As momentum builds, Citizen adds a new investor
Goodwater Capital joins other existing investors in $20 million strategic investment
[Image: From Andrew Frame, Citizen Founder and CEO.]
Part of building a company is building a great team. Today marks an important recruiting event for Citizen. I’m excited to announce that Chi-Hua Chien, Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Goodwater Capital will be joining the Citizen team as an investor and partner.
I’ve been discussing Citizen with Chi-Hua since before the Series-B closed. He has an excellent track record and two decades of experience growing consumer companies. He has invested in some incredible success stories while at Goodwater, Kleiner Perkins and Accel. Chi-Hua’s skill set building category-defining businesses in combination with Goodwater’s focus on mission-oriented companies make for a good match for what we’re building at Citizen. Goodwater Capital will be investing $20 million into the company in the form of a convertible note. Combined with equity funding to date, Citizen has now raised $60 million.
The investment from Goodwater will help accelerate Citizen’s considerable growth and momentum. Since launching in New York in 2017, Citizen is now established in 15 cities in the US and aims to be in more than 30 by the end of the year. Citizen has seen over 3 million downloads since inception and one in eight New Yorkers use the app.
In addition, this investment will be used to launch new features that keep Citizen users even safer and better informed. Starting today, users can connect and communicate with family and friends on Citizen. We’ve already seen that users want to check on the people they’re closest to when an incident occurs. With these new tools, users can connect to their friends directly through the app, see when friends are close by, send direct messages about incidents and, most importantly, let each other know they are safe.
I am incredibly proud of the efforts of the Citizen team in the last three years. We have worked very hard to build a unique product that is a proven force of good in the world. There is much work to be done but I’m proud to see Citizen continue to expand and deliver on our mission of making your world a safer place.
