Habteab Argaw Bantora grew up in Aleta Chuko, in southern Ethiopia, watching his community go without something most of us never think twice about: clean water. In Ethiopia, 62 million people still don’t have it.*
He’s spent much of his adult life trying to fix that. His early-stage business, Vital Water Purifier, sells water filters and sanitation products across rural Ethiopia - and trains local women and young people as sales agents along the way, empowering them with their own income in the process.
Habteab’s business idea is clever in its simplicity: filters sold at full price in town subsidise cheaper ones in the poorer rural villages, and free ones for families who can’t pay at all. It’s a direct answer to the poverty he grew up around - poverty deep enough, in rural Ethiopia, to touch everything: clean water, food, education, the basics many of us take for granted.**
Vital is a great example of the kind of business we exist to support: one in its early life, led by a founder who's visibly passionate about the human problem they're solving. It's one of four businesses we're supporting in 2026–2027. Each is at a slightly different stage, but needs the same thing: people in their corner offering expert advice as they begin building something that matters.
If you follow us, you’ve probably already met Habteab and his cohort. What you might not know is what happens next. What does a year with All Good Ventures actually look like, once a founder gets the email that says “you’re in”?
Let’s walk you through it – with Habteab as the example.
The short version: Money, Mentoring, Muscle
One thing to know about us, is that we never simply hand over a cheque and wish founders luck. Every founder we back gets three things, for a full twelve months: Money, Mentoring, and Muscle.
Broadly, here’s the shape of the year. Around mid-year, a new cohort signs on and the grant lands in their account. Two months of intensive one-on-one strategy work with our co-founder Rod follows. Then a dedicated mentor takes over for the next ten months. Muscle - the practical extras - sits available the whole time, ready whenever it’s needed. One year in, the cycle starts again with a new cohort.
Here’s what each piece of our programme actually looks like for someone like Habteab...
Money: enough to get moving
Every founder we accept gets a one-off grant, somewhere between $5,000 and $20,000 NZD. There's no interest, no repayment, and no equity taken. It's a gift, full stop.
For Habteab, the grant lands not long after he signs his support agreement, paid straight into Vital Water Purifier's bank account. What he does with it from there is largely his call. It might mean buying water filter and sanitation product stock to reach a new village, or working capital to keep his cross-subsidy model turning over while the business edges closer to standing on its own. We don't require founders to report back on how they spend it, though we love hearing when they do.
We know it's not everything Habteab needs, it's not meant to be. It's momentum - enough to keep him moving forward under his own steam, with Mentoring and Muscle right behind it to carry the rest of the way.
Mentoring: the part that does the heavy lifting
The way we see it, Money gets a business moving but Mentoring helps steer it in the right direction - and if you ask our alumni, many will tell you it's the part of our programme that makes the most impact.
From July, Habteab spends two months working fortnightly, one-on-one, with our co-founder Rod. Together they build what’s called a One Page Strategic Plan - a tool borrowed from Verne Harnish’s book Scaling Up - plus a proper budget. It’s the entire strategy for Vital Water Purifier, distilled onto a single page, clear enough that Habteab can see exactly where the business is headed and how he’ll get it there. By the final mentoring session, he and Rod will have figured out exactly what kind of mentor he needs next.
That’s where phase two starts. From around September, a carefully matched volunteer mentor steps in for ten months - meeting monthly, shaping their guidance around whatever the business needs that month according to its founder, and reporting back to us after each session so we can step in with extra support if it’s needed.
All up, that’s roughly 20 hours of mentoring across the year for each founder. For some, we’re their first real backer. For others, we’re one piece of a bigger puzzle. Either way, a dedicated mentor for 12 months total can change a business’s whole trajectory. We see it happen every year.
Muscle: the practical top-up
Muscle is the catch-all - built to plug whatever gap Money and Mentoring don’t quite reach. It includes a curated online Learning Hub of startup resources exclusively for our founders, free consulting hours with four New Zealand-based experts (currently covering PR, digital marketing, finance and podcasting, with room for more to join), and a door into our partner We Make Change: a global bench of more than 50,000 skilled volunteers.
For Habteab, advice from our finance Muscle Partner might end up mattering almost as much as the grant itself. Another founder might need something tangible – help with a new website, a marketing plan, a set of proposal documents - that's where We Make Change comes in, matching them with the right talent. Different gaps, same goal: meet each founder exactly where they're stuck.
Why we built it this way
We believe lasting change is built, not bought. A grant can open a door, but ‘walking through it’ - turning a promising idea into a business that actually holds together, year after year - takes a lot more than money. It takes someone, or multiple someone’s, in your corner for the long haul.
That’s the whole logic behind backing founders with three things instead of one. Money gets them moving. Mentoring keeps them moving in the right direction. Muscle fills whatever the other two can’t reach.
And it’s working! Our latest Impact Report shows the businesses we’ve backed have gone on to positively impact 375,930 lives - through jobs, education, healthcare, and the everyday basics most of us take for granted. We’re so proud to play a part in getting them off the ground so they can go on to achieve incredible things.
Where you come in
None of this happens without people who believe what we believe: back a purpose-driven business at the right moment, and you don’t just change one founder’s path. You change the course of hundreds of lives. Often thousands.
If we’ve piqued your interest, there are two specific ways you can help.
If you’re a businessperson, the thing our founders need most after the grant lands is your expertise - we’re always growing our network of volunteer mentors and Muscle partners. Email Beth at beth@allgood.ventures to find out more.
And if you’d rather give financially - your donation to our work at All Good Ventures is tax-deductible, and it goes further than you’d think. To date, every dollar given to our enterprise founders has changed close to one and a half marginalised lives.
So that's what happens after we say "yes!". Money to move, mentoring to steer, muscle to fill the gaps - and twelve months later, a business that's strongly positioned to change lives well into the future. If you’d like to be part of what we’re doing, don't be shy. We'd love to hear from you.
Sources
* WHO/UNICEF Joint Monitoring Programme (JMP) data, cited in The Borgen Project, “Ethiopia’s Access to Clean Water” - borgenproject.org/ethiopias-access-to-clean-water
** “Impact of crop commercialization on multidimensional poverty in rural Ethiopia,” National Center for Biotechnology Information - pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC11754290