Jason Shuman

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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Every #VentureStudio GP knows some portfolio bets won’t hit. That's expected - and it's one of the reasons studios are such a powerful vehicle for innovation. And while a venture's failure might be what's visible to the outsider, what keeps them up at night isn’t failure at the venture level — it’s failure at the systemic level within the studio. One bad entity design. One IP misstep. One governance gap. That’s how studio operations fall apart. We break down how to spot (and fix) these cracks before they turn into fault lines in our latest paper, "The GP Dilemma" - DM me and I'll send you a copy!

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I spoke with Christien Louviere of BDE Capital about his journey from a $330mm exit to becoming an independent sponsor. Christien shared excellent insights for folks looking to partner with business owners, rather than buy sellers out completely. Below are a few of the topics we covered: - Why he moved from “zero-to-one” startups to a buy-then-build strategy - How Christien's background shaped a focus on growth vs. cost-cutting - Why 20–40% rolled equity is central to his deal structures—and how it builds trust with sellers - Using scenario analysis with AI tools to evaluate management teams and uncover hidden key-person risks - How to identify when a $3–5M EBITDA company truly has a middle management layer—or is still founder-reliant For anyone investing in or buying small businesses, Christien’s approach provides a fresh lens on growth, alignment, and deal structuring. 🎥 Watch the full interview here → https://lnkd.in/ekfkaiej 🎧 Listen on Spotify: https://lnkd.in/e86Agx6V

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It is incredible what care.fi has built - an OS for healthcare players —unifying RCM, claims intelligence, and embedded finance into a single execution layer. Welcome to July Family, Care.fi

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I’m so proud that Hyphen Capital has been a backer of Tim Hwang and Jonathan Chen since the beginning of Nitra. They had big ambitions to modernize the archaic back office of healthcare practices from fax machines to AI. It’s been amazing to see their growth from processing zero transactions to over a billion dollars and they’re just getting started.

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I met Craig Limoli, Founder and CEO of Wellsheet, in 2019. Craig was presenting at the Ai4 Healthcare Conference in New York City, hosted by Michael J Weiss . It was one of those early gatherings focused on AI in healthcare - well before the recent wave of hype. Craig took the stage to share how Wellsheet was using AI to help doctors and nurses make better, faster decisions at the point of care with its Care Team Copilot. Wellsheet’s technology was impressive, but its real edge came from Craig’s deep understanding of the problem he was solving. Before founding Wellsheet, he worked at IBM as a strategy consultant, helping large health systems assess their tech stacks. He saw firsthand that the tools available were clunky, fragmented, and ultimately failed to support the clinicians doing the hardest work. It’s a story as old as time - the very systems IBM was selling to hospitals weren’t meeting their actual needs. So, Craig left IBM, enrolled in the The Wharton School MBA program to sharpen his entrepreneurial skills, and decided to build the product those systems truly needed - a Care Team Copilot designed to summarize patient charts, streamline documentation, and support real-time collaboration between physicians and nurses. We stayed in touch after that first meeting, and a few months later, Wellsheet raised its $4.5 million Series A, which our team at SpringTide Ventures led. The round came together just as the world was shutting down in the early months of the pandemic. Understandably, Craig was nervous that investors might pull back as uncertainty swept through the market, but we didn’t. We believed in Wellsheet’s mission, and more importantly, in Craig’s ability to execute against it. Despite the chaos of 2020, he stayed focused and transparent - qualities that made us even more confident we were backing the right founder at the right time. Fast forward to today: Wellsheet is now live at hundreds of hospitals and continues to outperform much larger competitors. In fact, when a major national health system evaluated solutions from both Google and Wellsheet, they unanimously chose Wellsheet. The healthcare industry faces an unprecedented shortage of doctors, nurses, and frontline clinicians. Wellsheet’s technology helps address this challenge by automating the most time-consuming and manual parts of clinical work. For physicians, it means no more laborious data entry; for executives, it means decisions are queued up for them - clear, informed, and ready to act on. By streamlining chart reviews, documentation, and decision support, Wellsheet enables care teams to focus on what truly matters: delivering better patient outcomes. We’re proud to support, and keep championing founders like Craig and his mission-driven team at Wellsheet!

