An individualized, strategic, and hands-on hybrid startup accelerator-venture studio by LvlUp Ventures.
NextUp is the hybrid startup accelerator-venture studio arm of LvlUp Ventures, a Venture Capital (VC) Firm, which helps pre-launch startups go-to-market and scale through individualized, hands-on strategic advice and services across Go-To-Market (GTM) strategy, product development, strategy, marketing, and raising capital and invests in the most promising ones after they launch.
Our team of operators, investors, and advisors have over a century of combined experience in scaling startups in a variety of leadership and advisory roles, helping raise/invest hundreds of millions of dollars with a 10x+ return on investment and successfully growing or exiting over 20 companies as founders or VC’s.
Our team will help bring your startup to launch and ready to raise capital through individualized strategic advice and hands-on services over a flexible time period, plug you into our large community of LvlUp NextUp startups and Portfolio Companies, and offer you up to $500,000 of perks.
Every company is different. We believe that the traditional startup accelerator model doesn’t work nearly as well as it can, because of the non-customized, funnel-like approach that it employs. We’re transforming the way that startups grow by providing an individualized, strategic, hands-on, and cohortless (the opportunity to grow is now open 24/7/365) approach to bringing your startup to market and raising capital.
We consider investing in the most promising ventures which take part in LvlUp NEXT, writing checks of up to $125,000 and aiming to bring value throughout the entire startup journey through our mentorship and connections. Following the scale, startups can pitch to LvlUp in a community day consisting of our fund team, PortCo’s, entrepreneurs, and others in the startup ecosystem with the goal of getting a pre-seed or seed investment.
We believe in founders with a vision and high-potential solutions who have a Business Plan and Minimum Viable Product (MVP), but are yet to launch and raise their seed round. We act as an extension of your team by providing strategic advice and expertise to help you go-to-market and be well positioned to scale.
We work with a few dozen companies per year. They love the results.
When we select a startup for NextUp, we will help bring them to market and we share in their success with a 1-3% equity grant.
NextUp is flexible in length, depending on a startup’s needs. It can be 12-Weeks, 8 months, or anything in between, all based on a customized, adjustable plan. We’re goal-oriented, not prediction-oriented.
LvlUp doesn’t take a weekly schedule approach to helping startups launch. Rather, it provides Strategy, GTM Strategy, Product Development, Product Management, Marketing, and fundraising expertise and strategic advice in an intentional, sequential order, providing one service at a time until the startup is ready for the next stage of development. We will work with you to help you develop a GTM strategy, build a plan to scale, and raise capital starting at any point at which your startup is ready during your time in NextUp or after.
Take a glance at the companies in our current portfolio.
Through our partnership with Spin Labs, we share equity in all of their portfolio companies.
The ProLeague platform aims to bring a web3 infrastructure that provides gamers with a single, unified upgrade to the fragmented platforms they are using now. The Esports industry is currently very behind on tech to propel it forward. Currently, there is not a multi-sided platform that brings everyone together in one unified place (Brands, Developers, Content Creators, Tournament Organizers, Guilds, Teams, Orgs & Players). At the moment, gamers also need to use multiple sites to manage their careers. We are building an infrastructure to help gamers focus on what they love most ... The Games. ProLeague will provide the proper infrastructure to manage the biggest hurdles gamers face. By providing a web3 infrastructure for web2 and web3 games, we can help the entire industry maximize revenue streams. Our unique Players Association and Proof of Play Protocol will ensure that results and stats are verifiable and that the community can organize and weed out bad actors. Similarly, our blockchain technology will make it possible to guarantee prize payouts and to deliver them to winners quickly. All of this, along with direct on-platform tournament creation will allow us to build a sustainable ecosystem and provide a solid foundation for esports on a global level.
Studious is an AI personalization platform for studying that creates a flywheel for each user, leveraging cognitive science, gamification and LLMs, with an underlying study topic framework to improve success rates and reduce cost. Studious is currently growing at 25% MoM and is targeting the Workforce Learning and Higher Ed markets.
The founder, David, has tremendous brand building expertise having worked as the P&L owner of apparel lines in an e-commerce business, and in 2016 founded a ski apparel brand, which did 6-figure sales in its first year. He is also a veteran tutor and has an MBA from Wharton
