A letter from our CEO — Talking Crap

I have some really big, exciting news to share. Usually I’d initiate a drumroll, but that seems silly in writing. Actually, why not, let’s do it.

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“After 9 years, we’ve just brought on our first investors to help scale the business and our impact! ”

Let me explain why this is such a big deal.

My co-founders and I have always been passionate about proving the business world can (and should!) take an active part in social change. Starting Who Gives A Crap was less about making great toilet paper (though we definitely do that), and more about building a company with the sole purpose of doing good. This idea has guided all aspects of our business, but especially our mission.

Our company’s purpose is to ensure everyone has access to clean water and a toilet in our lifetime. We donate 50% of our profits to incredible non-profit partners to make it happen. But to reach our goal, we need to accelerate our growth and take our impact to the next level.

“Even though we’ve donated over $10 million to date, we still have billions to go. ”

Yes, billions. As I write this, over 2 billion people are still drinking from a water source that’s contaminated by human waste. It’s shocking. It’s heartbreaking. But with a lot of work, it’s fixable.

To reach our ambitious (audacious, even) impact trajectory, we need to scale the business. To do that, we need additional capital – that’s why we started entertaining the idea of investors.

We’ve been self-funded since the beginning, which is incredibly unusual for a high-growth startup. Most startups take funding and operate while losing money until the business gets bigger and hopefully becomes profitable. Because we were donating half of our profits, we wanted to be profitable as quickly as possible to make donations and prove that our business model could work.

We’ve had to grow very carefully, taking small, calculated steps to ensure we’ve always been able to make a substantial annual donation to our charity partners. With this investment, we can make some bigger bets to grow the business while ensuring our donations have the biggest impact in the long run.

This was an enormous decision for us as a business and not one we took lightly. In fact, we had very specific criteria for our potential investors.

They had to support our mission and recognise that doing good isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s what makes us successful.
They had to be in it for the long haul. That’s because we’re in it for the long haul — it’s taken us 9 years to get to where we are today, so we know it will take a lot longer for us to make sure everyone has access to clean water and a toilet.
They had to have experience and expertise that we could learn from.

We’re really proud that our new investors check all of these boxes.

So who are these mysterious investors? Our lead investors are some very nice people from a company called Verlinvest, who also happen to be the people behind Oatly and Tony’s Chocolonely (two of our favourite mission-driven brands). We’ve also brought on the nice folks from The Craftory, Jamjar, Airtree, Grok Ventures, Giant Leap and Athletic Ventures, as well as a bunch of individuals that have helped found and grow some of the companies that we look up to. They’re all great role models for how to balance mission, growth and building a strong brand.

So what are we doing with the money? A lot of business-y stuff that we’re still working out. But what we can tell you is that we’ll be entering new countries, making more products, scaling our sustainability initiatives and finding new ways to help our community make a positive impact on the world. All while reaching our goal of toilets and clean water for everyone faster than we’d ever thought possible.