Propeller VC operates through a formal multi-year partnership with Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, giving it direct access to scientists and IP while building companies out of ocean science labs through a defined tech-transfer process that spins out startups with scientists as founders. The fund refuses capital from oil companies and has helped establish the three-vertical framework (Ocean Carbon, Ocean Industrials, and Ocean Organics) that major institutions like J.P. Morgan now use to define the blue-tech investment landscape.