Dear Colleagues,
This week we are profiling Elevate Ventures, a leading early stage venture capital firm. Elevate Ventures has invested in over 600 startups, backing more than 402 active portfolio companies and deploying $184 million+ in capital since its founding to fuel early-stage innovation and growth across Indiana and beyond, with a robust ecosystem that has supported thousands of entrepreneurs and helped elevate emerging companies toward success. Elevate Ventures is the #1 most active early-stage VC in the Great Lakes Region and top 10 in the United States.
Upside VC profile of the month:
VC name: Elevate Ventures
Headquartered: Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Founded: 2010 (active since 2011 as part of Indiana Economic Development initiatives)
Managing Partners: Christopher “Toph” Day (CEO).
Website: https://elevateventures.com/
Sectors: Cross-sector innovation (software, life sciences, hardtech, healthcare, consumer, and more)
VC type: Venture Capital / Innovation Ecosystem Builder / Venture Development Organization
Typical investment range: ~$350k per round.
Total number of investments: 600+ startups funded since inception (602 funded as of 2024)
Total number of exits: At least ~41+ exits (according to industry data sources)
Elevate Ventures is one of the most active early-stage venture capital investors in the Great Lakes region, focused on investing in high-potential, innovation-driven companies primarily based in Indiana. Alongside providing capital, Elevate supports founders with strategic guidance, network connections, acceleration resources, and community development to help startups grow and scale. Its portfolio spans diverse sectors including technology, life sciences, and hardtech across pre-seed, seed, and Series A stages, with a strong commitment to building a thriving entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Midwest and beyond.
For more information visit https://elevateventures.com/
As part of that we interviewed Myles Grote, partner at Elevate Ventures.
You can watch the video interview below by clicking on the Youtube link. You can also listen to the audio interview by clicking on the link at the top of the page:
📝Show Notes: Through this interview, we touched on Myles’ background and his role at Elevate Ventures, what Elevate Ventures is. We also touched on his investment philosophy, the favorite startups he invested in, and so on.
🚀Best Quotes: Here’s some of the key discussion points and best quotes from our conversation with Myles:
Q1. Background & Career Path
“I started in entrepreneurship. Before college, I witnessed my parents start companies — third generation entrepreneur. Building is in the DNA, if you will. But I was super passionate about finance. I started doing public investing when I was 14 years old — and mind you, this is when we had dial-up internet. We didn’t even really have easy ways to execute on investing in public markets at that point.”
“In college, I started to build a not-for-profit with my future business partner, Kevin McCauley. We created the first ever collegiate-hosted half marathon in the country, which was a fundraising vehicle for the largest scholarship for cancer survivors in the country. That was really like my first actual thing that we built — and we had a lot of success with it.”
“Eventually, I left and started a company with Kevin — one of the early sports tech companies back in 2011–2012 called Book a Coach. We pivoted to a more sustainable business model, rebranded to Upper Hand, and became the first cloud-based software in sports facilities around 2013–14. We exited in 2019, and I stayed on for a couple more years.”
“At that point, I always knew I wanted to get into early-stage investing. I was an Entrepreneur in Residence at Techstars Sports, started my own syndicate, closed on 11 different companies across 15 deals, and then ultimately joined Elevate Ventures as a partner and chair of the investment committee.”
Q2. Role at Elevate Ventures
“My main focus is due diligence. From the time that we say, ‘Yes, let’s take a closer look at this company,’ I oversee that process until we move into closing.”
“Elevate Ventures is a unique beast. We are a venture development organization — not your standard VC. We have kind of a dual mandate: economic development in the state of Indiana and returns. So we have to balance those, similar to how the Fed balances job stability and inflation.”
“We’re super active — historically eclipsing over 100 deals per year and deploying approximately $20 million annually. That’s a unique element.”
“Because of our dual mandate, we’re encouraged by our LPs to spend more time with founders — especially if they have messy situations, messy cap tables, or mistakes that have compounded. We’re able to spend the time to help them clean that up, right-size their structure, and get ready to raise a strong round.”
Q3. Investment Philosophy
“My personal investing philosophy is really around, first and foremost, there has to be some sort of secular growth story — some sort of multi-decade tailwind, some new technology that’s been introduced.”
“Secondarily — and probably equally as important — is just an amazing founder building on top of that technology.”
“The thing I always notice with amazing founders is that they consistently stay on your radar. They’re super effective at creating momentum and using that momentum to engage investors and keep them excited about what they’re building.”
“Whenever they’re pinned in the corner, they always find a way out. They’re super scrappy and always right in front of your face.”
“At Elevate, we also look closely at market sizing dynamics and competitive moats — which is a really hot topic right now, especially as it relates to artificial intelligence.”
Q4. What He Looks for in Startups
“Founders who can really see around corners — they’re always a couple steps ahead.”
“The most impressive ones are really effective at communicating how they’re going to execute on the opportunities they’re seeing around the corner.”
“Really describing the big vision and doing it in a very simple and effective way — that’s a really hard skill set to have.”
“For us, it’s got to be a big TAM — over a $500 million addressable market — and a really tight founding team that has really clear swim lanes in terms of what they’re focused on.”
Q5. Advice for Entrepreneurs Raising Capital
“Especially with AI tools these days, you don’t really have to raise that much capital to get a working prototype to validate or invalidate your concept.”
“Be as efficient as possible. Leverage a hell out of AI tools. It’s to the point where even if you’re not technical, you can still contribute to the code base in a meaningful way.”
“Be scrappy and get something to market as quickly as possible. Don’t be afraid that your baby’s ugly when it goes out there. I’ve launched some pretty ugly products that turned into something really beautiful.”
“Validate the demand for the product first before making it pretty. You don’t want to waste too much money or too much time until you really know you have something.”
“Have a great story. Start with the outline, move to some doodles — that’s what I typically do — and then pay a designer $500 to make it look respectable so you have a great storyline to anchor investors around the big vision.”
Q6. Fund Size
“We have about $225 million AUM.”
“We kind of operate more like an evergreen fund — we’re constantly deploying.”
Q7. Average Investment Size
“Typical investment size is around $350,000 from our seed and seed-plus fund.”
“With our pre-seed fund, we can invest as low as $20,000 and up to $100K — usually milestone-based and tranched.”
Q8. Favorite / Notable Portfolio Companies
“Lessonly was a pretty big win for us — they sold to Seismic for around $300 million. We were a seed investor in that company.”
“Sochi is another one — that was a big exit for us.”
“Endur purchased a company that spun out of Purdue — that was a really meaningful exit, and we still have a stake.”
“In sports tech, Upper Hand was a good exit for Elevate back in 2019.”
You may also like:
