Gauging the Market: How Venture Investors Are Actually Deploying
Field notes from a Blueprint conversation, with takeaways for investors underwriting proptech now
After the fastest rate tightening in four decades and a hard reset in venture valuations, the question is no longer whether proptech will be funded, it’s by what proof, at what price, and on what timeline.
At this year’s Blueprint, Ashkan Zandieh (Managing Director, CRETI) moderated a session on how venture capital is actually being deployed in proptech alongside Gavin Myers (Managing Partner, Prudence), David Weiden (Managing Director, Khosla Ventures), Alexandra Nicoletti (Partner, Camber Creek), and Adam Demuyakor (Managing Partner, Wilshire Lane Capital).
If you’re allocating or raising, this is the playbook to compound capital in 2025–2026, where execution, not rhetoric, earns the premium.
1. Thesis Drift: From Category Stories to Measurable Pain
Sector specialists are concentrating on workflows that move a P&L, collections, underwriting accuracy, and maintenance turnaround, because those produce fast, auditable ROI. Generalist funds still participate, but increasingly where sector expertise is proximate and the market can absorb large checks without service drag. The standard screen is the customer's pain expensive, frequent, and owned by someone with a budget?
According to Gavin Myers, Managing Partner, Prudence, the bar has shifted from “interesting category” to “budgeted workflow.” Investors want evidence that the buyer feels the pain today, has the authority to spend, and can reference results inside their organization.
2. Entry Timing: Later Signals, Earlier Conviction
Entry points vary by mandate, but the underwriting bar has converged. Some specialists will still incubate or lead seeds; they expect working product, paying customers, and early signs that a single-asset win can become a regional rollout. Later specialists and many generalists prefer developed seed through Series A with a referenceable enterprise intent. The focus is propagation math: land → expand → standardize.
According to Alexandra Nicoletti, Partner, Camber Creek, credible expansion paths beat logo slides. Case studies should document the conversion from pilot to MSA, who signs, what changes in the operating model, and how much service load is required per incremental site.
3. Underwriting AI: Data Rights, Workflow Gravity, and Unit Economics
AI premiums are warranted only when three conditions hold: (1) privileged data access (contracted, refreshed, labeled in the loop); (2) a tightly embedded workflow beachhead (collections, leasing, due diligence, maintenance) that throws off recurrent signals; and (3) unit economics that improve with scale. Thin wrappers on generic models rarely clear this bar.
According to Adam Demuyakor, Managing Partner, Wilshire Lane Capital, real defensibility in proptech AI comes from access to operational data and the feedback loops that compound product quality; teams that can secure integrations and label outcomes at scale earn their multiples.
4. Liquidity by Design: Aligning Fund Physics and Founder Timelines
Ten-year funds collide with 12–15-year company arcs, especially as M&A runs episodic and IPO windows stagger. The practical response is to architect liquidity early: structured secondaries at growth rounds, GP-led continuation vehicles for outliers, and cross-fund policies that avoid forced exits. Liquidity planning is now a fiduciary habit, not a market-timing hope.
According to David Weiden, Managing Director of Khosla Ventures, managers should demonstrate realized distributions in the last cycle and be explicit about secondary and continuation-vehicle playbooks. Boards should calendar liquidity discussions annually, before they’re needed.
5. Deployment Playbook 2025–2026: Spend-to-Stage and GTM by Design
Discipline separates durable winners. Conserve until unit economics are proven; accelerate when propagation math becomes repeatable. Design GTM around operator reality, training at the point of need, integration contracts instead of brittle one-offs, and subtraction of legacy steps as you add automation.
According to Nicoletti, adoption is an organizational capacity problem as much as a technology problem. Removing duplicate steps and reports creates the space for new capabilities to stick and for sales velocity to compound.
What Founders Should Do Next
Be honest about AI. If you lack the data rights or technical DNA to build a moat, treat AI as a feature, not your category.
Prove propagation. Publish your land→expand→standardize funnel, with conversion rates and service hours per step.
Match spend to stage. Cash is strategy; preserve it until the unit economics are observed, not inferred.
Co-design liquidity. Align with your cap table on secondary logic before growth rounds, not after.
What This Means for Proptech
The venture market around proptech isn’t paused. Investors who underwrite data paths and workflow change, and founders who measure propagation and design liquidity, will meet in the middle at rational prices with durable outcomes. Everything else is commentary.
