Brittany Davis Wilson

At Provest Equity Partners, we focus on building enduring platforms at the intersection of industrial scale, advanced technology, and responsible innovation. Our work with Advanced Process Solutions (APS) reinforced a core belief: value is created when operational rigor meets mission-critical manufacturing. That same philosophy continues to guide our portfolio construction as we expand into businesses enabling more efficient, lower-impact production models across industrial and energy-adjacent markets. We are now preparing to onboard our next platform investment—one that reflects where long-term capital is increasingly converging: materials, manufacturing, and energy-enabled technologies that deliver both commercial durability and structural relevance for the future economy. As operator-investors, we commit capital patiently and partner deeply with management teams to scale responsibly, allocate capital prudently, and compound value over time. We’re excited about the road ahead and appreciative of the continued trust from our LPs and partners. More to come. #ProvestEquity #OperatorInvestor #GrowthEquity #IndustrialTechnology #AdvancedManufacturing #SustainableInnovation #EnergyTransition #PlatformInvesting #LongTermCapital #PrivateMarkets

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Advice from Luke Carroll for VC's raising their first fund. I’ve been thinking a lot about how CIOs and fund selectors like Luke Carroll at Reference Capital look at emerging managers and what that means for those of you raising Fund I. A few takeaways that really stuck with me: 1️⃣ Venture is a power law, not a participation trophy 2️⃣ “Access” is your actual product Capital is abundant; differentiated access is not. A first-time fund has to prove: Why the right founders will choose you over established brands What proprietary communities, ecosystems, or networks you sit in How your career to date translates into non-commoditized deal flow and insight If an LP can’t clearly see your access edge in the first 5 minutes, they’ll mentally file you under “nice, but interchangeable.” 3️⃣ Be honest about marks and “zombie risk” We’re coming out of a cycle where a lot of portfolios are still marked to the 2021–2022 world. CIOs are looking straight through shiny TVPI to ask: Which companies have raised recently at real, external prices? Where are you still relying on old marks? How will you avoid building a tail of zombie positions that never raise again and never get written down? For Fund I, that means leading with realized outcomes and externally priced rounds wherever possible – and being transparent about where risk lives. 4️⃣ LPs crave simplicity, not clever structures Family offices and private clients in particular are gravitating to vehicles and relationships that are “bankable and operationally simple.” For emerging managers, that’s a strong argument for: Keeping fund structures and terms straightforward Making capital calls, reporting, and communications highly predictable Reducing friction rather than showing off how innovative your docs can be Your operational experience is part of your edge. 5️⃣ Your fund is a solution, not a story CIOs don’t buy “great funds,” they solve portfolio problems. The question on their side of the table is: What specific gap in geography, stage, theme, or risk profile does this fund fill for us? How does this manager’s sizing, reserves, and pacing plug into our broader private markets plan? If your deck doesn’t answer that explicitly, you’re asking the LP to do your job. 6️⃣ The questions a CIO would actually ask you From the LP side, the conversation quickly becomes: What is the one thing that makes this fund truly non-commoditized? Who are the 10–15 founders or co-investors that would call you first, and why? If you never raised Fund II, what about this vehicle would still make it a win for your LPs? As a first-time manager, internalizing this LP lens is uncomfortable but powerful. It forces you to sharpen your thesis, right-size your fund, and be radically clear about what makes you worth the illiquidity, complexity, and time. If you’re raising or thinking about a Fund I, what’s the clearest articulation of your edge that would stand up in front of a CIO like Luke Carroll?