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I’m thrilled to announce defy.vc’s investment in Birches Health as part of their $20M combined Seed and Series A funding round, alongside incredible partners like AlleyCorp, General Catalyst, Will Ventures, and others. As someone deeply passionate about backing companies that tackle important problems for our society, I couldn’t be more excited about what Birches is building—a national virtual clinic dedicated to treating gambling addiction and related behavioral disorders like gaming, sex, porn, and internet addictions. What excites me most is Birches’ innovative health assurance model: proactive, accessible, and affordable care that’s evidence-based and delivered right at home. With the explosion of legal sports betting—think nearly $1.5 billion wagered on this year’s Super Bowl alone—we’re staring down a looming public health emergency. Traditional options like hotlines or generic therapy fall short for this high-acuity issue, but Birches changes that by offering specialized therapy from trained clinicians, multimodal treatment, and peer support, all covered by major insurers like United Healthcare, Cigna, Aetna, and Blue Cross Blue Shield. It’s available in all 50 states, breaking down geographical and financial barriers that have left so many without help. The impact is already profound: 96% of patients report an improved quality of life, and 94% give Birches a 5/5 rating. By partnering with state governments, payors, and policymakers, Birches is pushing gambling addiction into the spotlight of behavioral health conversations, where it’s been neglected for too long—often leading to shame, worsened outcomes, and higher suicidality risks. This funding will supercharge their growth: expanding the provider network, boosting clinical excellence, scaling infrastructure, and deepening insurance and state partnerships to meet surging demand. Very excited to partner with Elliott Rapaport and the entire Birches team! See more about our POV in the blog post linked in the comments. #GamblingAddiction #BehavioralHealth #HealthTech #VentureCapital #Innovation

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Excited to share that Fifth Wall co-led Sekra's $12.5M seed round alongside 8VC. Sekra is founded by Oliver Ripley (OUR HABITAS), with Travis Kalanick (Uber & CloudKitchens) as founding investor and board member, and is reimagining what rental living can look like for a generation that's renting longer and expecting more from where we live—community, wellbeing, design, and technology working together as a cohesive experience. The round included an exceptional group of strategic investors across real estate, technology, and hospitality, including the Reuben Brothers, Mitchell Moinian (The Moinian Group), Div Turakhia, Harvey Spevak (Equinox), and Patrick Finnegan (Second Sight Ventures). I recently sat down with Oliver to talk about the vision behind Sekra, why traditional multifamily hasn't kept pace with how people want to live, and what it takes to build a truly category-defining residential platform. Thanks to Patrick Sisson at Fast Company for taking the time to speak with us and for capturing the thesis behind what Oliver and the team are building. 📰 https://bit.ly/4bZdaZH

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Excited to announce that Esplanade Ventures has co-led a Seed round investment in No Barrier Medical Translation, joined by our valued partners Nadav Shimoni, M.D.  at A-Squared Ventures, and Bill Evans and Sean Day from Rock Health Capital. As an immigrant who has faced language barriers firsthand, I was immediately inspired when I met Eyal Heldenberg. His authenticity and deep expertise in voice AI, combined with a nuanced understanding of the complexities in medical translation, are truly compelling. I am proud to support No Barrier’s mission to provide secure, accessible, and HIPAA-compliant medical interpretation services—transforming healthcare access for tens of millions of Americans and Canadians who have been historically underserved due to language barriers. No Barrier’s AI-powered medical interpreter offers real-time, clinically accurate, and privacy-first interpretation tailored specifically for healthcare environments. This innovation is a significant leap toward equitable healthcare by empowering limited English proficiency (LEP) populations with timely, reliable, and culturally sensitive communication at every stage of care. #DigitalHealth #VoiceAI #HealthTech #Founders #VentureCapital #NoBarrier

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I couldn’t be more excited to finally announce Generational Partners’ early investment in Sphere Semi. Everyone is talking about how the AI boom is driving demand for more digital semiconductors. What rarely gets discussed, however, are the analog chips our world actually runs on. Energy infrastructure, communications systems, and national security all depend on them, yet designing analog semiconductors is still an artisan craft. As a result, custom analog chips take too long to design and require significant upfront engineering costs, making them impractical in most use cases. Historically, many resort to commercial off-the-shelf options and compromise application-specific performance in response to this. We believe Sphere, and specifically their AI backend engine, is going to be the key to unlock this at scale. We're proud to back Steven Glinert & Mitchell Nahmias alongside Construct Capital, Abstract, Xfund, Village Global, and now ACME Capital & Future Ventures as Sphere Semi raises $12M in fresh capital. This is only the beginning. Link to Steven's announcement of the raise on TBPN today! https://lnkd.in/gJqcbg2r cc. Van Espahbodi, Denver Yu

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