In February I wrote the first edition of this thing. It was about a company called Pond and an idea called Outcome as a Service, and the argument was this: execution is fast now, distribution is global, tools are everywhere. The constraint is no longer access. It is clarity. The most valuable thing you can do is say exactly what you want, specifically enough that the right person can step in.
Six months later that idea is a product, and it is the only thing I am asking you to do today.
Aurora Wenters told me what she needed when she registered for Demo Day. I matched her before the doors opened. She closed $100,000 a month later. That is the whole thing working, and until today it only worked when I happened to be standing in the room.
Last Monday I sent one question to this entire list: which one are you right now?
6,295 opened it. 97 answered.
41 founders
15 service providers
14 investors
13 operators
10 supporters
4 hiring right now
That took about three seconds, and it is the most useful thing this list has ever produced. Until last Monday I could not have told you what a single person on it was working on.
So this week I am asking for four minutes instead of three seconds, and then I am going to do something with the answers.
The Propel Card
From today this is the only way anything here gets routed. Eight questions, four minutes, and you can start it in this email right now.
THE PROPEL CARD
1. What are you working on? Say it the way you would say it to a friend, not the way you would pitch it.
2. What problem are you trying to solve? Pick the closest one. This is the field that finds the other people working on it.
Climate and energy
Health and care
Education and youth
Food and agriculture
Housing and cities
Economic mobility and financial access
Civic tech, policy and governance
AI and emerging tech
Arts, media and culture
Conservation and biodiversity
Justice and human rights
And if none of those fit, name it in your own words. That is a real field, not a dead end. When a written-in problem comes up more than once it becomes a category, so the list grows from what people actually say rather than from what I guessed.
3. What do you need most right now? Money, people or talent, customers or distribution, expertise or advice, an introduction to one specific person, or somewhere to start.
4. Say the need in your own words. Be specific. A climate lawyer who has done a Reg CF beats legal help every time.
5. What can you give someone else? Everyone here gets routed both ways. This is the half that makes you worth knowing.
6. When do you need it? This sets your place in the queue, and it expires so nothing goes stale.
7. Which one are you right now? Founder, investor, operator, service provider, supporter, or hiring. Roles are a toggle, not a box.
8. Where are you? City and country is enough. Coordination is mostly local until it is not.
9. What are you putting into the record today? A need, something you can offer, a win that closed, an introduction you can make, a resource worth sharing, or an event worth attending. Tick as many as are true. All six go into the same record, which is the point.
Start it here. Question three, one tap, and you can type the need in your own words underneath. Your answer carries into your card.
What do you need most right now?
Then finish the other seven. It is the same form, it takes four minutes, and it is free.
Three promises about it.
Every card is read by a person. Me, for now. If somebody in here can move what you are working on, you get an introduction with a reason attached, not a cold connection and a "you two should talk."
The offer question is required. Nobody takes from this network without saying what they give. That single rule is what stops this becoming another place where everyone asks and nobody answers.
Your need expires. A stale need in a database is worse than no need at all, because it makes the whole record a lie.
What the card is actually for
Three things, and they get bigger.
This week, it is how you get routed. Without a card, what you need is a conversation that evaporates. I have run 137 events and taken 7,448 registrations over two years, and at every one of them somebody said out loud exactly what they needed. Every time, the night ended and the thing they said disappeared. I have been running an intake machine and throwing away the intake.
This year, it is how the matching stops being guesswork. Every card that closes writes down who helped whom, and why. A few hundred of those and I am not guessing who to introduce you to. I know, because it worked before.
Eventually, it is a record that does not exist anywhere. The fourth time somebody says they need someone who has taken a hardware product through UL certification, nobody should have to guess. Who did it, how long it took, what it cost, which lab was slow. That is written down nowhere, not because it is secret, but because nobody writes it down.
The thesis, and where it is actually broken
I would rather be corrected than agreed with, so here is the whole bet in plain language, including the parts that do not work yet.
The bet. Most of what makes a company work is who you happen to be standing next to. That is currently left to luck, geography and whose parents knew whom. A researcher in Brazil and a researcher in Azerbaijan can spend a decade on the same question and die without knowing the other one existed. If you write down what people need and what they can give, and you route it deliberately, you replace that luck with a system. Nobody has built the public record of who is trying to do what, what it actually took, and who helped. Not because it is hard to store. Because nobody writes it down.
The mechanism, in eight steps. Take the need in. Resolve it into something specific enough to act on. Map it against everyone else. Route it to the person who can move it. Deliver the introduction with a reason attached. Prove whether it closed, from the mouth of the person who asked. Publish what the network needs so people working on the same problem find each other. Then do it again, better, because the last round taught you something.
What is actually built. Intake, which is the card you just read. The record behind it. A public map of what the network needs. A close step that writes down who helped whom, so the next match is informed by the last one. A directory of 83 founders and a marketplace with real listings on it.
What is not built, and I am not going to pretend otherwise. The close step records that something worked, not what it cost, so the most valuable half of the record, the part where you learn the certification took eleven weeks and $6,000 and which lab was slow, is only now being captured. Pathways, the thing that eventually tells you what people who were exactly where you are did next, who they talked to and what it cost them, needs real density before it is anything other than fabrication. And a meaningful part of what I described above is written, tested, and sitting behind a deploy I have not shipped.
How I will know if I am wrong. Two numbers, published here every week: cards captured, and the share of them that reach an outcome the person who asked confirms. Today both are zero. If cards captured stays at zero for two weeks after this email, the thesis is wrong and the plan changes, not the effort. I would rather write that sentence now than explain it later.
