Melissa Withers

Written By Your Name

After 10+ years working as an investor and biz builder, RevUp Capital Founder and Managing Partner Melissa Withers has deep strategic and operational experience across a portfolio of 100+ companies.

With a background in life sciences, Melissa started her career at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research at MIT, working at the intersection of research, communications, and commercialization. After becoming a founder herself, Melissa found her way into professional investing in 2014.

Melissa is a bullish advocate for innovating how early stage companies are funded and for directing more support to

founders who build businesses without the perks of privilege.

She’s also a proud mom, an amateur boxer (with a title belt!), a Boston Marathon finisher, and a lover of the great outdoors.

Workhorse Bio
RevUp Capital Founder and Managing Partner Melissa Withers is one the most experienced female early stage investors in the U.S.. She is also a bullish advocate for innovating the ways in which new companies are funded and supported. She is deeply committed to directing funding to founders who build their businesses without the perks of privilege.

In 2016, Melissa and her partners created RevUp, one the first revenue-based funds in the world to serve early stage companies. In freeing themselves from the “exit or bust” constraints of equity, Melissa and her team pioneered a powerful way for investors and founders to redefine success. For Melissa, the RevUp portfolio— and the results these companies produce—is ample proof that the only barriers to innovation in investing are those investors set for themselves.

Beyond building new economic models for investing, Melissa is also committed to efforts that direct more entrepreneurial funding to those underserved and overlooked by traditional VC.

With a background in life sciences and a graduate degree in science communications, Melissa started her career at Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research, working at the intersection of basic research, communication, and public policy. She’s also spent time in public service at the state and municipal level. Most importantly, she’s a proud mom, an amateur boxer (with a title belt!), and a lover of the great outdoors.

Everyone Has a Backstory

After overseeing 100+ investments across the last decade. I guess its fair to day that I am old and experienced. On the spectrum of Child-like Innocent to Age-Speckled Oracle, I’m somewhere in the middle. Let’s say I am Salt and Pepper Savvy.

I have learned a lot from the booms, busts, and many WTF moments of the last decade. Across companies I’ve built and invested into, I have seen enough wacky patterns, kooky customers, founder fracas, and product wins / product fails to last a lifetime. Yet, every day I still learn something new.

Here’s what I do know: Building companies is super fun, until it’s not. Wildly inspiring, until your heart breaks. Pattern driven, until patterns change. Easy as pie. Well, never that. Yet, I can’t think of anything else I would rather do.

What else should you know about me?

As an investor, my job is to increase the odds of your success…without destroying your soul. In return, I ask founders to avoid the peril of self-deception. There may be good reason to lie to me, but there is NEVER good reason to lie to yourself.

Aside from enjoying the punishment of business-building—especially the messy human parts—I am committed to using my investor superpowers to support founders who build businesses without the perks of privilege. I was the first person in my family to graduate college. Providing for my family is my responsibility. I did not have wealthy friends and family to subsidize my entrepreneurial ambitions. Sure, sometimes these things held me back, but they also made me a resilient operator, a dogged problem solver, and hardworking AF. Poverty, race, geography, and gender should not be a barrier to entrepreneurship. Period.

I am also very interested in “capital innovation.” A fancy way of saying that I am keen on expanding the tool kit that we use to fund new companies. For decades, investors have relentlessly pushed founders to innovate every aspect of their businesses. Meanwhile, the only innovation that the investors came up with was a SAFE note. #FAIL

Money lost, money wasted, and money never made are reason enough to demand new kinds of funding. Worse, the current toolkit is also lousy at empowering entrepreneurs to build many of the things that people want and need. Moreover, traditional VC is notoriously exclusive, reserved for those who match the narrow profile of what a “bankable” founder looks like. I am proud to be among a growing group of investors who are trying new things, many with great success. The barriers to capital innovation are mostly imagined, but changing minds can be the hardest change of all.

I have unattractive toenails thanks to running the Boston, Chicago, and Philly Marathons. I am an amateur boxer. Dogs are my spirit animal. Gin over whiskey, champagne over beer, but not fussy if the company is good.

Good with a microphone, terrible on roller skates.

I can be reached at melissa at revupfund.com.

This is a photo of me and my cousin Kim. I am not sure she knows it, but she was my first mentor. This picture reminds me how hard it is to be a good advisor, especially to first time founders. It takes effort to both push and protect, to know when to teach, when to help, and when to get out of the way. I hope one day my mentees will say that I got it (mostly) right.

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