The Problems Worth Solving Usually Don't Make Headlines
When people think about venture investing, they often imagine chasing the next big trend.
In reality, that's rarely what gets our attention.
The companies we're most excited about usually aren't creating entirely new markets. They're solving problems that industries have quietly accepted for years—problems that everyone knows exist, but few believe can actually be fixed.
Healthcare providers still struggle to coordinate care across fragmented systems.
Schools are rethinking how learning should be measured in the age of AI.
Small businesses know creator marketing works but often lack a practical, measurable way to access it.
On the surface, these challenges have little in common. But they all represent friction hiding inside large, established markets. And when technology reaches the point where that friction can finally be removed, entirely new companies can emerge.
That's what drew us to our latest ecosystem additions: Amicare, StartSprint, and 2x.
Amicare: Solving a Problem Healthcare Has Lived With for Too Long
Every healthcare organization agrees that smoother care transitions lead to better outcomes. Yet referrals, discharge planning, and communication between providers are still surprisingly fragmented.
Amicare isn't trying to reinvent healthcare. It's addressing one of the industry's most persistent operational challenges by helping providers coordinate patient care more efficiently across hospitals, clinics, and home care.
What stood out wasn't just the product—it was the team's understanding of the problem. Their early partnerships, pilot programs, and traction suggest they're building something healthcare organizations genuinely need, not simply another AI tool looking for a use case.
StartSprint: Rethinking Assessment, Not Just Automating It
AI didn't create the challenge of measuring student learning—it exposed it.
When every student has access to generative AI, traditional assessments become a less reliable indicator of understanding. That raises a much bigger question: how should schools evaluate learning going forward?
StartSprint approaches that question differently. Rather than focusing only on correct answers, the platform analyzes behavioral signals—hesitation, confidence, answer changes—to give educators a richer picture of how students think.
That perspective, combined with strong early adoption and millions of behavioral data points already collected, is what made the opportunity compelling to us.
2x: Making Creator Marketing Accessible
Creator marketing has become one of the most effective ways for businesses to reach customers. Yet for many small businesses, it's still difficult to access, difficult to measure, and difficult to justify.
2x is changing that by building a performance-based marketplace where businesses pay for outcomes instead of upfront campaigns.
What impressed us wasn't just the product. It was the validation. Before officially launching, the team had already attracted hundreds of creators and built a pipeline of businesses ready to run campaigns—a strong signal that the market was waiting for a solution like this.
A Shared Pattern
Healthcare. Education. Creator marketing.
They're very different industries, and we didn't back them because they fit neatly into a single category.
We backed these founders because each team identified a problem that had become accepted as "just the way things work"—and built a solution that challenges that assumption.
That's a pattern we continue to look for.
The biggest opportunities aren't always found in brand-new markets. More often, they're hidden inside existing ones, waiting for founders with the conviction to rethink how things should work.
We're excited to welcome Amicare, StartSprint, and 2x to the LvlUp portfolio and support them as they turn those ideas into enduring companies.
