Portfolio Welcome: Viva Benefits
By Micaela Kamp
For millions of renters, their biggest monthly expense doesn’t build savings, improve credit, or move them forward. This shows up in the numbers.
The median renter in the U.S. has around $10,000 in net wealth, while the median homeowner has closer to $400,000. That difference isn’t just about income: it’s about access to tools that actually help people build over time.
On the other side, landlords are dealing with late payments, turnover, and empty units.
Different sides, different symptoms. But with significant value lost by both.
Viva Benefits closes the gaps that keep renters—and landlords—from getting better outcomes.
Co-founded by Michael Barnes and Karina Cruz Le Hardy, Viva is a financial wellness platform designed for affordable and workforce housing. It’s built around a simple idea: when residents are more financially stable, properties perform better.
Landlords–either owners or managers of rental housing–pay a small fee per unit per month, and every resident is automatically enrolled in a mobile platform with access to telehealth, a high-yield savings account, rent reporting to all three credit bureaus, tutoring for K–12 students, and homebuying programs.
Most products in this category depend on residents signing up on their own. Adoption tends to stall there. Viva is set up at the property level, so every resident starts in the system from day one.
That changes how many residents actually use it and that’s what drives the results.
At properties using Viva, landlords have seen higher retention, fewer missed payments, and measurable improvements in net operating income. The platform tracks this engagement at the resident level and connects it to overall property performance, generating reports that operators can use with lenders and partners, including formats aligned with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Viva didn’t start as an abstract idea. It came from firsthand experience owning and operating housing, where these patterns show up every day but rarely get addressed directly.
What the team has built is a more practical way to think about the problem and a more direct way to solve it.
We’re proud to welcome Michael, Karina and the entire Viva team to the RevUp portfolio as they build something that works for both sides of the system.
More About RevUp Capital
RevUp Capital invests in B2B and B2C companies that are revenue-driven and ready to double down on growth. We deploy cash and capacity to help companies grow from $1-3M to $10-30M, quickly and efficiently, using a revenue-based model. Companies enter our portfolio with $500K-$3M in revenue, a strong growth rate, and a team that’s ready to scale. Our typical investment range is $300K-$500K.
More at www.revupfund.com
How We Invest
We built RevUp to invest into B2B and B2C companies ascending the $1M-$10M growth curve. We know from experience—and from the stellar performance of our portfolio—that this curve can be conquered. But, having the right resources and support along the way is critical to success.
RevUp combines non-dilutive investment with hands-on support to help companies build stronger, more scalable infrastructure for growth. And, we do it using a non-dilutive model. Our goal? Give companies the best shot at success while preserving founder equity, optionality, and autonomy.
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