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LvlUp Ventures

@lvlupvc

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Investing in category-defining businesses. 1,000 startups backed globally.

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Some of the most interesting companies we see don't fit neatly into a category yet. That's exactly what Emerging Companies Day is for.

Today, founders building in new and fast-moving markets pitched live to investors in the first part of our Emerging Companies series. Different industries, one thing in common: they're early, and they're moving.

Emerging Companies Day, Part 1 winners:

KLUSTR takes first, with a better-for-you crunchy gummy cluster that pairs bold candy flavor with meaningful protein.
Baritex AI Operating System comes in second, giving SMEs and professionals across Africa AI-powered strategy, mentorship and career guidance for $15 a month.
Zerplay rounds out the top three, with a stream-to-own entertainment platform where fans watch, listen, read and play, and creators keep control of their work.

Congratulations to our winners and to every founder who pitched this week. Part 2 is coming soon.

#LvlUpVentures #PowerOfThePitch #EmergingTech #Founders #Startups by @lvlupvc

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2 days ago

Consumer founders have one of the hardest jobs in startups. They have to win over a buyer, a shelf and a shopper, often all in the same month.

Today's CPG & Consumer Tech founders brought products people can hold, taste and use, and the numbers to show customers are coming back.

Meet today's winners:

🏆 Wellspring Global: affordable, fortified everyday nutrition and safe-water brands for Bangladesh's growing middle class, already reaching 8,500+ outlets
🏆 ZoraSafe: a privacy-first, community-powered network that protects people from scams on their phones
🏆 AForce Hydration: premium performance hydration paired with AForce OS, an app that turns real-time health and activity data into personalized hydration guidance

If you love discovering brands like these, join us in Los Angeles (or online) on November 12 for LvlUp Demo Day, where our accelerator's CPG brands take the stage: lvlup.vc/events/la-cpg-demo-day

#LvlUpVentures #PowerOfThePitch #CPG #ConsumerTech #Startups by @lvlupvc

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3 days ago

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3 days ago

In B2B, the strongest pitch usually isn't the slide deck. It's the customer list.

Today at Power of the Pitch Week, B2B founders walked investors through the problems they solve for real businesses: the workflows they replace, the budgets they unlock and why customers keep renewing.

Your B2B Day winners:

1. Sastra, AI and clinical care management that helps health systems identify high-risk chronic patients early and reduce hospital readmissions
2. SupplyMango, AI agents that run procurement for hotels in Latin America, paying suppliers on delivery and offering buyers credit terms
3. Halite Intelligence, portable consumer identity infrastructure that gives brands and AI shopping agents permissioned customer context from the first interaction

Congratulations to all three, and to every team that pitched. Tomorrow we turn to CPG and Consumer Tech. Tune in here: https://form.typeform.com/to/Wl2houKi

#LvlUpVentures #PowerOfThePitch #B2B #SaaS #Startups by @lvlupvc

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4 days ago

AI Day at Power of the Pitch Week is a wrap.

Every founder who pitched today is building with AI. The ones who stood out had turned it into something customers pay for, use every week and would miss if it disappeared.

Congratulations to today's winners:

🥇 Marqea | an AI CMO for small businesses that audits, plans and executes marketing across six channels
🥈 Native Labs | an operating system for AI-run companies, with agents that plan, sell, build and ship alongside one founder
🥉 The Good AI Company | AI transformation for African enterprises, built and maintained under one stack

Thank you to every founder who pitched, and to the investors who joined us live. B2B Day is up tomorrow.

Sign up to watch our founders pitch live here: https://form.typeform.com/to/Wl2houKi

#LvlUpVentures #PowerOfThePitch #AI #Startups #VentureCapital by @lvlupvc

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5 days ago

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5 days ago

When someone asks AI for the best tool in your category, does your company show up in the answer?

Join the LvlUp Ventures × Semrush AI Search & Discoverability Hackathon, a live build session where you work through the SEO and AI SEO module on your own company's site.

📅 Thursday, November 5 · Virtual · Open to founders anywhere

How the session runs:
🚀 Kickoff and the brief
🔍 How search is changing across Google and AI answer engines, and where your next customer now looks
🛠️ A live build session where you work through the SEO and AI SEO module on your own company
🎤 Share-outs, where founders show what they built

What you walk away with:
✅ A clear picture of how your company shows up on Google and in AI answers today
✅ Your SEO and AI SEO plan, started live, with next steps laid out
✅ A $225 grant for every eligible founder

Register here:
https://events.lvlup.vc/ai-search-discoverability-hackathon/

#Founders #AISearch #SEO #LvlUpVentures by @lvlupvc

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9 days ago

Hundreds of millions of people across Africa still don't have reliable electricity, and many more have a grid connection they can't count on. Solar is one of the fastest ways to close that gap, and the cost of panels has fallen dramatically over the past decade.