What I am looking for
This is the part where I ask, and the same rule applies to me as to everyone else here, so I have told you what I am giving and what I do not have.
I need help productizing this beyond where it has got to. Specifically:
Somebody who has built matching or routing at scale. Recommender systems, marketplaces, anything two sided. I know what the graph should do. I would like to be told what I have got wrong before I find out slowly.
Somebody who has turned a service into a product. The introductions work when I make them by hand. Everything past a few hundred a month is a design problem I have not solved.
Somebody who has run a network like this before and knows which parts I am about to get wrong, because the failure modes here are well documented and I have not read them all.
If that is you, or you know the person, reply with the word BUILD and one line on what you have done. I read every one of these myself and I will reply to all of them, including the ones I cannot use.
Then put the work somewhere people can find it
The card is private. It comes to me and I route it.
propel.earth is the public half. Make a profile and the change you are trying to make sits on a page anyone can read: your mission, your vision, what you are raising, and everything you have shipped.
Two ways in.
Featured Founder. Your company, the problem you are solving, your mission and vision, your funding goal, your deck, and a feed of your events and wins. 83 founders are already up there, searchable by category and by how much they are raising. Here is mine, so you can see the shape of it.
Service Provider. This one is a storefront. List what you do, what it costs, how long it takes and how many years you have been at it, and you show up the moment somebody needs exactly that. Cohen and Co are on there selling fractional CFO work. Dorwart Law are on there at $1,000 with a three day turnaround. That is what a storefront looks like when it is working.
A Service Provider storefront. What you do, what it costs, and how long you have done it.
A Featured Founder page. Mission, vision, what you are raising, and what you have run.
Eighty three founders, each with a stage, a funding goal and the problem they are solving.
The marketplace is already live and already has 37 products, 6 jobs and 16 open asks on it. Post what you sell, post what you need, or go answer somebody else's ask today.
Legal work, manufacturing, paid founder calls. Sixteen open asks waiting on an answer.
And Explore puts the whole thing in one feed: community posts, impact projects, jobs, resources, listings and open asks, filtered however you want to read it.
Explore. Everything the network is posting, in one feed.
Do this today, not this week. A card tells me what you need. A profile tells everybody else, and it works while you are asleep. Ten minutes, and it is free.
August, for the record
374 people at the Southampton Inn on 22 August for Hamptons Fashion Week. Baccio Couture, Cesar Galindo, Ocean of Origins and Carlton Jones on the runway. Jeffrey Banks headlined, two Coty Awards, trained under Ralph Lauren and then Calvin Klein, longstanding CFDA executive board. He stayed the whole day, did a Q and A, and signed books. The Manhattan bus sold out.
Southampton Inn, 22 August. Photography by DCG Media Group.
I also turned off twelve automated systems that had been writing status reports about this business instead of running it. They ran clean every single day while people who had written to me waited weeks for an answer.
What is left is smaller and I think it is the actual thing: a list of people who want to change something, a record of what they need, and someone reading it by hand until there is enough of it to route properly.
New today: you can join the Private Network in one click
Until this morning the only way to join was a payment link I pasted into emails by hand, and nothing on my end knew when somebody paid. As of today it runs properly. Membership is live directly inside this newsletter, so you upgrade in one click from this email and I know immediately, which is the difference between a promise and a system.
The Private Network is $200 a month. Three introductions, every month, to someone who can pay you, hire you, or move your company forward. Made by hand, from what you told me on your card. Free entry to every room I run. The first 25 members hold that rate for as long as they stay.
The honest version of the pitch: this is done by reading, not by an algorithm. What exists is a written record of what people need and a working knowledge of who is in this network, and the matches come out of that. Slower than software, and better, because an introduction with a reason attached is worth more than ten that are merely plausible.
Two ways to check before you commit. Reply with the word NETWORK and I will send you the last three introductions I made, names removed, so you can judge the work rather than the promise. Or take fifteen minutes with me and tell me what you need first. If I do not think I can route it, I will say so on the call rather than take your $200.
One date for the calendar
Times Square Fashion Week, Tuesday 15 September, Father Duffy Square, noon to 11pm. New York fashion week season, outdoors, in the middle of Manhattan.
Two designer showcase slots are left at $5,000, which carries eight looks on the runway, press releases, and a Times Square billboard for the duration of the show. Vendor placement is $3,000. And there is a $500 add-on called Billboard With You On It, which does exactly what it says at 9pm when the billboards light up over the square.
The whole breakdown lands at 4pm today. The run of show hour by hour, every price with the tax and fees shown before checkout, why I killed the free press pass, and what the $500 billboard actually is. If you already know you want to come, tickets are on Eventbrite from $25 for the marketplace and $350 for the full day. Use the code PROPEL for 20% off any tier. Reply RUNWAY if you want a slot.
Stephen
If you missed the last few
I have been sending 16,830 people the same email
28 August. The one question that produced the 97 answers at the top of this edition.
Richie Hosein spent 26 years selling healthcare. Now he gives it away.
26 August. A founder feature, researched from a real conversation.
Russell Brand and Pink Floyd's Scott Page on Shelter Island, plus fashion week in the Hamptons
17 August. Two rooms, both of which have now happened.
The Private Network
Three introductions a month, to someone who can pay you, hire you, or move your company forward. Made by hand, from what you told me on your card. Free entry to every room I run. $200 a month, and the first 25 members hold that rate for as long as they stay.
Not sure yet? Take fifteen minutes with me and tell me what you need. If I do not think I can route it, I will say so rather than take the money.
Know someone who should be in here?
Forward this to them. Or send them the front door: propelearth.beehiiv.com, where the card, the map, the Private Network and every room I run all sit one click apart.