The global experiences market grew 2.6%, versus 0.8% for non-essential goods, over 2023–25.
Building ventures for
the experience economy.
PROPEL is a venture platform exploring new businesses in live experiences, the digital services that power them and the financing that makes them possible.
Explore the venturesIdeas first.
Businesses if they earn it.
Businesses if they earn it.
Everything here is still at concept stage. PROPEL makes ideas visible early — so they can be challenged, shaped and, where the case is strong enough, built with others.
Why this economy, why now?
AI creates more content.
People want more life.
As digital content becomes abundant, people place greater value on going places, doing things and sharing experiences.
Think live entertainment, travel, culture, sport, hospitality — and the businesses that make them possible.
Technology helps create and deliver them. The opportunity is human.
The investment case
Growing demand.
Multiple ways to capture value.
The opportunity goes beyond creating experiences. It extends to the businesses that help people discover, book and fund them — and keep coming back.
That is the investment thesis: identify where value can endure, build the right business model and match the financing to it.
Europeans surveyed who say they value experiences more than ever.
Forecast growth through 2030 across selected live, shared and out-of-home experiences, including trade shows.
Six ways in.
Different markets. One underlying economy.
01 / PROPEL
FRONTIERS
New markets
Building experience-economy ventures where demand is emerging faster than supply.
Starting with fast-growing, underserved markets — and with local consumers, behaviours and partners.
Discover the idea02
INSIDERS
Insider venturesTurning non-obvious operator insight into new companies.
Discover the idea 03KINDRED
New life stageA new life-stage market built around connection, discovery and thoughtfully designed shared experiences.
Discover the idea 04GRO
CapitalNew financing for live and cultural productions — with capital designed to recycle.
Discover the idea 05WCF
ConvergenceBringing creators, capital, technology, media, brands and places into the same room.
Discover the idea 06TRACES
New media formatsStories experienced in real places, through the eyes and voices of remarkable people.
Discover the ideaThe exploration continues.
Your perspectiveAn idea. A question. Something you see that others don’t. There’s room for more perspectives — come explore with us.
Come explore with us.About PROPEL
Connecting insight,
people and capital.
PROPEL is an independent venture platform focused on the experience economy. We explore opportunities, shape business models and bring together founders, operators, creators and financing partners to build them.
FRONTIERS
New markets.
New experiences.
Building experience-economy businesses in fast-growing markets where demand is emerging faster than supply.
A concept-stage venture-building thesis, shared to test where it could create real businesses.
The opportunity
What comes after
basic needs?
As cities grow, incomes rise and consumers become more mobile and connected, demand expands beyond essentials. People want places to meet, travel, play, watch, participate, discover and belong. In many fast-growing markets, the supply of locally relevant experiences can lag that demand.
The PROPEL idea
Build for the local market first.
FRONTIERS would look for experience businesses shaped around local consumers and local behaviour — not simply imported concepts. Tourism and international visitors could strengthen the economics where relevant, but would not have to be the starting point.
The opportunity set could span leisure, live entertainment, sport and wellness, hospitality, culture, outdoor and adventure, food experiences, events, community spaces and the technologies or services that enable them.
How it could work
From market gap to venture.
The model would begin with a specific market and behaviour, then build only where demand and economics can be demonstrated.
- 01 / Read
Find the market gap
Identify where consumer demand, demographics or urban development are moving faster than the existing offer.
- 02 / Localise
Design from the market
Work with local operators and consumers to shape a proposition that fits local culture, pricing and behaviour.
- 03 / Validate
Prove the economics
Test willingness to pay, utilisation, repeat behaviour, operating requirements and the path to an investable model.
- 04 / Build
Create and scale the venture
Bring together local entrepreneurship, specialist operators and capital around the concepts that prove themselves.
Where to look
Experience is broader than entertainment.
Leisure & live
Attractions, family entertainment, music, events, nightlife and participatory formats.
Travel & hospitality
Locally relevant stays, destinations, food experiences and new forms of discovery.
Sport, wellness & outdoors
Active leisure, clubs, communities, adventure and formats built around wellbeing.
Culture & enabling platforms
Venues, heritage, cultural experiences and the technologies or services that help them operate and grow.
Join the conversation
Where is demand moving faster than supply?
The first task is not to pick a country or import a concept. It is to identify a market where a new pattern of leisure, culture, travel or participation is becoming economically visible — and understand it from the ground up.
INSIDERS
You’ve seen what
outsiders haven’t.
Turning insider knowledge into new companies.
