Greg Alvo

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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Founders drive late-stage deals. Messaging is founder-dependent. Expansion relies on personal relationships. Process is missing. Board expects scale. Revenue misses mount. CRO credibility erodes. Founder dependency becomes leadership liability. The harder truth: You can’t scale GTM on founder horsepower. Pushing harder won’t fix it. Neither will hiring sales without fixing the engine. You fix it by:  → Institutionalizing GTM process and messaging  → Shifting execution from founder to team  → Driving pipeline ownership across roles  → Building leadership trust through repeatable process Because when founders carry the number, leadership accountability is already compromised.

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Most startups die trying to get what an existing business already has — Customers Cash flow Systems Brand trust Why start from zero when you can buy from momentum? Buy a business doing $500K–$2M in revenue. Leverage seller financing, SBA, or private capital. Keep the team, fix the margins, and scale. It’s not about being an entrepreneur anymore. It’s about being an acquirer. Startups are hope. Acquisitions are math. And math wins. 🦈

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Selling is often misunderstood as manipulating the customer to buy what you are selling. No, real selling is about figuring out what the customer needs. It starts with customer discovery. But to do that, you need to get the customer engaged in a conversation. For which you need to "sell" yourself as someone they care to speak with. How do you "earn the right to ask"? Focus on that challenge as the 1st step

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I recently sat down with Josh R., Co-Founder & CEO of Gusto, for a fireside chat at Afore Capital's Pre-Seed Summit.   Gusto is a testament to solid fundamentals. We partnered at the Series B over a decade ago (Jason Green). Since then, they've steadily built a business that's amassed more ARR than Cursor, Lovable, and Harvey combined, is executing profitably, making accretive acquisitions and integrating the latest in GenAI to improve their stack.   Here are 5 tips Josh shared for early-stage founders with similar goals:   1. Start with co-founder selection, not the problem   Unlike most founders who begin by identifying a problem to solve, Josh prioritized finding co-founders based on relationship quality and complement. The investment in those relationships has paid dividends—their families are so close that the founders' moms have a group text thread.   2. Problem authenticity accelerates product-market fit   Josh and his co-founders had experienced payroll pain firsthand at previous startups. I've observed this same pattern repeatedly with portfolio founders who reach PMF fastest. Austin Hughes at Unify knew the GTM space from his work at Ramp. Eric S. Yuan was VP of Engineering at Webex before founding Zoom. Authentic problem experience creates both passion and expertise that compound over time.   3. Sequence your biggest risks first   When Josh started Gusto, he took a methodical approach to de-risking. Before burning cash on frontend or go-to-market, they built the backend systems—tax calculations, payments, and all the complex infrastructure. Then they manually tested these systems at friends' companies to validate that they worked before building front end. This sequential risk management helped proved technical feasibility before they committed resources elsewhere.   4. Don't trust surface-level competitive analysis   Payroll looked terrifying from the outside. ADP, Paychecks, and Intuit all dominated SMB, while Zenefits was an aggressive upstart. But when Josh dug deeper, a different picture emerged: the incumbents combined only had 50% market share, and 40% of SMBs were still doing payroll manually. Markets often have more white space than initial analysis suggests.   5. Find why you can win the untapped market   Identifying opportunity is one thing. Capturing it requires a superior go-to-market motion or a better product than incumbents. Josh developed both over time. The question every founder should answer: "Why can we tap the market segment the established players have left behind?"

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If you aren’t able to text message at work, you need to be asking compliance to upgrade with Archive intel It’s a no brainer. Text, WhatsApp, social media all in a compliant manner!

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VC schedules, and thoughts on being a VC noob. -- VC schedules to know -- Most venture capital firms hold partner meetings on Mondays. This is typically when the investment committee votes on new investments and other key decisions. Savvy founders learn the exact timing and may need to provide additional data over the weekend to stay in motion. It is also well known that many venture capitalists observe a “European summer,” with August often being light or fully off. Similarly, the winter holidays reduce activity across much of December. That said, data from Carta shows a meaningful year-end push to close deals in December, followed by a flurry of activity in January. Founders should be cautious about kicking off fundraising during these slower periods. You do not want a raise to go stale and fall apart. VCs talk to each other, the industry is highly interconnected. -- I’m a mid career Noob! -- I am an “emerging manager,” effectively a new VC, less than three years in. In venture capital, the timeline is long. On my Linkedin you'll see I have two roles at Blitzscaling: Limited Partner means I put money into a fund, but have no decision making ability, and General Partner means I'm actively finding startups, bringing them to the partnership, and funding. As a General Partner, you are often considered an emerging manager for close to a decade, as it takes years for a fund to fully mature and establish a VC track record. Investing is a long game, but the upside can be extraordinary. Fortunately, I entered this role with a positive angel track record from my own bank account, which is often a good idea to have as a VC. When I learn a new VC concept or term, I’m an AI first, I’ll link to my post a few days ago in the comments, I totally live for constant growth and learning, if you’re not growing you’re dying. Fun fact: Many/most start their VC career in their 40s, as they need to have enough tech and biz cycles, a broad enough network, resources, and a platform to stand upon. As we end the year, I'm sharing more career thoughts, and productivity thoughts, rather than industry trends and market maps and frameworks and forecasts. I wrote all of this by hand myself, but used AI to edit some of it.

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Huge step forward from the Dyad team. AI that actually clears the inbox and kills rekeying (not just talks about it): 📨 Email Triage Agent to route submissions automatically 📃 Extractor to pull data from PDFs straight into ALIS DX If you’re an MGA, wholesaler, or program administrator who wants teams focused on underwriting, not manual work, this is worth a look: https://hubs.la/Q03T_Q1S0

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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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🚀 Stop chasing investors blindly. Here's the 5-step system that gets startups funded: Define financial needs (12-18 months) Research aligned investors Build a killer pitch deck Systematize outreach Prep due diligence docs Most founders skip steps 1 & 5. Don't be like most founders.

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