Every year, I sit down in December and look back, not just at numbers, but at stories.
Since 2016, Elevate Capital has invested in 88 startups with $60M in assets under management, helping create more than 700 jobs. Sixty-five percent of those investments are in women-led companies, and 92% are in founders who identify as BIPOC, LGBTQ+, or veterans.
Those statistics matter. But what truly stays with me are the moments: the first institutional checks, the late-night pivots, the risky hires, the first big customers, the “we might actually pull this off” realizations.
In 2025, those moments were everywhere. It was one of the strongest years we’ve had, defined by an important exit, national awards, global impact, and founders who kept pushing the frontier of what’s possible.
This is my personal look back at the year we just built together.
A Breakthrough Moment: TrueLark’s Acquisition
One of the defining milestones of 2025 was the acquisition of TrueLark by Weave Communications.
TrueLark has spent years transforming how service-based businesses—dental, wellness, beauty, fitness, and beyond—manage their front desks. Their conversational AI helps small businesses answer calls, book appointments, and serve customers around the clock.
At our Annual Investor Meeting, TrueLark President Rajan Raghavan reflected on how the company grew through extraordinary volatility:
“COVID showed us we were building something essential. Elevate helped us get there.”
This acquisition was a powerful validation of that work and a reminder of why we exist: to back overlooked founders early, stay with them through the hard years, and celebrate moments like this together.
Elevate’s Model in Action: Community, Mentorship, and Performance
In June, we brought founders, LPs, and ecosystem partners together in Portland for our Annual Investor Reception and Investor Meeting. Those two days distilled what Elevate is all about: belief, partnership, and shared legacy.
At the Investor Meeting, I opened with the latest numbers:
- 88 total investments
- $60M AUM across Elevate funds
- Fund I: 30 companies, 8 exits, 63% women founders, 53% BIPOC
- Fund I IRR: 17.6% net with 18% average annual cash distributions
- Funds II + III scaling in sectors like AI, healthtech, and fintech
But the most powerful moments came from the founders themselves:
- TrovaTrip shared how their platform now powers over 1,500 group trips and 27,000 travelers, with AI automating 30% of interactions. “Elevate was one of the first to believe in us, and they’ve stayed in the trenches ever since,” said Lauren Schneider.
- TrayAway reminded us what it means to turn an overlooked problem into a global solution. “We’re turning overlooked problems into scalable wins. Elevate helped us find the signal in the noise,” said founder Josh Johnston.
- Brandlive and Minnow spoke to the journey from idea to real-world impact: “Elevate backed us when we needed belief more than anything. That belief turned into momentum,” said Eli Ackerman of Brandlive. “We went from prototype to real-world impact all because Elevate helped us think like builders, not just dreamers,” shared Andy Troxel of Minnow.
Those reflections say more about Elevate than any metric ever could.
Awards, Grants, and Recognition: 2025 by the Numbers
This year was extraordinary in terms of awards, competitive grants, and recognition across our portfolio. Here’s a comprehensive look at the honors Elevate Capital companies and founders earned in 2025.
State & Federal Innovation Grants
Several companies received competitive public-sector innovation SBIR/STTR Matching grants from Business Oregon & Oregon Innovation Council.
- Birch Biosciences
- Canopii
- Madorra
- Skip Technology
- Trace Biosciences
- Vivifi Medical
These grants help fuel deep-tech and life-science companies working on plastic recycling, advanced agriculture, women’s health, energy storage, nerve-sparing surgery, and men’s health.
Pitch Competitions & Venture Conferences
Birch Biosciences – Best CleanTech Pitch Award (Venture Summit West)
Birch was recognized for its work using generative AI and advanced enzyme engineering to bring plastics into the circular economy.
Toast Wear – Early Stage Winner, Bend Venture Conference (BVC)
Toast Wear, reinventing temperature-regulating apparel, took home the top prize in BVC’s Early Stage Competition. Their patented technology keeps adventurers comfortable in changing conditions, blending sustainability with performance.
Photon Marine – Growth Stage Finalist, Bend Venture Conference (BVC)
Photon Marine, building powerful electric outboard motor systems for commercial boats, was recognized as a Growth Stage finalist—underscoring its momentum in transforming the marine industry toward cleaner, more efficient operations.
Sentry AI – Winner, Startup Grind All-Star Pitch Battle
Sentry AI emerged as the global winner from a field of more than 1,500 startups across 150 cities, advancing through multiple rounds to take top honors in the Startup Grind All-Star Pitch Battle.
Oregon Entrepreneurs Network (OEN) Awards
At the 2025 Oregon Entrepreneurship Awards, multiple Elevate companies were honored:
- Hemex Health – Growth Stage Award Winner
- Birch Biosciences – Development Stage Finalist
- Photon Marine – Trailblazer Finalist
Industry & Product Awards
Brandlive
- Recognized as one of Oregon’s Top Ten Most Admired Companies (Portland Business Journal)
- Ranked #26 on Portland Business Journal’s 100 Fastest-Growing Private Companies list
Goalsetter
- Selected as “App of the Day” by the Apple App Store
- Named a winner of the 2025 Products That Count Awards
HacWare
- Recognized as a CRN 2025 Stellar Startup
The Dyrt
- Continued to build its “award-winning Camping Report,” with Toyota Trucks returning as presenting sponsor for the 2025 Camping Report.
