Brooke LeBlanc

What’s a week at Propel Venture Partners like? Here are the key themes from meetings this week. Sharing to spark ideas of what we are interested in and who else we should be chatting with! ✨ 📩 ~~~ 🧠 Key Themes Fintech infrastructure maturation across emerging markets and specialized verticals, with strong momentum in stablecoin payments, insurance automation, and commodity/energy finance. 💡 Market Intelligence Stablecoin Payment Infrastructure: Multiple companies building stablecoin payment rails for different use cases - payroll, cross-border B2B, and emerging market banking. Validates the thesis that stablecoin adoption is accelerating beyond crypto-native users into mainstream business operations, particularly in markets with currency controls or high FX costs. Insurance Automation Wave: Multiple companies attacking different insurance verticals with AI. All cite similar pain points: manual processes, fragmented data, and low technology adoption. Suggests insurance remains ripe for disruption despite insurtech 1.0 failures. Emerging Market Fintech Momentum: Strong activity in Brazil around payments, trade finance, and wealth management. The regulatory environment (PIX, VASP licensing) is creating opportunities, with similar dynamics in other emerging markets. Contrast with US where fintech innovation more incremental. AI Agent Proliferation: Multiple companies building vertical-specific AI agents - investment research, insurance ops, wealth advisors, SMB operations, medical records, etc. All cite recent model capability improvements (computer use, domain-specific reasoning) as enabling. Commodity/Energy Finance Opportunities: Commodity hedging, battery financing, heavy equipment, all targeting underserved industrial/B2B markets with complex financing needs. Traditional financial infrastructure (futures markets, equipment leasing, project finance, etc.) are not serving the mid-market well. Looking forward to next week! ✈️

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Ever negotiate with a gorilla? When you do, your fundraising pitch becomes the giant acquirer's weapon. On Feb 25 & 26 I'm sharing the full analysis. Link in Comments. To raise venture capital, you must project confidence about uncertain outcomes. Hedging undermines fundraising. By the time you sit across from a sophisticated acquirer, you've spent years telling a particular story about what your technology can achieve. In earnout negotiations, the acquirer's M&A team has reviewed every investor presentation. Every board deck. Every press release. They know what you've claimed. And there is a logic to their negotiation: "If you believe so much in these outcomes, why not shift considerable consideration to the earnout?" This is what I call the Conviction Trap. Research backs it up: → 81% of entrepreneurs believe their chances of success exceed 70% (Cooper et al., 1988) → The planning fallacy: we systematically underestimate costs and overestimate benefits (Kahneman) → The illusion of control: we overestimate our ability to influence outcomes determined by external factors (Langer, 1975) But FDA clearance is not within the founder's control. Post-acquisition resource allocation is not within the founder's control. The very qualities that enabled the company to be built — conviction, vision, persistence — may prevent a clear-eyed assessment of deal risk. At Auris, we accepted $2.35 billion in earnout milestones. Those milestones required FDA clearances across 6 anatomical systems where no predicate devices existed for flexible robotic platforms. Conviction made that sound achievable. The regulatory reality was different. Feb 25 & 26 I'm sharing the full analysis. Link in comments. #founders #venturecapital #psychology #negotiation #mergers

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💡Emerging GP Fundraising Insight #8: Rolling Closes Keep You Moving Small funds can't always afford to sit still until the target is hit. Rolling closes let you start deploying earlier, build a track record, and show momentum to prospective LPs. One GP told me that for Fund I ($5M target), he took capital as it came, signed, wired, and got to work. It wasn't perfect, but it kept the lights on and the deals moving. Sometimes the "sign and wire as it comes" approach is the only way to get moving. Takeaway: Momentum is a fundraising asset and rolling closes can help you keep it. Has anyone here used rolling closes as a strategic advantage?

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A question my team and I get all the time on sales calls is: “If everyone uses Raylu… won’t we all end up seeing the same deals?” Totally fair concern - because in private markets, edge comes from seeing what others miss. Here’s the truth: • Raylu is not a marketplace. • Raylu is not a shared deal feed. Raylu is an AI-native origination system built around Deal Engineering - and this is the key point: Raylu doesn’t look the same for every fund. Because Deal Engineering means the platform is designed to think like you and mirror your process as an investor. So the way Raylu is set up for Fund A can be completely different than Fund B: • different definitions of “good signals” • different exclusions / conflicts • different scoring + prioritization logic • different workflows + outputs • different outreach motion + sequencing • different CRM loop + internal process We believe the only way to consistently source deals you’d actually invest in is to build a system that’s bespoke to how your fund thinks - not a generic database everyone queries the same way. And critically: Every time you enter a thesis, Raylu runs an on-demand AI search + scrape to build that market view. • It’s not a static list. • It’s not a feed. It’s your thesis, executed - inside your private workspace. What’s shared vs. what’s private: → Shared: the platform infrastructure (workflows, speed, integrations) → Private: your work (theses, searches, lists, rankings, notes, outreach, exports, CRM outputs) Even if two firms start with something similar, differentiation shows up where alpha actually lives: • scope decisions (geo, revenue profile, customer type, business model) • signal decisions (funding profile, growth signals, profitability proxies, customer mix) • exclusions + execution (conflicts, no-go flags, prioritization, sequencing, messaging) Origination isn’t “a list.” Origination is a system. Same platform ≠ same pipeline. Article linked below: https://lnkd.in/dZT3BtHh

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🥾 #bootstrapping as a mindset should be ephemeral, one that requires a deliberate transition away from as a business enters sustained growth Appointing an established auditor is often regarded as a luxury and not part of bootstrapping Audits discipline a business - to be methodical, thorough and deliberate - traits that acquirers often seek in due diligence After all, "What gets inspected, gets respected," Anon We will share the traits of venture businesses sought and respected by MNC acquirers, join us if your business is out of the #bootstrapping mindset #fulfillingpotential #hepmil #oobmil

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