Dez Fleming is a Principal at FirstMark who focuses on proptech, fintech, and vertical SaaS investments, building on his commercial strategy experience at real estate platform Cadre and M&A work at Deloitte. He founded Catalyst, a network for Black and Hispanic tech professionals, and regularly hosts fintech conversations with founders while running the All Things Venture newsletter to educate early-stage entrepreneurs.

• Strong thesis on vertical AI and the transition of labor services into software platforms. He closely follows how AI-native firms are competing with human labor in specific industries, pointing to the legal services market and the personal injury space as key indicators of this shift towards systems of action.
• Appreciation for hands-on experimentation with large language models to accelerate product development. He shares his personal experience iteratively prompting to build fully functional web apps and browser automation tools in a matter of hours, signaling an interest in founders who leverage these tools for rapid prototyping.
• Focus on the nuances of the fintech sector and the reality of market competition. He holds the view that fintech is rarely a winner-take-all environment and pays attention to effective brand marketing strategies, specifically noting the ubiquity of campaigns by companies like Ramp and Brex.
• Interest in the evolving interface between users and data, specifically the concept of prompting to trigger complex actions. He speculates that the next decade will see a shift toward prompt-based interactions for high-utility tasks like trading, fundamentally changing how users engage with accessible data.
• Respect for founder conviction and the resilience required to navigate failure. He highlights the challenging nature of entrepreneurship, sharing insights from successful founders about the high failure rate of individual initiatives and the necessity of persistence in building high-conviction businesses.