Here’s a quick profile on how we invest at Propeller for founders seeking funding or for investors seeking to syndicate with us. Note: We’re speaking generally here. We sometimes draw outside the lines.
Stage
We typically invest between Pre-seed to Seed. We will invest as late as ~Series A, depending on the circumstances. We’ll entertain founders at the Idea stage, but we usually like to see some kind of traction. Many of our founders build momentum with grants to fund their research first, then spin out their startup to fundraise and commercialize their innovation. If you’re at the idea stage, we still encourage you to reach out. We like to get to know founders early in their journey.
Check Size
Our sweet spot is $500K-$1.5M. Again, this isn’t a hard and fast limit. We will write checks both larger and smaller where appropriate. It depends on the round size, price, and how the syndicate, if any, shapes up. We also reserve funds to take our pro rata in future rounds.
Process
Typically, one of our partners gets interested in a founder, their startup, and their potential deal.* The partner will socialize the company internally, get conviction on the deal, and “do the work.” This means we’d enter into due diligence (hopefully you’ll share a data room of some kind) and we begin preparing a deal memo to share with our Investment Committee (IC) before we bring you in to formally pitch. All deals go through our IC, which comprises our six investment partners. After the IC, we may make a decision, or we may have more follow up questions. Point is, to invest, we must have conviction.
This is our current investment style and process. It has already evolved a bit since we started, and it may change more in the future. Regardless, hopefully this has been helpful to you founders out there. We know fundraising is hard; we've all done it ourselves. G'luck!
*We sometimes may love a founder, and/or what they’re working on, but the investment opportunity just isn’t a great fit for our model.
