Waterfall - the digital bridge to bankable climate assets

The world needs and wants sustainable infrastructure, but there’s a $64 trillion infrastructure investment gap between now and 2050 to achieve net zero. This gap is widening because next generation infrastructure looks different to the large-scale infrastructure projects of the past - it’s smaller-scale, modular and distributed, making it harder to fund. 

The ability for this next generation infrastructure to access traditional debt markets is hindered by its complexity, examples including risk allocation, financial structuring, and forecasting - all leading to projects not reaching deployment. With this complexity comes a funding bottleneck, and with 20x growth in sustainable debt markets required to reach net zero goals we need to solve these hurdles.

There are hundreds of infrastructure solutions coming to market that tackle decarbonisation, such as modular heating and cooling in buildings, 3D-printed tiles to restore marine ecosystems, regenerative agriculture and closed-loop supply chains, however they’re not being deployed quickly due to complex funding pathways. 

To be widely deployed and deliver real climate impact, climate hardware needs a different investment approach from both the massive infrastructure projects of the past and traditional startup funding pathways. We need to design projects to be bankable so that they can target the right funding sources at the right time - increasing their chances of scaling and delivering real climate impact.

Waterfall helps climate-solution companies to make their projects commercially viable, connect them with capital sources, and ensure both funding partners and the companies can seamlessly transact, manage and report on the investment. We do this through the Waterfall Platform - an end-to-end digital funding solution.

The Waterfall Platform is a two-sided marketplace that allows for climate infrastructure projects to be matched with high probability funding partners. 

For Project Developers we help with the design, delivery and deployment of climate infrastructure projects through a number of products:

• FOAK by Waterfall helps developers of First-of-a-Kind (FOAK) projects to be funding ready. Our productised approach provides a pathway for companies to create an institutional-grade commercial proposition, apply innovative financing options and accelerate and de-risk their project pipeline.

• Build by Waterfall provides a digitally enabled corporate development team as a service. We commercialise assets and businesses, structure financing with innovative financial instruments and connect investors and developers to transact quickly and efficiently. 

• Liquidity by Waterfall offers ongoing compliance, reporting and capital optimisation to enable the liquidity needed to leverage and build new assets.

For investors we convert climate projects into institutional-grade investment assets through a standardised process and smart, data driven tools. This includes:

• Specialised market intelligence and insights to inform and accelerate decision making for focus climate verticals.  

• Pre-vetted and pre-built innovative transaction structures that transfer risk and deliver meaningful returns.

• We make it easy to deal with new development counterparties, preparing projects for market and solving due diligence and process needs.

By removing the barriers of scale, maturity and fees we solve the growing funding gap for smaller scale, distributed climate assets. 

Access the Waterfall demo for Project Developers

Access the Waterfall demo for Funding Partners

Waterfall is driving investment into a better future. We enable faster and scalable deployment of sustainable infrastructure assets - this accelerates emission reduction, assists with climate adaptation and improves the adoption of sustainable innovations.

By increasing and democratising access to climate markets for landowners, Traditional Owners and communities we’re building financial literacy, reducing conflicts of interest and improving transparency in climate solutions. We’re supporting project developers and funding partners to better value and price the benefits of nature, environmental and social impacts.

For landowners, Traditional Owners and local communities we’re providing direct access to difficult to access funding sources to empower these stakeholders to take ownership in local climate infrastructure. And for those that are hosting these projects, we’re providing resources and direction to project developers to ensure fair and reasonable contracting that supports local development and ensures holistic measurement of project impacts.

Being Australian-headquartered, we have near-term growth ambitions into serving the APAC region. This is because we see South East Asia as an underserved and key market for the deployment of climate solutions and the tools and funding to support these. 

At a global scale, we’re targeting US$5 billion in funding per year by 2030, enabling an estimated 100 million tonnes CO2e of carbon reduction per annum.

Our solution knows no boundaries, and neither do we. We’ve been global from day one - with a diverse team coming together from international roots. We believe this diversity is key to our success because the projects, communities and funders we represent have differing priorities and mandates for creating next generation infrastructure.

We believe that our capability can be strengthened and are building an influential advisory board which will allow increased support, skills and access for different markets.

Our team continuously engages in direct outreach and attends digital and global face to face events. Feedback on our Platform that we’ve received at these events continues to highlight the importance of high-quality projects that have been accurately vetted. We’re responding to this feedback by building in a rigorous funding readiness process for project developers that supports funding partners to deeply understand their financial, community, governance and environmental obligations and areas for improvement. Our funding readiness process allows us to advocate on behalf of proponents and communities by focusing on the value of localised control and influence over development activity. 