A concept-stage venture-building model focused on experienced operators with a non-obvious market insight.
The opportunity
Years inside a market
create an unfair insight.
Experienced operators see problems, behaviours and opportunities that are difficult to understand from outside: a broken workflow, an unmet customer need, an underused asset, an obsolete model or a new behaviour hiding in plain sight. The founder does not need to arrive with a polished startup idea. The insight is the starting point.
The focus
Entertainment & experience industries.
INSIDERS would focus on people who have operated inside live entertainment, attractions, sport, hospitality and travel, events, cultural venues, experiential leisure and the technologies and services around them.
The insider brings the edge
First-hand knowledge, industry relationships, an observed problem and access to the people who can validate it.
PROPEL brings the venture process
A way to test the insight, shape the proposition, assemble the company and connect it to operating talent and capital.
How it could work
From insider insight to independent company.
- 01 / Surface
Find the non-obvious insight
Start with something an experienced operator has repeatedly seen that outsiders are unlikely to understand as clearly.
- 02 / Validate
Build the ProtoCo
Test the problem, customer access, solution and business case before committing to a full company.
- 03 / Launch
Create the NewCo
Bring together the insider, PROPEL and investors around a proposition that has earned the right to exist.
- 04 / Transition
Build the operating team
Put dedicated leadership in place as the company becomes independent and the insider’s long-term role becomes clear.
The thesis
The founder may exist before the idea does.
The addressable pool is therefore broader than executives already planning a startup. INSIDERS would look for strong operators with insight and appetite — then help determine whether there is a company worth building around what they know.
Join the conversation
What do you know that outsiders don’t?
The first conversation is about the insight, not the pitch deck: what keeps recurring, who feels the problem, why it matters and what evidence would make it worth building.
PROPEL / WCF · Convergence
Where creative worlds
come together.
World Creative Forum & Festival — bringing creativity, media, technology, capital and place together in Montreux.
The opportunity
Across sectors.
Beyond the usual rooms.
Music, film, media, art and technology each have their own gatherings. WCF would create a shared space for the people shaping these industries to explore what they could build together — connecting strategic conversation with creative work and new business.
The idea
A forum. A festival. A place to make things happen.
The Forum
An invitation-based gathering for industry leaders, investors, leading creators and public stakeholders. A setting for candid discussion about business models, investment, technology and the future of creative work.
The Festival
A public programme of performances, new formats and immersive experiences. A way to make the ideas discussed at the Forum visible, tangible and open to wider audiences.
The connections
Leave room for the unexpected.
Alongside the Forum and Festival, an informal market would give producers, creators, media companies, investors and technology ventures time to meet. Project presentations would sit alongside unhurried conversations, with the aim of generating collaborations, productions and deals.
Creative work meets new capabilities
Artists and producers could explore new formats with technology companies and distribution partners.
Projects meet people who can advance them
Investors and decision-makers could engage directly with creators and the ideas behind their next production.
The setting
Montreux as the meeting point.
The project draws on Montreux’s creative identity and musical heritage. The ambition is an annual gathering that brings a focused professional community together while opening the city to public experiences.
The programme would connect questions of creation, ownership, financing and distribution. Its value would lie in who meets, what they explore together and what continues after the event.
Join the conversation
What deserves a shared stage?
Which conversations are missing between creative industries? Who needs to be in the same room — and what could they create or launch together?
PROPEL / GRO · Capital
Finance the production.
Keep capital moving.
A financing model for live and cultural productions — bringing new capital structures to production and recycling capital into new projects.
The opportunity
Production comes first.
Revenue comes later.
Cultural productions need money before audiences buy tickets. GRO would provide short-term production financing, with repayment linked to the revenues a project generates. Capital returning from one set of productions could then support the next.
The idea
A revolving pool for cultural production.
The proposed structure is an evergreen fund financing batches of productions through revenue-based finance. Each agreement would define the share of revenue used for repayment and a cap on the total amount repaid.
Pooling several productions would spread exposure across projects. The model depends on careful selection, credible revenue assumptions and reliable collection and reporting.
How it would work
Finance. Collect. Recycle.
- 01 / Select
Build a batch
Assess several productions together, including their budgets, ticketing assumptions and revenue collection arrangements.
- 02 / Finance
Fund the production
Provide capital before the production earns its revenues, under an agreed revenue-sharing arrangement.
- 03 / Collect
Follow actual revenues
Receive the agreed share as revenues come in, until the contractual repayment cap is reached.