Founder & Leadership Honors
Obatala Sciences – Dr. Trivia Frazier
- Named to the Biz New Orleans 500 for 2025
- Honored as a Changemaker at Tulane University’s A.B. Freeman School of Business
- Received the 2025 Outstanding Young Alumna Award from the Tulane School of Science and Engineering
Patti White – Hemex Health
- Received the ET Women Conclave Award 2025 for Excellence in HealthTech for her leadership advancing accessible diagnostics for sickle cell and other hemoglobin disorders.
Global Rankings & Lists
Responsive, The Dyrt, TrovaTrip – GeekWire 200
Three Elevate portfolio companies were named to GeekWire’s 2025 Top 200 Startups in the Pacific Northwest:
- Responsive – #9
- The Dyrt – #110
- TrovaTrip – #113
Birch Biosciences – Top 100 Global Impact Companies
- Named to the Top 100 Global Impact Companies in the 2025 THRIVE Challenge, recognizing its high-impact work in sustainable plastics and circularity.
Beyond Awards: Milestones That Mattered
Awards tell part of the story. Just as important are the strategic moves, partnerships, and product launches that shifted trajectories for our companies this year.
A few examples from 2025:
- Brandlive expanded aggressively, acquiring 6Connex, Eventory, MediaPlatform, and Hubilo—building a next-generation enterprise video platform for town halls, events, and internal communications.
- Biomotum launched a pilot partner program, placing robotic exoskeletons into clinics across the U.S.
- Birch Biosciences secured a global patent license agreement with NREL and continued advancing enzymatic plastic recycling.
- Doktorconnect acquired VitalFlo, enhancing respiratory care and remote monitoring capabilities.
- Goalsetter continued reshaping financial education for families, schools, and districts—through both the Goalsetter app and Goalsetter Classroom, driving a reported 47% increase in students’ understanding of financial concepts.
- Leapfrog Design rebranded as Waterleaf, aligning its identity more deeply with regenerative, sustainable design.
- Minnow Technologies acquired DeliverZero, bringing reusable packaging and sustainability deeper into the food delivery ecosystem.
- TrayAway expanded from hotels into hospitals, improving cleanliness and operational efficiency for patient care.
- Obatala Sciences received a new patent allowance for its biological scaffolds, and partnered with Ainnocence to combine AI and human-derived models for drug discovery.
- ToolBelt launched the Skilled Hands Alliance, a nonprofit dedicated to empowering skilled trades professionals.
- WEVO Secures Strategic Investment from Accenture—the AI-driven user experience and digital strategy platform earned a strategic investment from Accenture. This partnership underscores the growing market demand for simulated audience insights and the role WEVO is playing in reshaping how enterprises understand user behavior long before launch.
These are the kinds of moves that compound over time—positioning founders for the next funding round, the next market, or the next category they’ll define.
Building Oregon’s Innovation Ecosystem
In 2025, our role extended beyond individual companies to the broader ecosystem:
SSBCI Venture Direct Program
Business Oregon selected Elevate Capital to manage the State Small Business Credit Initiative (SSBCI) Venture Direct program, allocating up to $15M to invest in Oregon startups over the next four to six years, with at least 40% of the portfolio in SEDI-owned businesses.
As I shared at the time, “The honor of managing the SSBCI Venture Direct program…reflects Elevate Capital’s reputation and effectiveness in fostering innovation and growth in Oregon’s startup community with investment.”
And we’re just getting started. Stay tuned for an update on our work with this program in January.
Oregon Innovation Showcase
We were proud to sponsor the Oregon Innovation Showcase, where Elevate portfolio founders including Photon Marine, Canopii, and Hemex Health presented in the Deep Tech Pitch Showcase, and where companies like Birch Biosciences, Ren Energy, Rewire AI, Skip Tech, Thaena, and Trace Biosciences were prominently featured.
These efforts reinforced something we’ve believed from day one: when you support founders, you strengthen the entire region.
Looking Ahead: The Future Is Founder-Led
As I reflect on 2025, a few themes stand out:
- Inclusive investing works. Underrepresented founders are winning pitch competitions, earning national awards, landing on top-startup lists, closing strategic acquisitions, and driving real returns.
- Mentorship capital matters. The quotes we heard in June—from Rock Paper Coin, TrayAway, Ren Energy, Goumi, CleanHaus, and others—remind me that the relationship is just as important as the check.
- We’re just getting started. From AI and healthtech to sustainable materials, marine electrification, climate tech, and financial inclusion, our founders are not just keeping pace with the future—they’re building it.
As I look toward 2026, I feel both energized and humbled. We have more work to do. More founders to back. More opportunities to create generational wealth where it has long been absent.
But we also have momentum, partnership, and a mission that resonates deeper now than ever before.
To our founders: thank you for your courage, your creativity, and your trust.
To our investors: thank you for believing in this vision from the beginning.
To our partners and supporters: thank you for helping us build something bigger than any single company or fund.
Here’s to 2025—a year of impact, heart, and powerful growth.
And here’s to 2026—the next chapter in building legacy together.
