Chi-hua Chien
Managing Partner at Goodwater Capital
Palo Alto, California
Overview
Work Experience
Co-Founder & Managing Partner
2014 - Current
Goodwater is the world’s largest consumer-tech focused venture capital firm, managing over $4B of assets and an early + venture growth stage portfolio of 80 companies in 19 countries around the world. Our seed program serves an additional 700 portfolio companies in 51 countries. The mission of Goodwater is to empower exceptional entrepreneurs everywhere to change the world for good. Our global family of companies provide innovative technology products that address the daily needs of consumers — housing, health care, food, financial services, transportation, education, and entertainment. We believe consumer technology is the most powerful force on earth, shaping global culture and transforming the global economy at unprecedented speed and scale. We are devoted to entrepreneurs who are furiously building products and platforms that consumers love.
Goodwater Genesis seeks out exceptional entrepreneurs and helps them cultivate the success they deserve.
Early Stage Investor & Board Member
2016
Led the initial Series A pre-revenue investment round into Weee! and worked closely with the company as it pivoted from a 3P marketplace business into a 1P grocery delivery company. Weee! has grown to serve millions of customers per year across more than 25 US cities, and is now the largest ethnic eGrocer in the country.
Weee! is an online grocery delivery platform that offers Hispanic and Asian foods specialty products and everyday staples.
Raised $862,750,000.00 from SoftBank Vision Fund, iFly.vc and Greyhound Capital.
Early Stage Investor & Board Member
2016
Led a seed round into Stash when the company had 12K accounts and <$150K annualized revenue. Subsequently joined the Board and led the company's Series A financing. The company has since grown to >$100M revenue, >6M accounts, and >$3B AUM.
Stash develops a personal finance application to combine banking, investing, and advice into one platform.
Raised $519,972,000.00 from T. Rowe Price, Union Square Ventures and Goodwater Capital.
Early Stage Investor & Board Advisor
2017
Led a venture funding round into Monzo when the company had 300K pre-paid debit card users with <£5M in revenue and negative gross margins. Monzo has since grown to over 8M current accounts and $1B+ in revenue, becoming the largest and most successful neobank in the UK.
Early Stage Investor & Advisor
2016
Co-led an early stage funding round into musically (before it became TikTok) when the company had 7M active users and no revenue. The company was eventually acquired by ByteDance, which rebranded the musically product "TikTok" which has gone on to serve over 1B active users and generate over $10B of annual revenue.
Board Member
2013
Board of Trustees
2023
Venture Growth Stage Investor & Advisor
2011
Led a growth stage funding round into Spotify before it entered the US market. At the time Spotify had <500K subscribers in Europe only and $75M in revenue.
Venture Growth Stage Investor
2010
Co-led a growth investment round into Twitter when it had 50M active users but no proven revenue model outside of data licensing deals to large search providers. The company eventually grew to become a public company and was taken private by Elon Musk in a 2022 acquisition valued at $44B.
X is a social networking platform that allows its users to send and read microblogs.
Raised $12,869,191,511.00 from Greenlight Capital, Binance, Litani Ventures, Qatar Investment Authority, Qatar Holding, The Lawrence J. Ellison Revocable Trust, Fidelity, Alwaleed Bin Talal, Sequoia Capital and Vy Capital.
Early Stage Investor & Board Advisor
2008
Led a venture funding round into Chegg when it had ~$3M of revenue in its college textbook rentals business. It has grown to over $750M revenues, 8M subscribers, and the largest publicly traded ed tech company in North America.