- 04 / Recycle
Support the next batch
Reinvest returning capital in new productions, with distributions to investors governed by the fund’s terms.
The structure
Real productions. A digital ownership layer.
An evergreen approach
The fund would remain available for successive batches of productions, allowing returned capital to be used again.
Tokenised participation
The proposed fund interests would be represented digitally. The underlying activity would remain the financing of cultural productions and the collection of real revenues.
Join the conversation
Where could this financing fit?
The useful starting point is a production with a clear funding gap, a traceable revenue stream and a short operating cycle. Producers and financing partners could help test whether the model fits those realities.
PROPEL / KINDRED · New life stage
A new chapter.
A wider world.
A trusted global platform for active women entering their next chapter — a new life-stage market built around connection, culture, discovery and shared experiences.
The opportunity
More freedom.
More to discover.
KINDRED is designed for active, independent women, broadly from their late fifties to early seventies, who want to explore, meet people and spend time in inspiring places. At this life stage, the opportunity may be less about owning more and more about doing, discovering and connecting. Shared experiences would be the starting point for lasting connection.
The experience
A season of reasons to come together.
A curated KINDRED Season would bring together different ways to participate, from a local conversation to an immersive stay. Culture, curiosity and the people around the table would give each experience its character.
Salons
Intimate gatherings built around a conversation, a cultural encounter or a shared interest.
Weekends
Short stays combining discovery, time together and access to people and places that make the visit distinctive.
Residencies
Longer immersive stays, offering time to live somewhere else, explore locally and build connections.
Roamings
Curated journeys shaped around discovery, with a trusted group and a connection to the places visited.
Only in KINDRED
Everyone brings a key.
Each member would contribute a KEY: access to a place, a person, an area of expertise, a connection or an experience. Together, these contributions could open doors that a conventional programme could not.
Safety without enclosure
Thoughtful curation, trusted hosts and reassuring arrangements would support freedom and independence, while keeping the experience open to the surrounding place and its people.
A second life for places
The “Second Life” idea would bring new activity to exceptional, underused places through stays and cultural programming, connecting their next chapter with that of the women who visit.
The model
A community built through experience.
Membership would support the community and platform, with experiences booked separately. KINDRED would develop its programme with partner venues and local hosts, keeping the focus on the quality of the experience.
Join the conversation
What would make you want to be there?
The first conversations would be with potential members, hosts and cultural partners: what experiences would feel worth making time for, what creates trust, and what KEY could each person bring?
PROPEL / TRACES · New media formats
Stories you can
step into.
A global media platform for experiences that unfold in real places — guided by the voices, stories and perspectives of remarkable people.
The opportunity
A place becomes
part of the story.
A street, a neighbourhood or a city can take on a different meaning through someone else’s eyes. TRACES would bring that perspective into the physical world: a musician’s influences, a comedian’s observations, a scientist’s curiosity. Walking through the place becomes part of experiencing the work.
The experience
Walk into someone else’s world.
Each Trace would be an authored multimedia experience, developed with a recognised personality as its creative host. Their voice and filmed presence would accompany the participant virtually, with the story unfolding along a route.
A host with a point of view
Artists, performers, thinkers and other personalities would help shape each production. Their relationship to the subject and the place gives the experience its character.
A story made for the location
Scripted, recorded and filmed on site, each Trace would connect narrative and surroundings through sound, images, geolocation and augmented reality.
Familiar places, fresh perspectives
Residents could encounter their own city differently. Visitors could discover a place through a distinctive creative lens. Curiosity is the common starting point.
The city as a medium
Movement, surroundings and the host’s presence would work together. The participant’s physical journey becomes part of the storytelling.
The platform
Many perspectives. One catalogue.
One account would open a catalogue of Traces across selected cities and themes: music, comedy, science, society and more. The ambition is a recognisable media format that can travel internationally while giving every production its own voice and setting.
The catalogue would grow progressively, bringing together selected places, compelling themes and hosts with something distinctive to share.
What to explore
From a compelling story to a repeatable format.
The creative proposition
Which combinations of host, theme and place make people want to take part — and seek out another Trace?
The production model
How can scripting, filming, rights and location-based technology come together in a format that maintains quality as the catalogue grows?
The audience relationship
What brings residents and visitors into the experience, and what gives them a reason to return across themes and cities?
The business model
Which ways of accessing, distributing and paying for the experiences could support both the platform and the people creating them?
Join the conversation
Whose world would you walk into?
A personality, a place, a story worth experiencing differently. Creators, producers, technology partners and curious participants could help shape what a first Trace should be.