Candace Widdoes

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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Greenfield Partners is proud to be deepening our partnership with Capitolis as they announce today a $56M strategic round. If you’ve spent time in market infrastructure, you know how rare it is to see deep market insight paired with real product velocity. The team at Capitolis has both, and the result is infrastructure that makes capital markets safer and more efficient. We’re increasing our investment alongside Barclays, BNP Paribas, J.P. Morgan, fellow investors Canapi Ventures, 9Yards Capital, and existing investors Citi, Morgan Stanley, State Street, and UBS to fuel the next stages of Capitolis’ Capital Marketplace and Portfolio Optimization solutions. https://lnkd.in/exK8nQYx Kudos to Gil Mandelzis and the entire Capitolis team!

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Enjoyed this conversation with my friend and mentor, John Tedesco, at MESA. We tried to cover what has been 30+ years of adjustment and iteration. We aspire to bring some of these lessons from mistakes and pivots over the years to our work with entrepreneurs through Mairs & Power Venture Capital where we have invested in 20 tech and tech-enabled firms across the Upper Midwest since 2022. We partner for the long haul because overnight success is a myth.  If you don't know MESA, the organization offers free mentoring of emerging software companies (and MPVC is a sponsor / supporter). Some of the most successful tech companies in the Twin Cities have benefitted from MESA mentors.   https://lnkd.in/gK6FfNxj #operatinginreality

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HealthVC x Lusha: Unlocking Smarter Fundraising and Sales Workflows We’re thrilled to announce our newest partnership: HealthVC has teamed up with Lusha to bring next-gen data and prospecting tools to founders, fund managers, and operators across our community. Lusha recently launched a powerful suite of AI-powered features that redefine how go-to-market teams research, prospect, and convert. Now those capabilities are coming to HealthVC Pro subscribers. ✨ With this partnership, you’ll be able to: Surface real-time, accurate, and compliant B2B contact data Use AI Prospecting Chat to instantly uncover new investor or customer leads Tap into CRM-triggered recommendations to stay one step ahead Turn insight into action with Sales Streaming, Lusha’s smarter, connected selling framework. But Lusha’s superpower isn’t just the AI; it’s that the AI sits on top of best-in-class data. That means every signal, every recommendation, and every lead is not just fast, it’s trustworthy. At HealthVC, we’re building more than a newsletter; we’re building the operating system for venture, and this partnership helps our members move faster, pitch smarter, and close better. Available now to all HealthVC subscribers, link in comments.

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PitchBook's quarterly Venture Monitor report shows a market that is beginning to move again, but unevenly. These are discussions we have with customers every day and we have seen these trends play out across the market. But the numbers certainly speak for themselves. In 2025, AI accounted for about 65% of total deal value and nearly 40% of deal count, driving a highly concentrated environment where 50% of deal value went to just half of 1% of deals. Deal activity increased across every stage, with early-stage and first financings nearing 2021 highs, even as fundraising and liquidity remain constrained. It seems that opportunity is returning, but selectivity and differentiation matter more than ever. As always, we strive to ensure we are helping our clients across the private capital market ecosystem navigate the current environment. http://spr.ly/6045CFwD5

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Another missive from Chuck Cotter and Daniel Faierman. Thanks guys for continuing to help to ecosystem. If you've not seen their posts, peek at https://lnkd.in/gPiu9Z4z. Topics include: · CPG Co-Manufacturing Contracts · Early Stage VC Terms to Rarely Accept · More Dividends (and Dividend Recaps?) · 5 Raises, 5 Takeaways · A Founder's Guide to Secondaries · Standing Out Pre-Traction · The State of VC · Corporate Governance 101 · Anti-Dilution Provisions · Primer on QSBS · 4 Fund Raising DON'Ts · Liquidation Preferences · Understanding SAFEs · Understanding Convertible Notes · Understanding Prorata Rights · Founders & Athletes · Employee Stock Options Demystified · The Art of Start-Up Valuation · What Is A Term Sheet Anyway? Check it out ...

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What is a "buyer-builder"? It's the founder archetype we back at Daring Ventures. Buyer-builders have lived experience and domain expertise on the industries they are building in. They've felt the friction and know which problems to address and who to build for. They don't need to do customer discovery because they've experienced it first-hand. Outsiders spend years and millions figuring out what buyer-builders already know. We started The Builders Series to profile the ones doing it right. This edition: Ara Mahdessian and Vahe Kuzoyan of ServiceTitan. Ara and Vahe did not need to be told that contractors were underserved. They grew up watching it. Their fathers, competent skilled operators, losing hours every week to paper invoices, missed calls, and work that software should have absorbed years earlier. Full piece on Forward This 👇

