The problem it solves could not be less sexy: giant globs of greasy gunk known as fatbergs. Billions of euro are spent annually around the world dealing with congealed masses of flushed non-biodegradable solid matter formed when grease and cooking fat meet wet wipes and other matter creating blockages that can break sewer systems and can damage human health. 

Now Irish start-up SwiftComply, which has developed a platform to help cities and water authorities protect human health and the environment, has raised another $2.5 million (€2.24 million) from high net worth investors to solve this global problem. 

Its new funding round, The Currency has learned, includes not just its long-term backers like a former chief operating officer at Facebook, but also an American venture capitalist married to Chelsea Clinton. 

The fundraising, which is almost closed, will value the business at more than $20 million. Nice work, considering it is just four years since it was founded by Michael O’Dwyer.

High-profile backers

SwiftComply’s latest series A round is a mark of confidence in the business, which now has customers in Ireland, Britain, the Netherlands and the United States.

SwiftComply has developed a high-tech tool that allows cities and water authorities to work with the foodservice industry to meet their compliance requirements, thereby preventing the build-up of fats, oil and grease (FOG). 

This new funding round of $2.5 million has brought a number of new investors on board as well as seeing existing backers put more into the company. Among the new investors is Marc Mezvinsky. 

A director of TPG Capital private equity, the venture capitalist invested about $150,000 in his own name. Mezvinsky is married to Chelsea Clinton, the only daughter of Bill and Hillary Clinton. 

Mezvinsky joined TPG as a managing director and business-unit partner in its $1.6 billion Tech Adjacencies Fund, which invests in growing technology companies that do not want to go public.

Nellore Capital, the biggest investor in the round, put in about $500,000. Sakya Duvvuru, a former partner in Social Capital, leads Nellore Capital, which was founded in 2019. Social Capital is best known in Ireland for investing in Irish unicorn Intercom as far back as 2013. Mevinsky is a former vice-chairman of Social Capital. 

415 Investments, a venture capital company co-founded by Owen Van Natta, first invested in the business during its seed round and he has now put follow-up funding into the A round. Van Natta was chief operating officer at Facebook from 2005 until 2008. 

Michael O’Dwyer is on his way to both hitting serious pay-dirt for his investors while solving an important environmental and health problem.

He previously worked as a vice-president with Amazon and was once chief executive of Myspace. He was also a senior executive and board director of Zynga. Van Natta is reported to have held onto a significant number of shares in Facebook, which today has a market capitalisation of over $550 billion.

Enterprise Ireland is also a significant investor in the business. Howzat Partners, an investor in early-stage digital businesses, is also a backer. Howzat was cofounded by Hugo Burge, who was the chief executive of the Momondo Group which owns the Cheapflights brand sold to the Booking Group for $550 million in 2017. 

Of the roughly 30 investors who have backed SwiftComply, most have relatively minor stakes. Angels include Bryan Maybury, the co-founder of Macalla, who has also backed John Byrne’s fintech business Corlytics. 

Chris Adelsbach, a former managing director of Techstars who now runs Outrun Ventures, is also among a range of angel investors who have backed the company. Techstars London is also a small investor.  

*****

Dealing with fatbergs is big business. Cities and towns in the United States spend hundreds of millions annually dealing with such blockages and globally it is a multi-billion market.

Aaron Kraft, a general manager at Veolia North America, described it this way in a December 2019 column: “Beyond the associated clean-up costs, fatbergs present a tremendous environmental and public health threat.”

Pipes being blocked is more than an inconvenience as they cause toxins to leak into rivers or the drinking water supply when they crack or overspill. New York spends over $18 million a year tackling the problem for example.

Detroit spent $100,000 in 2019 clearing a 100-foot-long glob inside an 11-foot diameter pipe called the Lakeshore Interceptor. Last year Thames Water spent three weeks clearing out a 40-tonne fatberg the size of a double-decker bus from a London sewer. The blockage was so severe some of it had to be cleared by hand. Closer to home, clearing out fatbergs is a constant challenge for Irish Water, which has to deal with over 6,000 blockages a year. Last year, an eight-foot-long blockage had to be cleared in Wicklow. In an interview with The Journal last year, Annabel Fitzgerald of Irish Water said: “The size and scale of the impact of flushing the wrong items down the toilet is incredible. It is really important that people recognise the impact of what they flush so the network can function efficiently and effectively.” 

*****

Engineering a business

O’Dwyer got the idea for his business in 2008 when he was working as an engineer with Dublin City Council, where he developed Europe’s first FOG regulatory program in Dublin. O’Dwyer reduced fatberg build up in Dublin by 95 per cent. In 2016 O’Dwyer was ready to found his own business. 

After doing a Techstars London start-up accelerator, Swiftcomply was made a high potential start-up by Enterprise Ireland. 

Swiftcomply previously closed an almost $1 million seed round in 2017, and the business has been growing its revenues rapidly across two continents.  

Over 450 cities in North America use Swiftcomply including authorities in Houston, San Diego and San Francisco. It has had a significant business in Amsterdam since 2018 and acquired XC2 Software in 2019 for an undisclosed amount. The move allowed it to launch a new product called SwiftBackflow, which is a software product that helps carry out backflow tests for water providers. 

Michael O’Dwyer is on his way to both hitting serious pay-dirt for his investors while solving an important environmental and health problem.

Swiftcomply is only at the tip of its global potential to defeat fatbergs.