Come Up Capital

Come Up relies on deep operator networks built over decades in the Midwest technology community, including relationships with university spinout programs at the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin. The firm's general partners maintain active involvement in the region's startup ecosystem through events like MinneDemo, where they connect with founding teams long before formal fundraising processes begin. Their thesis is that personal introductions within the Upper Midwest and Great Lakes industrial corridors generate higher signal-to-noise opportunities than broadly marketed coastal deal flow.

Casey Allen and Justin Kaufenberg founded Come Up Capital after scaling Sport Ngin into a major SaaS platform serving the youth sports market, a journey that gave them firsthand experience building a venture-scale technology company in Minneapolis. That operator experience shapes their conviction that the Midwest produces durable, capital-efficient B2B companies that are systematically overlooked by coastal funds. They launched Come Up to deploy early-stage capital specifically against this geographic thesis.

The firm invests at the pre-seed and seed stages, positioning itself as a lead or co-lead in initial rounds. Come Up targets enterprise software, applied artificial intelligence, and frontier hardware including robotics and automation companies in the Great Lakes region. Their approach emphasizes capital efficiency and early go-to-market design over rapid unprofitable scaling.

The firm does not publicly publish a negative screening list, but its disclosed investment activity centers exclusively on enterprise technology and frontier hardware. Consumer internet, direct-to-consumer brands, and traditional retail businesses are not represented in their portfolio, consistent with a Midwest B2B focus that leverages the engineering talent pools and Fortune 500 customer density in the region.

Come Up is deeply embedded in the Twin Cities and broader Midwest technology community through the track record of its founders at Sport Ngin, a Minneapolis-based SaaS success story prior to acquisition. The firm co-hosts and participates in MinneDemo, the region's flagship startup showcase, and maintains active ties with local angel networks, corporate venture arms, and university commercialization offices.