So the panel isn't really the hard part anymore. What is hard is everything around it: finding an installer you can trust, getting a system sized correctly, paying for it, and keeping it working five years later.

We backed DECHANS through LvlUp Labs.

DECHANS is a Kenyan, EPRA-licensed solar and electrical company building an AI-powered platform that helps homes, farms, businesses and institutions get affordable solar. It connects customers with trusted installers, suppliers, financing and maintenance in one place.

What interested us is how the company makes money. It earns from selling and installing systems, and then keeps earning through maintenance, monitoring, subscriptions, and commissions from the suppliers and financing partners on its platform. That turns a one-time sale into a long customer relationship.

That relationship is also where trust gets built. In markets where poor installations and unreliable vendors have made customers wary, a company that stands behind the system after it's installed has a real advantage.

The early signal is strong. DECHANS reports $50K in monthly recurring revenue and has raised $300K.

It remains early. We'll be watching the share of revenue from recurring services, installer quality across the network, and expansion beyond Kenya.

Welcome to the LvlUp ecosystem, Humphrey and the DECHANS team.

dechans.co.ke

#LvlUpLabs #ClimateTech by @lvlupvc

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10 days ago

Power of the Pitch Week is back, October 13–16.

Four days, four categories, founders pitching live:

Oct 13: AI
Oct 14: B2B
Oct 15: Consumer Tech & CPG
Oct 16: Emerging Companies

Each day, founders pitch to a room of 250+ investors and partners. These are some of the sharpest early-stage companies we've seen this year, and the best way to understand what they're building is to hear it from them directly.

Register to watch our founders pitch here: https://form.typeform.com/to/Wl2houKi
Apply to pitch at our future events: https://www.lvlup.vc/apply/funding-application by @lvlupvc

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10 days ago

Ship more. Hire later.

The most efficient early-stage teams are automating first and hiring only when revenue calls for it. Here's how they do it.

Join the LvlUp Ventures × Zoom Company Building Series: Building the AI‑Native Company.

📅 Friday, October 30 · Virtual · Open to founders anywhere

How the session runs:
🤖 What "AI-native" actually means at the early stage
⚙️ Live walkthroughs of real workflows, start to finish
🗺️ Mapping the automation opportunities in your own company
💬 Q&A before you log off

What you walk away with:
✅ A map of the AI workflows your team can adopt now
✅ An automation idea for each of your biggest time sinks
✅ A hire-or-automate framework for deciding when a role needs a person
✅ A first look at ZoomMate, Zoom's new agentic AI work surface

Register here: https://events.lvlup.vc/company-building-series-building-the-ai-native-company/

#Founders #AINative #StartupOps #LvlUpVentures by @lvlupvc

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11 days ago

We’re proud to announce our investment in Loadstone Labs.

In the American West, water rights are real property. They can be bought, sold, leased and changed to new uses. They're also traded under a legal system that dates to the 1800s, where your priority date decides who gets water when there isn't enough.

That system is about to be tested. The rules for operating the Colorado River's biggest reservoirs expire at the end of 2026, and the seven basin states have been negotiating what comes next on a river that has been over-allocated for a century. More water is going to change hands.

Loadstone builds software for the attorneys, engineers and investors who move water rights. It starts in Colorado, where the company works within the state's water community, with a co-pilot that automates decree research, call alerts, decree extraction and augmentation plan accounting.

What interested us is how little software this market has. A single transfer can involve title research going back over a century, historical use reconstruction, injury analysis and state approval. Change cases can take years. Most of that work is done by hand.

Welcome to the portfolio, Hari, Henrik and the Loadstone team.

loadstonelabs.com

#FirstCheckFund #Water #ClimateTech by @lvlupvc

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11 days ago

Getting paid from abroad has become easy. A freelancer in India can invoice a client in the U.S. and receive the money through PayPal, Wise, Payoneer or a bank wire within days.

What happens next is still hard. Each rail reports fees and amounts differently, so payments rarely match invoices. Each payment needs a FIRA, the bank document that proves foreign income and supports export tax treatment. Then it all has to be reconciled, taxed correctly and filed.

That’s why we’re excited to announce that we’ve backed Lumeo through LvlUp Labs.

Lumeo is compliance software for India's cross-border earners. It reconciles every incoming payment, generates the FIRA, computes the tax and prefills the income tax return automatically.

More than 48,000 people on the waitlist, including nearly 8,000 in the U.S., with no ad spend.

Welcome to the LvlUp ecosystem, Sohom, Krishnendu and the Lumeo team.

lumeo.co.in
#LvlUpLabs #FinTech #India by @lvlupvc

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12 days ago