Even after a transaction has been completed, Waterfall is committed to high-quality projects by implementing institutional-grade monitoring and reporting across financial, social and environmental metrics.

Our next stage of development will focus on building a proprietary risk decision model that will utilise a wide range of data sources (including our own) to accurately provide risk indicators across a projects’ sustainability.

The Waterfall Platform currently allows project developers to create a project and for funders to create an account. We have three project developers providing feedback on this MVP and a register of over 100 direct investor/developer relationships to be converted. 

Waterfall has signed one carbon-focussed platform customer ($100m mandate with potential to generate ~$500k over the next 12 months). We are working with 3 other companies under NDA, have 1 additional LOI and 8 other high probability potential customers. These companies are primarily in nature based solutions, with the lower proportion of interested companies focussed on new energies. We also have an ongoing informal partnership with a major bank. 

We've successfully hired our first employee and are progressing to hiring a second due to growing customer demand for our services.

We are looking for expert assistance that can help us build our company quickly and professionally, a community to work with to refine and innovate our solutions, and connections to potential customers and investors.

We are hoping that by becoming a Solver we will be able to access:

• Technical support by industry experts to help us to build out our product in a meaningful way. We’re looking for advisory expertise from those that have worked on funding new infrastructure projects so that we can undertake regular gap analysis as a way to ensure that our digital simplification and streamlining of the funding process maintains best practice processes and incorporates evolving investor expectations.

• Legal guidance as we navigate the complexities of our business structure and IP as a global company, and as a financial services company facing regulations around the financial advice we can provide and in which markets. 

• Financial support to enable us to build the platform quicker. We’re continuously iterating and evolving our MVP with customer feedback and functionality however there are key elements of the platform such as dataroom and standardised documentation functionality that will enable end-to-end transactions and provide a deeper customer experience. We are balancing the costs of building quickly with ensuring we’re receiving customer feedback and achieving business development goals.

• Public relations support to scale our marketing and sales. As a highly-engaged and informed team we have a lot of topic areas that can provide meaningful insights into how to get climate solutions funded. We’d love to spend the time and energy in developing our thought leadership, backing it up with data and using this data to drive external relations. By improving our position as a leader in financing climate solutions we believe we’ll be able to progress potential clients, especially on the capital markets side, through our acquisition funnel.

Waterfall is catalysing capital into sustainable infrastructure.

Funding climate assets is complex and costly. Currently, project developers must hire an expensive in-house team or engage a prohibitively expensive advisor to help them with the funding process. On the other side, institutional investors use a process that is administratively complex, bespoke and labour intensive. Neither is fit for purpose for new types of assets and smaller funding amounts. 

Waterfall’s approach innovates in three key parts: 

1. Applying digital tools to reduce the time and cost involved.
2. Designing a standardised and transparent process in a way that simplifies decision making - democratising access to funding and increasing its velocity. 
3. Incorporating a range of data inputs, reporting and intelligence that change the game from doing one-off complicated transactions to a real-time, continuous funding stream that can provide better scaling up of project delivery.

Our approach aims to transform how builders of climate solutions engage with capital. First and foremost, our funding readiness tools help to drive financial literacy - helping to improve not only access to capital, but the way climate solutions are designed and delivered, while allowing local stakeholders to be more engaged in the process. 

On the investor side, we are driving a fundamental shift in how they deploy capital. By giving developers access to innovative funding structures, and better information while connecting investors to pre-packaged and risk calibrated opportunities, we are forcing investors to move from a ‘no but maybe in future’ approach to becoming more innovative and proactive participants in funding climate solutions. 

We’re in the business of innovating infrastructure. Waterfall provides technology and solution architecture services that build the foundations for digital transformation and automation. Our activities are digital-first and self-service via our website, and can be accessed remotely, completely reimagining corporate advisory services. 

While the Waterfall platform is an innovation in its use-case, we’re utilising proven technology that is low risk and well understood by most market participants.

Waterfall is on a mission to solve the funding gap for sustainable infrastructure to deliver a low-carbon world. We’re targeting US$5 billion in funding per year by 2030, enabling an estimated 100 million tonnes CO2e of carbon reduction per annum. We’re doing this by redefining how climate infrastructure is valued, financed and managed. 

