A founder accepted into LvlUp Labs, the accelerator arm of LvlUp Ventures, says they were told that to secure their place and join group onboarding they had to buy paid subscriptions to a specific set of software tools. Free plans were not sufficient and no flexibility was available. They asked twice, then tested the answer by saying they could not afford it and offering to start on free plans, and were told the paid tiers were required because sponsors make the programme equity-free. They bought them and sent screenshots confirming every signup. The onboarding link never arrived. When they posted about it publicly, Aaron Golbin, a general partner, messaged them to say onboarding had been rescheduled for Passover and that, in his words, virtually all the tools are entirely free.
That account, published on LinkedIn with 166 reactions and 19 comments, is the basis for much of what follows. No regulator has acted against LvlUp Ventures or anyone associated with it, no lawsuit has been filed, and nothing here should be read as an allegation of unlawful conduct.
Three People, Two Versions
The contradiction is the substance of the complaint. According to the founder, the instruction that paid tiers were mandatory came from a programme representative they name as Jessica Lane. Golbin said the opposite. A scout they name as Benny Manasherov also said they were not supposed to pay anything.
By the time the general partner said the tools were free the founder had already bought them. Neither Lane nor Manasherov has commented publicly on the account, and Golbin’s only quoted words are the ones reproduced in it.
The founder took the correction in good faith, deleted the post, and said they looked forward to the Tuesday onboarding. The link never came, and their emails went unanswered, they say, including to a contact they name as Ana, who was handling a pitch competition they had also been accepted to. The following night came a final message: the firm could not move forward, and onboarding capacity had been filled.
They paid for tools they were told were required, the general partner said the tools were free, they deleted a public post in good faith, and then the door closed. They characterised it as behaviour designed to generate affiliate commissions before the programme began. That is their inference, and this publication has seen no evidence that LvlUp receives commissions on those tools.
A Second Founder, the Same Sequence
A Reddit commenter describes an almost identical experience, saying they were approached by someone from an outfit they name as Deal Partners, directed to an application form, then told they were one of 15 startups out of 300 accepted into LvlUp Labs. They were sent a list of applications to sign up for and asked to send screenshots proving they had done so.
They sent the screenshots on a Sunday. The programme was due to begin that Thursday. They had heard nothing and had emailed several people with no reply. They said they would cancel the software if nobody responded, and told other founders not to waste their time.
That account is anonymous and carries less weight than a named one, and differs in one respect, because free trials appeared acceptable in that case. What the two share is the mechanism. Acceptance was followed by a requirement to sign up for third-party software and document it with screenshots, and the correspondence stopped before the programme began.
What LvlUp Says
The firm replied in the comments beneath the post. Arianna Kleynburg, an associate at LvlUp Ventures, wrote that it receives over 20,000 applications annually and is one of the most active venture platforms globally, supporting founders at all stages. She described LvlUp Labs as an early-stage programme for founders often pre-institutional capital, focused on operating readiness across growth, fundraising and core infrastructure.
That response does not address the specific contradiction about whether the tools were mandatory or free, and does not dispute the sequence of events described.
LvlUp Ventures Responds
On September 30, eight days after this report appeared, LvlUp Ventures’ legal team wrote demanding the article be removed in its entirety within 24 hours. A follow-up described itself as a final pre-litigation notice. The article was not removed. The firm’s substantive points are set out here because they are the fullest account of its position it has given.
LvlUp says it does not operate a business model in which founders are told to pay for the firm’s benefit and are then deliberately ignored, and that it receives approximately 25,000 applications a year across its funds, accelerators, pitch competitions, events and other programmes. It says the experiences of two applicants cannot be converted into a description of organisation-wide practice.
On the software, it says that where a specific LvlUp Labs programme requires a paid third-party product the cost is modest, often around $10 a month, that the requirement is disclosed in the offer or onboarding communications before participation, and that other tools are available through free tiers, trials or credits. It emphasises that those payments are not made to LvlUp. They are not tuition and not payment in exchange for an investment. They are the cost of third-party operating tools used in the programme.