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Excited to share that Inspired Capital is leading Remark’s $16M Series A. We’re joined by our friends at Spero Ventures, Shine Capital, Stripe, Neo, and Visible Ventures. Despite trillions spent on e-commerce, the single most effective driver of sales — the in-store expert — has never been replicated online. Remark changes that. Their AI personas, trained by over 60,000 human product experts, embed directly into brand storefronts to turn passive browsing into confident buying. I first met Theo last year at a small dinner I hosted on the future of commerce. His take on blending human insight with AI to unlock authentic shopping experiences was one of the most thoughtful I’d heard. As we got to know the founding team, it became clear that their ambition was to redesign today’s commerce infrastructure — and that we needed to be along for the ride. Thrilled to welcome Theo Satloff 🍊, Carl-Philip M., Ian Patterson 🍊, and the entire Remark team to the Inspired portfolio. TechCrunch: https://lnkd.in/ewFxNwjt

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Restructuring isn’t a failure. It’s often the price of growth. But let’s be honest change at scale is disruptive, political, and exhausting. You’re trying to realign people, processes, and systems while the business keeps running. M&A makes it harder. You’re not just merging org charts you’re colliding cultures, decision habits, and power structures. When it goes wrong, it’s chaos. When it goes right, it’s an art form. And that doesn’t happen by optimism. It takes: a clear operating model disciplined decision-making leaders who can hold the day job and the change agenda Most teams don’t need more enthusiasm. They need someone who understands the mechanics, the risk, and the human reality and can make the hard calls without drama. That’s leadership.

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Seth Levines’s new book, co-authored with Elizabeth MacBride, became a bestseller in its first week, a sign that many people sense the rules of capitalism are shifting in real time. I sat down with Seth, Partner at Foundry and cofounder of Pledge 1%, to discuss Capital Evolution and what it means for investors and founders. We cover the shift away from shareholder-first thinking, his concept of “dynamic capitalism,” and why restoring upward mobility is critical to an ownership economy. He also shares his perspective on today’s venture landscape, why transformational waves like AI and quantum often create bubbles that are more feature than bug, and what’s next for him after decades of investing and firm-building. Listen to Episode 502 of The Full Ratchet for the conversation. The link to the full episode is in the comment section below.

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Announcing the Founders Community Fund! This summer, we’re excited to launch the Founders Community Fund (https://lnkd.in/g8ig2VY4), a new investment initiative designed to help founders build and grow their startups and small businesses by providing a new capital source. As I explored in my recent article for Inc., “Venture-Backed Startups Are Raising Revenue-Based Financing,” (https://lnkd.in/g9BnS64K) many founders today are rethinking how they finance growth. Traditional equity financing doesn’t always fit every company’s needs, and founders are increasingly turning to Revenue-Based Financing (RBF) for greater flexibility and founder-friendly terms. This flexible approach also helps founders of small businesses who may not qualify for venture capital investment and are still building their banking relationships so they can eventually secure bank loans. RBF can provide these steady-growth businesses with a new source of capital. At the Founders Community Fund, we believe in backing entrepreneurs who want to grow sustainably. Our mission is to provide capital that scales with your success, along with strategic support and a community of like-minded founders. Stay tuned: as we launch the Founders Community Fund, we’ll be sharing more about how we can help you take your business to the next level. Sign up on this website for updates or get in touch today to learn more about how we can support your journey.

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I had the opportunity to represent Transition VC at the Global Private Capital Conference (Global Private Capital Association) in New York last week - joining the panel on Emerging Managers in VC. Alongside Cem Baytok (idacapital) and Ngetha Waithaka (Norrsken22), and moderated by Eric Mason (Church Pension Group), the conversation moved beyond fundraising cycles to something more structural: what does it take to build and back companies that don’t fit the traditional venture mold? One theme came through clearly for us: India’s energy transition will not be built by software alone. The most compelling opportunities are increasingly hardware-first, capital-efficient, and tightly coupled with real infrastructure challenges — across mobility, industrial decarbonization, and energy efficiency. But there’s a disconnect. Venture has spent the last decade optimizing for software outcomes. Many of the most consequential climate businesses in India, however, require a different lens: one that understands hardware cycles, patient scaling, and the realities of building for the physical economy. That gap is where we believe the next generation of climate innovation will emerge. Grateful for the conversation and to the panelists for an honest, grounded exchange, and to Eric Mason for steering it with clarity.

