00:14:48 · Eric Kim
[00:14:48] S4: By that, and, they were willing to take our capital early on. But we really saw not from the outside in, but through the consumer voice, the love for the product. I remember at the time, there's a lot of people who thought that investment in cacao was crazy. Maybe even some of the early team members weren't quite sure about the future. But when we talk to consumers, when we talk to people who actually use the product, they loved it so, so much. Oftentimes, one of the things I love to do when I go to cities, whether it's London or New York, I just like to hang out in the subway. You can see what apps they're using, just the color of the icons they're using. And when you go to Korea, a lot more people were starting to use this yellow icon, Kakao, and then you would talk to them. Why did they use it? I can save money. I can communicate with my friends. There's a group chat that becomes my community. And so that was our key insight is that you could scale this and create a powerful network effect that as more people got onto the platform, it would benefit all the preexisting users as well. That's a really powerful phenomenon that increases retention, that as more people get onto the product, the product gets better. How many of those can you name? There are very, very few companies that do that. And so once we saw that insight, we felt a very strong commune... Conviction to invest in the company. They were both very early stage deals, series a for the cacao and kind of series a plus for Coupang. The returns were massive on kind of a venture scale, kind of the 100 x, 300 x type scales. I think most venture capital firms, in my experience, do great work, but they don't necessarily have a strong sense of mission. And that's what was important to us when we started Goodwater was to have a really clear mission statement, again, to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. Goodwater had a tremendous impact on the venture capital ecosystem because we changed the mindset to go from an ecocentric mindset where you have individual venture capitalists being celebrated for how much money they made. Shifting that there's nothing wrong with that but shifting it more to a mindset of how can we, as a venture capital industry, have positive impact itself.
00:16:56 · Eric Kim
If Goodwater, many, many, many years from now, is known for that, Capital is a really, really valuable resource that you have to steward, and that's why we're called Goodwater. We think water is similar to technology and capital. Water is the source of life for every living organism, but the lack of water or too much water can lead to destruction itself. And technology and capital is the exact same thing, that you have to steward it. It can be a source for so much positive influence in the world, but it can also be used for not so good things too. That technology and capital isn't always the source of goodness in the world too. So we want to be the good water in the venture capital ecosystem. We also thought that the world didn't need another venture capital firm. There are so many great venture capital firms out there, Sequoia, Benchmark, you know, Accel Partners. There there are so many great venture capital firms out there. The world didn't need necessarily another venture capital firm. But what if you could create a venture capital firm that was not only mission oriented but focused on consumer Internet, consumer technology itself? A lot of venture capital firms at the time and still to today diversified away from consumer tech. They went to enterprise SaaS or security or hardware or climate tech or biotech. If you think about the best venture capital firms, where they started was by investing in companies like Google, like Amazon, like eBay. Six out of the eight largest companies in the world are all consumer tech companies like Facebook as well. Not only are there great equity returns there, but if you own that end customer relationship, then you can create so much innovation that backward integrates all the way into the enterprise as well. So we had this thesis that consumer technology, consumer Internet was incredibly powerful, that owning those end customer relationships was very powerful, that would span not just social networking, not just ecommerce, but that would span also.
00:18:49 · S0, S1
Ad[00:18:49] S0: This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block or finally break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini in Chrome is here for it. Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses, setup required, compatibility, and availability varies 18 plus. Ad[00:19:14] S1: Who said you can't have things your way? Spin your way on DraftKings Casino, the exclusive iGaming provider of Foxwoods. Flex spins let you pick the slots exclusively on DraftKings. New casino players play $5 and get 1,000 total flex spins, including 100 lightning link spins. Unlock 50 spins a day at varying values for your first twenty days, then use your spins your way across more than a 100 top slots. Download the DraftKings Casino app now. Sign up with promo code floor and spin your way. The crown is yours. In partnership with DraftKings Casino. Help is available for problem gambling. Call (888) 789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. Must be 21 or older. Physically present in Connecticut. Eligibility restrictions apply. Nonwithdrawable spins issued as 50 spins per day for twenty days valid for select games only and expire each day after twenty four hours. Spins values vary. See terms at casino.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 11/22/2026 at 11:59PM eastern time.
00:19:14 · S1, S2
Ad[00:19:14] S1: Who said you can't have things your way? Spin your way on DraftKings Casino, the exclusive iGaming provider of Foxwoods. Flex spins let you pick the slots exclusively on DraftKings. New casino players play $5 and get 1,000 total flex spins, including 100 lightning link spins. Unlock 50 spins a day at varying values for your first twenty days, then use your spins your way across more than a 100 top slots. Download the DraftKings Casino app now. Sign up with promo code floor and spin your way. The crown is yours. In partnership with DraftKings Casino. Help is available for problem gambling. Call (888) 789-7777 or visit ccpg.org. Must be 21 or older. Physically present in Connecticut. Eligibility restrictions apply. Nonwithdrawable spins issued as 50 spins per day for twenty days valid for select games only and expire each day after twenty four hours. Spins values vary. See terms at casino.draftkings.com/promos. Ends 11/22/2026 at 11:59PM eastern time. Ad[00:20:15] S2: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs.
00:20:15 · S2, S3, S5
Ad[00:20:15] S2: This episode is brought to you by Indeed. You're ready to level up your business, but the pressure to find the right person to make that happen is intense. Indeed sponsored jobs can help carry the load. It boosts your job post to help it reach quality talent fast. Cut through the chaos with Indeed sponsored jobs. Get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring now? Then this is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. Ad[00:20:44] S3: The secret society of semi homemade? Listen up. Sam's Club has premade dishes for a Thanksgiving feast that's ready in two hours, all while tasting suspiciously homemade. Ad[00:20:55] S5: Come join us. Sam's Club. Individual oven times may vary.
00:20:59 · Eric Kim
[00:20:59] S4: Financial services, health care, education, all these big industries would be increasingly consumerized because you could own those end customer relationships through digital technology. That was our big thesis when we started the firm in 2014. At Goodwater, our philosophy is that investing is both an art and a science. And so we leverage our technology and our software to get to the truth of the science part as quickly as possible. Of our 65, 66 person team, two thirds of that team are actually data scientists, product managers, engineers. And since day one, we've been building an infrastructure, a software layer to enable us to look at consumer technology companies. So we find so much value in looking at the data, being able to have this infrastructure to see companies on a global basis. We track over 10,000,000 companies in real time. So we have very, very accessible reports, consumer research, analytics, benchmarks that allow us to understand a company we think better than any other firm because we have so much data around it and we know how to apply it. So when we see a new opportunity to invest in, we're very quickly able to assess, is this company best in class not only on growth but also retention, customer love, what's their differentiation? All the hard science of investing, we've really locked into a very strong process and a platform itself. What's as important and it goes with it is the art part, and that's really understanding the entrepreneur, understanding that person's will and desire to win, that person's desire to have impact itself. By taking all the science and being able to really get to truth as quickly as possible, then you can spend a lot more time on spending time with the entrepreneur, understanding their motivations, understanding what their long term goal is, their vision for the company. So if you have seven days in a week, in the old process, it used to take six days in the week to do all the science, and then you have one day to maybe understand the soft part or the art. We've reversed that, is that it takes one day to understand the science part of it, the analytics, all the components that you can have software and our data platform really understand very quickly and spend the other six days to really understand the entrepreneur. Can we partner with this person?