Our logic model follows three key areas:

1. If we increase the bankability of early-stage climate solutions (particularly First Of A Kind projects), they will be de-risked sooner and therefore able to access greater funding options, decreasing their cost of capital and making them easier to scale. We’re delivering this through a tailored ‘Funding Readiness’ Program that steps founders through the key elements of accessing funding - including project design, business and financial structuring and understanding aligned investors. This is measured through the number of project developers that go through the program, and also, the amount of funding that subsequently flows through to their projects.

2. If we standardise the transaction process and metrics, such as Sustainable Development Goal alignment, financial benchmarks for new technologies (e.g. direct air capture, sustainable aviation fuel), and ready-made legal agreements, we will accelerate decision making - reducing the time taken for a project to receive funding, reducing the administrative costs associated with funding and increasing funding amounts.

3. If we aggregate market data (from transactions on-platform) Waterfall will increase a project developer’s understanding of the value of their projects while increasing the confidence for funding partners on projects. This will lead to increased confidence in newer sectors and higher scalability rates of these asset classes.

We believe that a positive impact on the climate means creating solutions that don't just sound good on paper but also stand up to market demands. That’s why we work with asset developers and funders to originate projects and deploy capital. And we have big dreams to de-risk climate infrastructure and get it built - fast. All of this enabling 100 million tonnes CO2e of carbon reduction per annum.

Waterfall is driving investment into a better future. We enable faster and scalable deployment of sustainable infrastructure assets - this accelerates emission reduction, assists with climate adaptation and improves the adoption of sustainable innovations.

By increasing and democratising access to climate markets for landowners, Traditional Owners and Communities we’re building financial literacy, reducing conflicts of interest and improving transparency in climate solutions. We’re supporting project developers and funding partners to better value and price the benefits of nature, environmental and social impacts.

At a global scale, we’re targeting US$5 billion in funding per year by 2030, enabling an estimated 100 million tonnes CO2e of carbon reduction per annum. This is measured by our top three customer metrics:

1. Measured increase in the speed of transacting (compared with earlier funding rounds or similar transactions)

2. Increase of funding to climate solutions measured by tickets size and funding flows

3. Increased diversity of funding types measured by a percentage split between debt and equity for projects

Waterfall is utilising cloud-based technology to create a digitised marketplace and transaction platform. We will utilise AI/ML and data analytics to transform the data that underpins due diligence of infrastructure projects into meaningful insights and measures of financing into climate solutions. We are using this technology to disrupt a typically manual and opaque industry to create a more accessible, sustainable and transparent market.

3 full time employees

5 contractors

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Waterfall’s co-founding team is 50/50 male to female. Our senior leadership team is 40/60 male to female. Waterfall is a 50% migrant founded organisation. 

We have internal practices to support creating an inclusive workplace, including:

• Statements in our job postings with a commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

• We pay above minimum wage, which is higher than the Living Wage.

• Flexible working arrangements, such as the opportunity to work from home, compressed working weeks and flexible hours based on the work that is being undertaken.

To increase transparency and equal opportunity, Waterfall has a quarterly 360 review process that enables important issues to be surfaced and resolved across our teams.

As we grow as a team we are focused on delivering a diverse workforce. We’ll do this through ongoing measurement and reporting against KPIs, benchmarking against similar organisations and feedback from our employees.

Waterfall is B2B. Our two-sided marketplace provides us with two key customer segments: 

1. Mid-market or early stage companies that build and operate physical assets such as carbon or renewable energy projects, and 
2. The capital markets players that invest in these assets including infrastructure funds, banks and private equity.

We provide technology and solution architecture services that build the foundations for digital transformation and automation. Our activities are digital-first and self-service via our website, and can be accessed remotely, keeping our pricing to customers low. We grow our distribution through direct outreach, word of mouth, attendance at industry events and continual engagement with existing networks on a global basis.

We generate revenue through subscription/service fees and success fees.

Waterfall is a young company. In just five months we’ve bootstrapped $150,000 revenue, built a strong team, delivered an MVP and proven market demand - and we’re only just getting started. If we can deliver on our existing mandates we can be profitable within 12 months, subject to investment into technology and growth.  

We know we’ll succeed because there is a ~$200 billion funding gap for sustainable infrastructure, which is worsening as the diversity of nature and technology-based abatement opportunities increases. We are seeing increasing inbound enquiries, reducing our need to invest in marketing and external sales and confirming the gap that exists in the market. The funding gap for infrastructure will mean growing competition for companies to win funding which will drive increasing business for Waterfall. 

Annual infrastructure investment is projected to increase from $2 trillion today to >$5 trillion per annum by 2030. Our $200 billion TAM assumes that 10% of the existing annual spend is smaller scale projects suited to our solution.