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Thrilled to share the launch of Criticality, a $65M fund built to back founders solving hard, high-leverage problems at the intersection of technical complexity and real-world urgency. Criticality builds on the foundation we’ve laid at Antler - applying our conviction-driven approach to companies at Seed & Series A. The fund is sector-flexible but applies a deep tech lens to each opportunity, targeting non-obvious, high-leverage problems from the earliest stages of company formation. Grateful to the New Mexico State Investment Council for their support in anchoring Criticality. More to come soon from Cash Allred & I.

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I’m thrilled to officially announce our $3M seed investment in Propel People, a company we built inside the 1848 Ventures studio to tackle one of the biggest challenges facing the #construction industry today: the skilled #labor shortage. For small and medium-sized contractors, hiring isn't just a challenge. It's the number one threat to their growth, profitability, and safety. With 94% of contractors struggling to find qualified workers, it’s clear that traditional hiring methods aren't built for the trades. That’s why we built Propel People. It’s a mobile-first, AI-powered hiring platform designed for how construction actually works: in the field. By leveraging smart candidate ranking, instant #SMS-based screening, and a fully #bilingual interface, Propel helps contractors build great crews faster and more efficiently. I’m also thrilled to formally announce that industry veteran Dexter Bachelder is at the helm as CEO. Having worked with Dexter and the team over the last few months, we've already seen the impact of his leadership. His 25 years of experience scaling construction tech companies will be instrumental as Propel People enters this initial stage of growth. This investment reinforces our core thesis at 1848 Ventures: building AI-native companies that solve fundamental pain points for the #SMBs that form the backbone of our economy. A huge congratulations to Dexter and the entire Propel People team on this milestone. We are incredibly proud to partner with you to support the people who build our world. Read the full announcement below. #constructiontech #venturecapital #seedfunding #ai #skilledtrades #smb

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I get a lot of emails from old acquaintances asking to catch up, usually because they want advice on breaking into venture capital or approaching VCs for funding. Half the time, I am directed to their calendly to schedule. This shifts the burden of work from you consulting your calendar and me consulting my calendar to me consulting your calendar and my calendar. Why? If you are asking someone else for time, my advice is to make it as easy as possible for them to schedule: 1. Offer a range of time over the subsequent three to four weeks. Wherever possible, offer large windows of time. 2. Use bullet points. 3. Be clear about your timezone. 4. Offer to send a calendar invite with a link or number upon reply. 5. Make clear you're happy to do by phone or web meeting, and provide your cell number. This might sound obvious or petty, but it happens to me almost every week. I bet following these simple steps increases the probability of getting a reply by ~50% on average.

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This week in my rising women in VC series, I'm excited to feature Bukie Adebo Umeano!! 📌 Title: Principal 📌 Fund: Anthemis Group 📌 Stage & Sector: Pre-Seed and Seed stage companies across fintech, software, and AI 📌 If you were founding a company, what space would it be in? I actually co-founded a company in the credit-building space that didn’t pan out. I tend to love products that increase access to things that I consider fundamental to human well-being like financial security, healthcare, housing, etc. Even if a product feels simple, the idea that it can play a meaningful role in someone's day-to-day life really energizes me. If I ever found/co-found another business, I would probably build another B2C business, in a traditional market, with arbitrary or inequitable barriers to access. 📌 What about AI most excites you? I am very excited about the infrastructure that needs to be built to support the agentic economy. We see so many solutions that promise fully autonomous AI agents that will execute real world tasks on behalf of consumers and businesses. But how will the orchestration and protocols surrounding those agents evolve? There are so many unknowns in that space–from how to authenticate agents to how to enable agents to move money. I am excited to see this supporting layer emerge because I think that enablement layer is critical to reaching the level of automation and efficiency that AI promises to bring. 📌 Any advice to founders? Don’t be afraid to be contrarian. I love hearing founders take a unique approach to a market or challenge conventional wisdom. Your strategy is what you do, but it’s also what you don’t do. I love when founders have a clear vision and POV on how to attack a space and I love when a pitch forces me to think differently.

