LvlUp Ventures

Brandon Maier is General Partner and Founder of LvlUp Ventures, an early-stage fund investing in companies with proven product-market fit and diverse leadership teams. He previously co-founded Quake Capital Partners, where he contributed to investments in over 300 companies with 18 exits to date. Maier oversees a venture ecosystem that includes a 2,500+ member scout program and corporate innovation initiatives, and has over 10 years of venture capital experience.

Adam Ned is a Principal at LvlUp Ventures, where he sources early-stage startups, manages portfolio companies, and executes deals across Gaming, Sports, Media, Entertainment, and Web 3.0 sectors. He also serves as a Startup Mentor at Alchemist Accelerator, providing guidance to founders on go-to-market strategy, fundraising, and scaling.

Hamza Ghernati serves as Director of Business Development, Investor Relations and Public Affairs at Immune Biosolutions. He has experience in private capital, corporate finance, and corporate development, with expertise supporting small and medium-sized enterprises through market intelligence, fundraising strategy, and stakeholder management. His work focuses on connecting Canadian investors with international capital sources to support startup growth.

Janet Escobar is co-founder of Rogue Assembly, a venture studio focused on scaling technologies addressing real-world challenges through collaboration between venture investors, policymakers, and researchers. Her background includes growth marketing roles at fintech startups, go-to-market consulting for Microsoft and Amazon, and venture scouting of over 100 pre-seed and seed-stage companies in AI, SaaS, and IoT at LvlUp Ventures. She holds Columbia's VC certification and has published work on women founders in technology.

Rabia Ghafoor is a computer science undergraduate at Indiana University with over two years of software engineering experience, including a full-stack engineering internship. She served as president of INgineering at IU for three years and organized Luddy Hackathon 3.0. Beyond engineering, Ghafoor creates content as a brand ambassador and writes about technology and finance ecosystems on Substack.

Brian Bacon serves as Associate Director of Transfer Admission at Lake Forest College while advising early-stage startups at the intersection of higher education and venture capital. He brings over five years of experience in venture scouting and product management, combined with background in undergraduate admissions, academic advising, and EdTech consulting. His work spans both institutional perspectives on educational technology procurement and investor evaluation of education-focused startups.

Christian Levan is Growth Lead at NationGraph, a platform that aggregates data on government institutions, budgets, contracts, and procurement opportunities for companies selling to public sector buyers. Previously, he spent four years as a venture investor at Front Row Ventures, Panache Ventures, Inovia Capital, and White Star Capital, focusing on early-stage companies.

David Cox is a Risk Consultant at Crowe LLP specializing in financial, IT, and operational risk management across technology, banking, education, nonprofit, and government sectors. He works with SOX and FDICIA compliance frameworks, internal controls assessment, and data analytics tools including AuditBoard, Power BI, Tableau, and SQL. Cox holds an MBA in General Business and a B.S. in Finance from California State University, East Bay, and is an active member of the IIA and ISACA.

James Sullivan is founder and CEO of OneSeven Tech, which provides AI implementation services to mid-market companies with revenues between $25 million and $1 billion. The company focuses on deploying AI solutions designed to deliver measurable return on investment.

Kieran O'Connor is a Valuation Associate in the Alternative Investment Services group at Alvarez & Marsal.

Niko Hems is a writer and longevity operator who analyzes developments in preventive health, clinical innovation, and health optimization across science, funding, policy, and consumer health. He holds Master's degrees in Management with a focus on Data Science and in Longevity, and works within the preventive health ecosystem to build and communicate medical prevention programs while hosting the Return on Health podcast. His work translates complex health and longevity research for operators, founders, investors, and clinicians, with a following of over 20,000 readers.

Ram Malladi is an investor at Venture Guides, an early-stage infrastructure software investment firm, where he focuses on AI, infrastructure, and data. Venture Guides invests in infrastructure software companies and its team has been involved in investments in companies including Dynatrace, DocuSign, LinkedIn, Rapid7, SolarWinds, Sysdig, Turbonomic, and Archer Technologies.

Shafaq Abdullah is Founding Managing GP at AI Earth Fund (Panoramik), focusing on climate solutions and sustainable business models aligned with the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Previously, he built and scaled the AI startup Insnap, a mobile personalization platform, to $300 million in revenue before its acquisition by a direct-to-consumer brand. He also founded Parkonomik, which addresses urban parking utilization through partnerships with local restaurants and municipalities, and later expanded into Shoponomik, a circular economy delivery infrastructure platform.