It also draws a distinction this report did not make. LvlUp Labs and the ecosystem programming are separate from the investment funds, and the programmes may be supported by sponsorships, affiliate arrangements and technology partnerships. The firm confirms it holds such arrangements in appropriate contexts and says there is nothing improper in that, while maintaining that it does not establish that the specific products these founders bought generated a commission, or that any programme decision turned on whether they bought them.
On the silence, LvlUp says applicants are directed to the contacts responsible for the relevant process, that it can produce communications showing these applicants were given that guidance, and that in several instances they then approached other people in the organisation who were not responsible and did not have complete information. On that account, what this report described as three people giving one founder three different answers reflects differing roles and differing knowledge rather than institutional contradiction. It adds that offers may be withdrawn for legitimate reasons including eligibility, capacity, incomplete onboarding or cohort considerations, and that sequence alone does not establish motive.
The firm objects to the naming of individual staff, saying employees answering enquiries outside their direct responsibility should not have those replies treated as statements of firm policy, and that associating identifiable people with a publication about alleged misconduct causes foreseeable harm where no wrongdoing by them has been established. It has offered documentation including offer communications, software disclosures, records concerning these applicants, and portfolio materials.
The Rankings LvlUp Advertises
The firm’s marketing rests heavily on a single claim. LvlUp states in its Crunchbase profile, on LinkedIn and elsewhere that PitchBook ranks it the seventh most active venture capital firm globally, fourth in the United States and first in consumer goods and technology.
A due diligence warning posted to r/Investors disputes this, stating that PitchBook’s 2025 Annual Global League Tables identify Andreessen Horowitz as seventh globally and Transpose Platform Management as fourth in the United States, and that LvlUp appears in neither table’s top 25.
This publication tried to verify that. PitchBook’s tables sit behind a registration form and could not be read without an account, so those figures remain the author’s claim rather than something confirmed here. LvlUp says PitchBook publishes numerous league tables by geography, stage, sector, investor type and period, and that one investor appearing at a position in one table does not prevent another occupying a position in a different category. That is correct. It remains the case that LvlUp does not say which table, category or period produced its own numbers.
500 a Year, or One
The scale LvlUp advertises is also checkable against independent trackers, and the gap is wide.
LvlUp describes itself as supporting 500 or more startups annually with a team of more than 2,500 core and extended members, and its posts have announced investing in over 100 companies in a single month. Golbin’s profile says he has backed over 1,000 startups.
Tracxn records 185 companies in total, one new investment in the twelve months to June 2026, and a team of 88. CB Insights lists 92 investments. Crunchbase shows 19 employee profiles. LvlUp’s answer is that these are not comparable measures. The databases use different methodologies and do not track the same transactions, programme participation, undisclosed investments or accelerator companies, and its own company count covers businesses backed across its funds and programmes rather than publicly disclosed financing rounds alone. It says its extended organisation includes venture partners, scouts, advisors, mentors and programme personnel who do not appear in a database of voluntarily created employee profiles. Those are fair objections, and this report cannot resolve them without the underlying datasets. What remains is that the figures the firm publishes and the figures independent trackers record are far apart, and no reconciliation has been published.
What Founders Can Check
Nothing here establishes wrongdoing, and the firm makes real investments: its team page names companies and partners, and founders have praised its programmes. But these accounts point to questions worth asking before paying for anything to access an accelerator.
Get any software requirement in writing from someone senior before paying, because one founder received opposite answers from three people at the same firm. Ask for the onboarding link before you pay. Ask which ranking table a firm is citing, with the year and category. And treat an equity-free programme with care: it still has to earn its money somewhere.
Conclusion
LvlUp Ventures demanded this article be removed within 24 hours and warned of litigation. It has not been removed, and the firm’s response now appears above. A founder was told paid software was mandatory to join an equity-free accelerator. They questioned it twice, paid, and documented every purchase. A general partner then said the tools were free. They deleted their complaint on the strength of that, and days later were told capacity had been filled. A second founder describes the same sequence. LvlUp says the payments went to third parties and not to it, that requirements are disclosed before participation, and that applicants were pointed to the right contacts. It has offered documentation. Both founders say what happened to them is what this article describes.
