Cleveland's North Coast Ventures has raised another $38 million to invest in Midwest startup companies, after investing $60 million in 57 regional companies in the last few years. This VC fund focuses on scalable SaaS companies, so we thought we would profile a few of them for you to show you what firms like NCV are looking for in a software startup.

How Does North Coast Ventures Invest?

NCV has two funds, a seed round fund an an acceleration fund, for startups in seed rounds or who have more traction. They provide a continuum of capital as companies progress from seed round to later stages of growth.

Remesh.AI

Remesh leverages AI to analyze qualitative research for audience analytics. Already they work with Barclays, NASCAR, Mercer, Nestle, Deloitte and more.

Remesh focuses on the conversation with consumers: "Launch a live conversation with hundreds of people at once. Understand what your audience is saying in real-time using AI to organize and analyze the responses. Make confident business decisions with faster, richer insights."

Axuall

Axuall works in the workforce intelligence space, using a practitioner data network. "We connect health systems, staffing firms, and digital health groups to a vast array of data," Axuall says, "providing insights for network planning, analytics, and reporting, while dramatically reducing onboarding and enrollment time via provider-enabled digital credentials."

For clinicians, Axuall helps create options for better network planning, credentialing, privileging, enrollment, and deployment among healthcare systems, staffing firms, telehealth groups, and health plans. For organizations, Axuall improves efficiencies by eliminating complexities and delays that impact patient access, clinician burnout, and quality of care.

Employstream

Able Teams from Employstream creates onboarding automation and candidate engagement platforms. Basically, they simplify onboarding so organizations can focus on recruiting rather than busywork.

Proformex

Proformex enhances transparency in the life insurance process via use of technology. "Throughout his 25 years of producer experience," the company says, "our founder grew increasingly fixated on a single objective: the need to protect policy owners' best interests by proactively monitoring life insurance policy performance throughout the insured's life to ensure a positive client outcome."

Proformex is used by Agency One, Capitas Financial, and many more life insurance agencies and partners.

How To Pitch a SaaS Startup

VCs are often interested in the product-market fit and proven traction of a startup, as well as how scalable the business idea is. That's why SaaS is a popular focus: it's super scalable and efficient as a business model. If you have a startup you'd like to pitch to venture capital, you'll need a solid business plan, to have done your market research, and put together a team that can succeed.

These days we often hear founders say that they got financing because of the following keys:

• they had a unique but scalable product/service offering
• they built a founding team that each brought industry expertise
• they had great mentorship

Mentorship is one of the missing pieces for startups. If you're thinking of building a SaaS startup, there are lots of new opportunities for support in the Midwest. Check out our series on startup incubators or our article on Where To Find Mentorship for Your Michigan Startup. Whether you're in the Midwest or not, these days there are so many more options for startups to find funding and support regardless of location, especially in states like Ohio and Michigan that have growing tech and startup scenes. Want more inside looks into what VCs are investing in? Let us know on social media what you want to learn more about.