Venture capital firm Goodwater Capital has grown its tech-fueled approach with the recent $1 billion asset raise across its early- and growth stage funds.
The Silicon Valley-based Goodwater team relies both on its own in-house software as well as the tech approaches of the consumer companies it partners with to find new global venture capital opportunities for a growing set of institutional investors.
Recent investors with the firm’s Goodwater V and Goodwater Infinity III include New Mexico State Investment Council and CalPERS.
The $3.3 billion firm announced the fundraise this week as it seeks to accelerate its focus on consumer tech investments globally. One of its most recent investments was in a Series C round for Hallow, a Catholic prayer app. The firm’s focus remains on making investments in companies in either seed stage or up to $100 million across core consumer digital utilities across housing, healthcare, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment sectors.
“During a tough time in the market we are ready to support the very best early and growth stage consumer tech startups with $1 billion of fresh capital. We appreciate the support and trust placed in us by our Limited Partners. This new capital will fuel our global investing approach and strengthen our position as the best consumer tech investing platform in the world,” said Chi-Hua Chien, co-founder and managing partner.
Prior to the firm’s launch in 2014, its partners also made early investments in Coupang, Facebook, Kakao, Spotify and Twitter.
“With our laser focus on consumer tech, global portfolio of companies building market-leading digital consumer utilities, and software-enabled platform, we are energized to champion the success of the most promising consumer tech startups around the world,” added Eric Kim, co-founder and managing partner. “We look forward to supporting ambitious teams building transformative digital solutions to address the needs of 8 billion humans who need better access to housing, healthcare, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment.”
The firm’s global portfolio spans some of the most successful consumer tech startups of the past decade, including social media company musical.ly (acquired by Bytedance, China/U.S.), fintech super app Toss (South Korea), ethnic grocery eCommerce leader Weee! (California), fintech disruptor Stash (New York), global live entertainment platform Fever (Spain/U.K.), neighborhood social app Karrot (S. Korea), British neobank Monzo (UK), 10-minute delivery standout Getir (Turkey), and health tech innovator Everly Health (Texas).
The global community of Goodwater CEOs and leaders gathers regularly in person and online to share best practices via Masterclasses taught by functional experts and small group squads designed to boost each company’s performance in specific focus areas such as customer acquisition, conversion, engagement, retention and monetization.
In the last year alone, over 1,400 Goodwater founders and executives attended or viewed the firm’s Masterclasses over 5,000 times.
Additionally, the firm has built proprietary software that helps Goodwater executives pinpoint the best companies and help to accelerate their growth. The platform is fueled by proprietary insights on consumer tech trends, which allows the firm to track millions of products globally and understand how consumers are adopting new technology. An in-house team of engineers, data scientists and product managers build tools to help founders boost performance.
“We have been fortunate to partner with Goodwater since our early days and they have continued to provide tremendous value to us as we’ve scaled,” SG Lee, founder and CEO of Toss based in Seoul, South Korea, said in a statement. “Their consumer tech expertise has been invaluable as we’ve navigated growth from an early stage startup to a multi-billion dollar company. Goodwater is truly a global firm that uniquely appreciates the consumer tech opportunity for companies like Toss.”
