Founder's Letter 2020

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. The S&P 500 fell by over 30% between February 19th and March 23rd, and then rose by over 60% from March to December 2020. All in the midst of death, despair and uncertainty.

Mercenary though it sounds, 2020 has been a good year for some – for online businesses especially. At Propel(x), we closed a round of financing earlier this year. As part of this round, we welcomed Franklin Templeton as an investor in our company, among others. We also saw our deal-flow grow in volume in alignment with our mission to enable investments in technologies that matter.

As the COVID-19 pandemic made it difficult for people to connect in person, we introduced various virtual events to engage our community – we now have weekly ‘Deep Tech Investor Calls’ on Wednesdays at 9:00am PT for accredited investors registered on the Propel(x) platform. These are deep-dives into companies that are currently fund-raising on Propel(x).

This year, it was an information overload, email and Zoom fatigue for everyone. Talks about learning to focus amidst uncertainty, improving work productivity and adopting mindfulness through meditation and KonMari method were common. Reduced screen time was encouraged which led to the popularity of podcasts. For those who wished to reduce screen time and also were short of time due to conflicting priorities, we launched byte sized insights. Our co-founder, Swati Chaturvedi shares her perspective on the latest in the industry through these insights.

Click on the below image to access the full playlist. If you like them, please subscribe to our YouTube channel to stay updated.