website.
Special Thanks
Finally, we want to thank our incredible limited partners for supporting Goodwater’s mission and steadfastly pursuing your own missions to expand access to high-quality education, support marginalized communities, advance scientific and medical research, elevate the arts, support Americans in retirement, and protect our planet for future generations. It is a privilege to invest on your behalf and support the next generation of great companies delivering radically better solutions to meet humanity’s everyday needs.
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This post is provided solely for informational purposes and should not be relied upon as investment advice or construed as an offer to provide investment advisory services. This post does not constitute an offer to sell or a solicitation of interest to invest in any pooled investment vehicle managed by Goodwater Capital, LLC (“Goodwater”). Investments referenced are not representative of all prior Goodwater investments and there can be no assurance that the investments referenced will be profitable or that future investments will have similar characteristics or results. This post may contain “forward-looking statements” within the meaning of the United States Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995, as amended. Because forward-looking statements involve risks and uncertainties, actual results may differ materially from expectations or projections made or implicated in such statements. Past performance is not necessarily indicative of future results.