Boulton & Watt
Est. 1775
What we do
Boulton & Watt is perhaps the world's slowest startup incubator. We build one company at a time with focused execution and high success rates.
We start one new company every year or so, and we do the work ourselves. We don't work with entrepeneurs-in-residence or fund others with a clever investment memo.
We think product-market fit is a hard problem and that can't be industrialized or handed off. Most of the work of a scientist isn't generating hypotheses, it's running experiments to get the data. That's what we do.
Once we've created real traction, we partner with best-in-class operators to create a second founding moment to scale the company. That's because the skills at each stage of a startup are different, even if vesting schedules pretend they're the same.
We aim for unreasonable speed with each portfolio company while making decisions at Boulton & Watt like we're going to be in business for decades. We go long: building networks of talented people we someday hope to work with, waiting patiently for businesses to compound, and preferring to make the pie bigger for everyone instead of owning all of a small pie of our own.
Who we are
- Jesse Clurman, Chief of Staff
- Lauren Feld, Chief of Staff
- Jan Fiegel, Partner and Head of People
- Dan Friedman, Managing Partner
- Sam Gerstenzang, Managing Partner
- Emma Gilsanz, Partner and Head of Concept Development
- Clément Huyghebaert, Partner and Head of Engineering
We're backed by leading investors, founders of public and large private companies, and executives across the gamut of startups and public companies.
Our companies
We're focused on vertical SaaS and infrastructure where we can unlock economic opportunities for others. Our categories might look niche, but they're not. You've just overlooked them.
- Moxie helps nurses open their own regulated aesthetics practices. 90%+ of our customers are female first-time business owners and we give them the tools to compete against the biggest chains. (Series B)
- Meadow Memorials is a contemporary, transparent, and hospitality-driven take on the traditional funeral home. (Series A)
Our namesake
We're named after the company formed in 1775 by Matthew Boulton and James Watt to commercialize the steam engine. It was the partnership between technology and business that catalyzed the Industrial Revolution.