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Welcome back to #MathMonday. It's pretty clear to us at Veteran Ventures Capital that we're back in conflicts of attrition—something many of us thought was buried in the dustbin of history after the "precision" war against #Iraq in 1991. Two things drove that home this weekend. 1. The exchange rate is breaking #math. Robert #Magyar Brovdi, Commander of Ukraine's Unmanned Systems Forces, recently put a price tag on the new way of war: roughly $878 in matériel to kill a single Russian soldier. The exchange ratio is a staggering 400 Russians lost for every one Ukrainian (according to Brovid). Drones now account for 70–80% of all battlefield casualties on that front, and FPVs alone struck 33,019 Russian troops in December 2025—the first month verified Russian losses from Ukrainian drones exceeded Russian recruitment. Some context on how unprecedented those numbers are: - #WWII U.S. Army Ordnance estimates: ~25,000–50,000 small-arms rounds per enemy combatant killed. - #Vietnam: cited figures climbed past 200,000 rounds per kill. - #British heavy AAA early in the V-1 campaign: roughly 2,500 shells per rocket downed—before the proximity fuze collapsed that ratio to around 100. The cost-per-casualty curve has been bending the wrong way for eight decades. #Ukraine just bent it back—violently. That's why it's a good thing the U.S. is sending more soldiers into Ukraine to learn from them firsthand. 2. Even the "losses" are wins. Ukrainian milbloggers have begun counting it as a kill when an FPV is destroyed by an incoming missile—on the logic that both pieces of hardware are gone, and the exchange still favors them. Makes sense when the Russians have to expend a $100K missile to take down a $1K drone. They're right, and the self-reflection of that math is sobering. We're firing $3M+ Patriot PAC-3 interceptors at $35K Shaheds, resulting in us running a ~100-to-1 deficit—and the Middle East burned through 800+ PAC-3 MSEs in three days in last year's engagement. Unknown what a good unclassified estimate for the current conflict, but it's a big number. Two takeaways: 1) As I've said often, the old adage needs an update. "Amateurs talk tactics, experts talk logistics" should now read: Amateurs talk war, experts talk supply chain. Ukraine is producing over 8 million FPVs per year. Russia claims up to 19,000 drones per day. Whoever scales their factories—and protects them—wins. 2) Cheap defense at single-digit percentages of offense cost is a brand-new kind of deterrent. Being on the wrong side of the cost curve may look good in the short term, but it's really a depletion race to the bottom of your own checkbook. The strategists, operators and investors who internalize this shift first will own the next decade of defense. #MathMonday #VeteranVenturesCapital #DefenseTech #DroneWarfare #AsymmetricWarfare #DefenseInvesting #NationalSecurity #FutureOfWarfare #MilitaryInnovation #SupplyChain

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Florida women interested in a career in early stage investing, we’re in Miami! Chai Ventures is in Miami for iConnections, and we’re excited to connect with the next generation of women exploring careers in VC and finance. Through Chai Fellows, our global community of 150 women in college and early in their careers, participants gain real exposure to venture, investing, and adjacent industries. Our fellows have: • Presented internationally (including Japan) • Attended Clinton Global to meet world leaders • Met billion-dollar women founders • Engaged with policymakers and senior leaders in intimate settings • Gained weekly access to our VC firm • Attended 100+ VC, startup, family office, and finance events Chai Fellows aren’t just exploring finance, they’re building conviction, access, and community while carving their own path. If you’re based in Miami and curious about venture capital or investing, we’d love to meet you. Reach out directly to find time! Together we rise. 

