Last Sunday I put eleven asks from this community in front of you. Here is exactly what happened.
276 people opened an ask. Five people answered one. Nine of the eleven got nothing at all. Ana Karina's ask has been viewed fifty times and has never once been answered.
That is not on you. It is on me. To respond you had to leave the email, land on a page, work out where the button was, and write something into a box. That is four steps too many, so almost nobody did it.
So this week, do not leave your inbox
Hit reply and name the ask. One line is enough. "I know someone for Ana Karina" is enough. I read every reply myself and I make the introduction by hand, usually the same day.
That is the whole mechanism. No form, no account, no page.
The nine that still have nothing
Ordered by how many people have looked without answering.
50 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES · THE MOST LOOKED AT ASK ON THE LIST
Ana Karina Da Silva needs schools
An education contract is on the table. If you know a principal, a district administrator or anyone who buys curriculum, that is the whole ask.
$25,000 TO $100,000 · 39 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES Makayla Williams is raising for Axion This was the most clicked link in the last edition and still nobody has answered it. |
$500 TO $2,000 · THIS ONE IS MINE · 38 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES Series A companies hiring software engineers I pay cash for an intro that turns into a hire. That is mine, and it is still open. |
$35 TO $50 AN HOUR · 30 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES Ritesh Doijode wants a robotics internship Summer 2026, working where AI actually touches control systems. |
17 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES Ayvan Krishan wants an introduction to the NY DEC Ideally someone near the Bigger Better Bottle bill. |
17 VIEWS, ZERO REPLIES · TWO ASKS Zsombor Koman needs two kinds of people Founders in decision-support wrestling with what their AI encodes, and civic AI funders or program officers doing non-dilutive grants. |
Makayla also has a second ask: app development mentorship.
The two that did work: Michael Jordan Pilgreen got three replies on his storyteller and video editor ask and two on diamonds and luxury real estate. Both had a budget attached and a specific person in mind. That is the lesson.
THIS WEEK'S PARTNER · RECOMMENDED BY PAUL ALLEN · EARN $250
Rho, startup banking, and $250 for one call
Paul Allen put this in front of the community through Atrios, the referral platform we are testing. Rho is a banking and financial automation platform built for startups. Perplexity, Superpower and Dr. Squatch run on it.
The deal is plain. Book a meeting through Atrios, take the call, share honest feedback afterward, and you are paid $250 for your time. Two qualifiers so nobody wastes a call: no regulated industries, and at least $100k of liquid capital in the bank.
New this week: Stacy Kessler
Stacy spent two decades building brands from both sides of the camera, on work with Chanel, Mercedes-Benz and HelloFresh. She has put two things on the marketplace this week.
Curated Industry Introductions · $500
"Not a list. A life worth knowing." Hand-picked introductions out of a network she actually built, not a spreadsheet she bought.
Fractional CMO and brand strategist · $250
She is opening a limited number of free ten minute exploratory calls for founders who want to talk positioning before they commit to anything. Take one.
Also new this week: Sol Trevino
Sol built a tool that shows you the whole story behind a website visit, not just clicks and sessions, where someone hovered, what they read before they filled out a form, where they got stuck. He is onboarding founders for free right now, no catch, but here is the actual trade so nobody finds out later: the data trains a behavioral dataset he plans to sell to AI and robotics companies down the line, and he is upfront about that being the business.
Free site analytics · Sol Trevino
A sixteen kilobyte script, seven days of passive data, then a plain English report on how people actually move through your site. Reply if you want in, first founders onboarded get priority when he starts charging.
Also this week: Hamptons Fashion Week
Southampton fills with 300 people on August 22nd for a runway on the lawn, real designers, and a day that starts at noon and doesn't let up until the show at four. Tickets are moving.
Where Propel is going
One more thing, and it is the part I most want you to read. Everything in this email, the asks, the listings, the intros, runs through one place: the propel.earth marketplace. It is a storefront for this network. You put up a profile, you put up what you sell, you post what you need, and we put it in front of roughly 20,000 people and make the matches by hand.
Right now I am the bottleneck, and that is fine, that is how it should start. A marketplace becomes valuable when the shelves are full. Every profile makes the next match faster. Every ask teaches us what this network actually needs. Every listing gives someone a reason to come back. The events fill the room, this newsletter closes the loop, and the marketplace is what makes the whole thing work at scale, for you, without me standing in the middle.
So we are opening it to testers this month. I want people who will use it, break it, and tell me plainly what was confusing, what was missing, and what almost worked. Reply with the word tester and I will onboard you personally.
If testing is not your thing, do one of these instead: make your profile, post an ask, or list what you sell. Ten minutes now, and it compounds every week after.
This Thursday, 12 PM ET, Propel Rooms. Two minutes each on what you are working on and what you need, intros made live, follow-up email same day. Join here, no registration.
New here? This is Propel Earth.
A network of roughly 20,000 founders, investors and operators, most of them in New York. We run rooms every week, we place engineers, and we match people to what they need by hand. Aurora Winters told us what she needed when she registered for Demo Day, we matched her before the doors opened, and she closed $100,000 a month later. That is the whole thesis: most of what makes a company work is who you happen to be standing next to, so we stop leaving it to chance.
The Propeller Network is open. It is where the loop closes between editions. Post what you need in Asks, post what landed in Closed, say you are coming in Rooms, find work in Hiring, and introduce yourself so we know who you are. Free, and I read everything in there.
Post an ask · Jobs board · Showcase · Upcoming rooms · Private Network, fifteen minutes with me
Reply with one name. That is all it takes.
Best,
Stephen
propel.earth · Reply here or text 516 307 6380.