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The Venture Codex

Cream City Ventures

720 East Wisconsin Avenue, Milwaukee, WI, 53202, United States

Overview

For 160+years, Northwestern Mutual has been proud to call Milwaukee and Southeastern Wisconsin home. Now more than ever, we believe it’s the best time to live and work here. That’s why they’re committed to improving education, revitalizing their neighborhoods and being a catalyst for business growth in their home town.

Total investments
2
Lead investments
1
Investments · 12mo
0
Active investors
2
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Investment portfolio

  • MediCardia

    Participated · Seed · Oct 2021

    Medicardia Health operates a core digital health platform that includes embedded telehealth, remote patient monitoring (RPM), natural language processing (NLP) for data discretization, and automated chart preparation. The company was founded in 2020 and was initially bootstrapped by CEO/Founder Dr. Indrajit Choudhuri with seed capital from angel investor Jeff Rusinow. It recently closed a $3M post-seed financing to accelerate product development. Medicardia plans to use the funds to ramp up IT development and launch new features in the coming months. Upcoming features announced include integration for implantable devices, imaging support, a research platform, and a proprietary clinical intelligence engine. The platform enhancements are aimed at expanding device and data interoperability and adding advanced clinical analytics capabilities. The company has investor support from institutional and angel backers across the U.S. and Japan.

  • Fiveable

    Led · Seed · Feb 2020

    Fiveable started as a free online learning community focused on helping high school students pass AP exams through livestreamed “cram shops,” study guides and an active Discord. The company is evolving into a broader social learning platform that enables student-directed spaces and multiplayer study experiences. It acquired Hours, a virtual study platform, to incorporate shared timers, task lists and study-session features into its roadmap. Fiveable prioritizes growth over monetization for now and keeps its platform entirely free to users. The startup reports more than 7.3 million students have used the platform with 3x year‑over‑year growth, a Discord community of over 25,000 users, and when it previously charged for access it granted more than 3,000 scholarships. The team includes over 50 paid student interns and a diverse staff, and the new funding will be used to grow the team and build more student-led online spaces. Fiveable combines educational content, community, and collaboration to support high school students with a focus on social learning. The platform hosts more than 5,000 pieces of content—study guides, live streamed lessons, and Q&A forums—and serves 1.5 million high school students. Students who studied with Fiveable achieved a 92% pass rate on Advanced Placement exams. The company offers Fall and Spring Fiveable Courses covering all 38 AP subjects with live instruction, practice assignments, feedback, and TA support. Fiveable is building a reimagined social learning community to address isolation and motivation, with an 800-student “Founding Members” team informing product design and a beta community planned for launch this winter. The recently secured funds will be used to propel that social learning experience and expand community offerings. Fiveable builds live-streamed learning sessions and online communities to help high school students prepare for Advanced Placement exams. The company was one of eight startups selected for AT&T’s Aspire Accelerator, which pairs mentorship with exposure to AT&T’s 5G capabilities. As part of the accelerator Fiveable will receive $125,000, including a $100,000 investment from AT&T Aspire, and the program culminates in a December demo day. Earlier, Fiveable won a $25,000 investment in a virtual competition run by ECMC Foundation and Chloe Capital. Founder and CEO Amanda DoAmaral said the company is positioned for growth as remote and online learning expand. The article notes the accelerator connected Fiveable with other top-tier investors and that additional funding is likely. Fiveable is a social learning platform that provides interactive test-prep content, live-streamed lessons, trivia review games, study guides, and a community forum with live support. The company recently dropped its paywall and launched a free, student-first platform while aiming to reach 100,000 student users this spring. Fiveable serves nearly 40,000 students who have achieved a 92% AP exam pass rate using the platform, and it employs more than 180 active content creators. Core offerings include weekly live streams, personalized dashboards, and paid “Cram Passes” for intensive pre-exam review sessions. The company plans to expand the number of AP subjects it covers and to add test-prep resources for the SAT and ACT. Fiveable was founded in 2018 by Amanda DoAmaral and is based in Milwaukee.

Team

  • Craig Schedler

    Venture Partner,Md & Founder

    LinkedIn
  • Stig Haagensen

    Senior Director of Digital Innovation & Accelerators

    LinkedIn