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"When choosing angel investors, we look for people who can really support us on our journey. Many had already helped us by making introductions and taking calls. Bringing them on as investors formalizes that support – when people are on your cap table, it's easier to ask for introductions and insights because you have an ongoing relationship." - Lennart Bock, Proxima Fusion As Europe's fastest-growing fusion energy startup and the first spin-out from Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics, Proxima Fusion needed to onboard strategic angels globally while keeping operations lean. Here's how Roundtable streamlined their Series A angel syndicate: ✅ Full SPV management: Roundtable handled setup, compliance, and internal administration – team received POA without operational burden ✅ Real-time visibility: Dashboard tracking of investor status and commitments at a glance ✅ Global reach: Accommodated international investors with proactive compliance support ✅ Automated KYC/KYB: Seamless process whether angels invested individually or through entities ✅ Strategic focus: Clean cap table (1 SPV entry) enabled focus on high-value relationships vs. admin ✅ Speed: Once angels ready, entire process can complete in 1-2 weeks "One feature I particularly liked was the visibility into investor progress. With other providers, everything may be taken off your plate, but then you're left in the dark. Roundtable gives you a bird's eye overview, which we found very useful." By giving experienced ex-founders and industry leaders the chance to invest (vs. paying them as advisors), Proxima aligned their interests with company success and gained invaluable access to networks and guidance. Want to see how they're building the future of fusion energy with strategic angels? Link in comments 👇

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A big milestone today for Grow Therapy, which just announced a $150M Series D led by TCV and Growth Equity at Goldman Sachs Alternatives, with BCI and Menlo Ventures joining Sequoia, Transformation Capital, and SignalFire. When we led Grow’s Series A in 2021, it was rooted in a belief that mental health access in the U.S. isn’t hindered by supply, it’s a systems problem. To win, Grow needed to be deeply integrated into the healthcare ecosystem, not operating as a point solution. In just 5 years, more than 2 million people have used Grow, with over 10 million therapy and medication management visits delivered on the platform. What stands out is the infrastructure the team has built: Grow now partners with 125+ health insurers, including Medicare and Medicaid across most states, reaching 220 million covered lives. At the same time, tools like its clinically-guided AI notetaker are reducing provider documentation time by nearly 70%, helping clinicians focus more on care. This is what durable healthtech looks like: deep payer integrations, measurable outcomes, and technology embedded directly into existing healthcare workflows. Excited to continue partnering with Jake Cooper, Manoj Kanagaraj, MD, Alan Ni, and the entire Grow team as they build trusted mental health infrastructure for insurers, employers, health systems, and most importantly, patients.

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Company building in energy is shaped by early decisions that compound over time—how capital is structured, how technical risk is absorbed, and how teams prepare for scale well before it arrives.    Much of my work with founders centers on navigating those choices as deep science becomes real businesses. The details differ across power, materials, and industrial systems, but the challenge is consistent: building companies that can operate, adapt, and grow over long horizons.  You can see that work taking shape across the Breakthrough Energy portfolio. https://lnkd.in/eXd72trE

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New partnership alert!! Excited to announce that Black Flag is partnering with xAI to give founders free credits and direct access to Grok - xAI’s family of powerful, multi-modal, real-time models. Across essentially any end product you're applying to Black Flag with, Grok will deliver: - Deep reasoning across text, code, and context - Faster inference and improved function calling - CUI: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth just announced that Grok is being adopted for handling Controlled Unclassified Information If you're building in critical technology areas important to the West - space, energy, autonomy, cyber - the next generation of secure software will be built with Grok and you can now get a head start through Black Flag. Only 18 days left to apply to Black Flag’s January batch - apply at the link in the comments!

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We asked founders who's building the future. They delivered. Introducing the Black Flag 100.2 No VC bias. No algorithms. Just founders — the people who know better than anyone — answering one question: "Which early-stage companies are you most excited about right now?" https://lnkd.in/gVfw5uVC

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🚨NEW EPISODE: Recorded live at FUTURE TITANS 2026 - Jeff Perry of Carta sat down with the iconic Seth Levine, co-founder of Foundry. Seth has been in venture for 25 years, built Foundry from scratch as an emerging manager himself, and has backed about 50 emerging manager funds through his fund of funds. He has genuinely seen every side of this table. They went deep on building Foundry, why VCs are in the influence business, not the decision business, and why the concentration problem in venture is not only bad for LPs, but also for the innovation ecosystem overall. And why Seth's new book, Capital Evolution, is so important for the future of America. 🎧 Links to listen... Apple: https://lnkd.in/ehQUQ2EM Spotify: https://lnkd.in/eU4FExpg

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