Since 2013, Freshwater Advisors has transformed the landscape of corporate innovation and investment. Over the past ten years, we’ve worked with nearly two dozen Fortune 500 companies to forge partnerships between major public organizations and bold emerging startups. We believe that blending “the speed and agility of startups” with “the scale and distribution of large enterprises” creates beautiful innovations to transform the way we live, work, and play. And it is our goal to help develop the technologies of the future.

The Freshwater team has been building entrepreneurial and innovation ecosystems for more than 25 years. Our experts and advisors have created new corporate venture arms across multiple industry sectors. We have been at the forefront of introducing new modalities of innovation experimentation and co-creation initiatives between corporations and startup ecosystems that have yielded measurable and exemplary outcomes.

In the last four years, most of our innovation work with corporations has focused on sustainability and impact-driven objectives, including:

• Our partnership with Exelon (Nasdaq: EXC), the nation’s premier energy transmission and distribution utility company, to help develop and administer their 10-year, $20 million Climate Change Investment Initiative (2c2i). The 2c2i program supports startups in creating bold climate solutions with potential wide-scale impact.
• Our partnership with AWS on the Clean Energy Accelerator (CEA) and their Sustainable Cities Accelerator. These accelerators unleash the potential of mature startups to drive commercial and technical milestones while working in partnership with large corporations and public sector entities around various sustainability modalities.

Originally founded in Chicago and inspired by the beauty of the “freshwater” of Lake Michigan, we have expanded to the Western Rockies of Park City, Utah, and Los Angeles, California. We continue to keep that Freshwater flowing as we focus on delivering innovative sustainability solutions and fostering co-creation between leading organizations and startup ecosystems.