Today, Propeller pushed an update to our website, revealing for the first time the portfolio we’ve been busy building. It’s an exciting day for us because what makes our work so satisfying is backing founders and the important work they’re doing.

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.

As a scientist I’ve spent decades studying how the air and sea communicate with each other. From a whisper to a roar, their sounds roll and ruffle across the blue expanse. Fruits of their joint labor like tropical cyclones dance across the planet and yield some of the fiercest most bellicose noises. So here I categorize the signals emerging in 2023 and their impact in 2024 as a “whisper” or a “roar.” With so many sounds to make sense of, this is a navigation guide to four areas to tune into...

This year’s COP was a sea change for the growing recognition of the role and speed of innovation in climate tech, and especially in the oceans. Multiple pavilions and a “start-up village” in the Green Zone drew attention to the ways private capital is scaling up broader climate solutions. And the opportunity for public-private financing of truly transformative approaches was at its most palpable. A new $250M Ocean Resilience and Climate Alliance (ORCA) fund was announced, encompassing a portfolio vital to planetary stabilization. In addition, hallway conversations featured the concept of a global “Innovation Fund” to match the scale of scope of what is needed to drive tech solutions that partner with the Global South at inception.

Ocean Pavilion Partners Unveil COP28 Dubai Ocean Declaration in Advance of UN Climate Conference

Propeller Ventures announced four new partnerships with leading ocean science institutions, Oregon State University, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, University of California San Diego and University of Rhode Island. These partnerships build on initiatives to accelerate climate solutions with founding partner, the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI). Working together with new partners in the West, Northwest, Northeast and Pacific regions, Propeller will further expand efforts to identify commercializable opportunities across these institutions, all of which are working at the frontier of ocean science innovation.

At Propeller, we constantly seek opportunities to inspire ocean-climate innovation and entrepreneurship. Our Hackathons help identify opportunities for research teams from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) to solve problems faced in the market and uncover connections between industry and academia.

We’re excited to share that Rodrigo Prudencio has joined Propeller as our Managing Partner.

A year ago this month – World Ocean Month – Propeller saw a need for a mini business bootcamp for ocean founders and built v0 of the Propeller Ocean MBA. We just wrapped our third cohort of the program, and the feedback makes us think we’re onto something…

Happy World Ocean Day from everyone at Propeller! It’s been a busy start since we got going about a year ago, and in honor of World Ocean Day, we thought we’d share some progress thus far!