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Calendar → Planner → Projects → AI employees. Motion is rebuilding the SMB productivity stack for an agentic world.  Stacey Bishop and I are thrilled to share our investment in Motion. They raised $60M, powered by an oversubscribed $38M Series C led by Scale Venture Partners. Harry Qi, Ethan Yu, and Omid Rooholfada are at the heart of it, driving the change every SMB has been waiting for. AI is reshaping business at a speed we've never seen. But for most SMBs it’s still out of reach: too complicated, too expensive, and way too much overhead. The Motion team is breaking down those barriers by replacing the productivity suite with a set of out-of-the-box AI employees, ready to work on day one. A 25-person accounting firm in Kansas City can now have AI teammates handling client follow-ups, prepping docs, updating records, scheduling meetings - the tedious, time sucking stuff that gets in the way of actual work. The team has built a single platform where humans and AI genuinely collaborate. Motion is following a GTM playbook that has led to some of the most significant business outcomes in SaaS: start with a wedge, win the SMB market, then expand across categories and upmarket. We’ve seen this across SaaS giants and within our own portfolio. Box defined content, HubSpot defined inbound marketing, and BILL defined Accounts Payable. They all began with focused products that evolved into comprehensive suites. Motion’s agentic productivity platform is already reaching 10k+ SMBs and is just getting started. The future of agentic work is here, and I can’t wait to see what this team accomplishes! Read more about the story here: https://lnkd.in/dvwkazfK

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Check back if you missed it! The world is changing around us and it makes sense to own a piece of it. Remember we have two entry points into deep tech: 1) go direct into the CR Fund 2) write a small check into AIM Company *Must be accredited. Sorry, government rules, not mine.

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Operating companies permanently changes how you invest. When you’ve lived through payroll cycles, commodity volatility, grid constraints, and board pressure in down markets, you stop starting with upside. Operators underwrite downside first: what breaks margins, what disrupts cash flow, what fails under stress. Capital doesn’t solve those problems but execution does. Operators: what risks do you underwrite first that others miss?

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Founders and investors need to understand the changes in QSBS 2.0. This is more than just a tax change, it will impact founder equity, talent retention, and early stage investment. Don't miss out!

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Layer is tackling one of the most overlooked pain points for SMBs: accounting. They’re gaining real traction doing so. Emergence is leading their seed round to bring embedded, AI-powered accounting to the SMB software stack. Kevin Spain highlights what makes this team and product so compelling. 

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76% of top-performing VC firms say tech tools directly improved deal flow, LP engagement, and internal collaboration 🚀 In 2025, staying competitive in venture capital means embracing the right stack. From sourcing smarter to automating fund ops and marketing, the VC Tech Stack is evolving fast—and those leveraging it are pulling ahead. 🔍 This post breaks down the tools transforming VC operations—from CRMs to LP portals and AI-powered market intelligence. 📬 Want the full breakdown with data, trends, and tool links? Check out this week’s Venture Capital Archive: https://lnkd.in/dg7NzGdn #vctech #vcstack #dealflow #venturecapital #fundmanagement #productivitytools #vcnewsletter #lpengagement #startupfunding #innovationtools #vc2025 #vcarchive

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Growth and profitability are not opposing forces. If anything, they're sequential. Once your unit economics work - every additional customer can spread fixed costs thinner, every transaction can make ops more efficient, and every bit of volume can give you better terms with suppliers. Solving for fundamentals will ensure growth makes you profitable, and doesn't become the thing that keeps you from it. Shreyans wrote a great piece on it, link in comments.

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Here's a transition we see go sideways all the time: successful services business. Revenue, team, domain expertise. The next step feels obvious -- start building ventures on that foundation. In theory, elegant. In practice, one of the hardest transitions in the studio world. The core problem is that costs and benefits land in the same place. The services team builds client work (pays bills now) and internal ventures (might pay in three years). When an outside investor looks at this, the question is immediate: how do I know the best people are on my ventures and not client projects? That's not a trust problem. It's an incentive alignment problem. 📉 We've seen the same diagnosis play out repeatedly. Venture builders and service providers share the same entity, the same P&L, the same team allocation. Ventures always lose this configuration because revenue-generating work always wins the resource fight. Cleanest solution: distinct entities, distinct teams, distinct reporting. Services business funds operations. Studio entity houses ventures. Shared thesis, separate P&L. If full separation isn't possible yet, raise per venture through SPVs. Build proof points one at a time. 🎯 Here's the takeaway -- the earn-to-own path is valid. But the operators who succeed plan for structural separation from day one. They don't assume services and studio can coexist in one body indefinitely. The ones who wait to separate usually never do. ⚡

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More great insights from Montauk Capital and Evan Caron on the extraordinary risks, and opportunities, at the intersection of energy and the real estate industry.

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As founders scale, financial leadership needs evolve just as fast as product or team strategy. In this article, Jason Anglin does a great job outlining when a startup needs a fractional Director of Finance vs. a fractional CFO. And why getting that choice right can save both time and capital. Worth a read for founders approaching their next growth stage.

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"My favorite CEO comes in, and the first ten minutes of the meeting is actually psychotherapy." We are excited to welcome Paul Martino, Managing Partner at Bullpen Capital, for Episode 2 of Charting the Course. A nine-time founder and veteran investor, Paul brings a unique perspective on the "post-seed" gap—backing founders who build in categories and geographies that others often ignore. To Paul, being misunderstood isn't an obstacle; it's often an early signal of opportunity. Full episode drops this Friday - follow to be notified. #ChartingTheCourse #VC #Startups

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Two weeks ago on Swimming with Allocators, we sat down with David Clark, CIO at VenCap, to talk about what decades of venture data can teach allocators. One takeaway that stood out: discounts don’t matter as much as people think in venture secondaries. Because venture is such a power-law asset class, outcomes are driven by exposure to a few massive winners. Whether a stake is bought at a small discount, or even a premium, often matters far less than the quality of the underlying company and its upside. Great conversation on venture returns, manager selection, and the nuances of how allocators should think about secondary investments. 👇 Link in the comments.

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