Submission declined on 10 April 2026 by Pegnawl (talk). This draft's references do not show that the subject meets Wikipedia's criteria for inclusion for organizations and companies. The draft requires multiple published secondary sources that: provide significant coverage: discuss the subject in detail, excluding routine coverage like product launches, staff appointments, or financial reports and listings in databases or listicles; are reliable: from reputable outlets with editorial oversight; are independent: not connected to the subject, such as press releases, the subject's own website, or sponsored content. Please add references that meet all three of these criteria. If none exist, the subject is not yet suitable for Wikipedia. If you would like to continue working on the submission, click on the "Edit" tab at the top of the window. If you have not resolved the issues listed above, your draft will be declined again and potentially deleted. If you need extra help, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. Please do not remove reviewer comments or this notice until the submission is accepted. Where to get help If you need help editing or submitting your draft, please ask us a question at the AfC Help Desk or get live help from experienced editors. These venues are only for help with editing and the submission process, not to get reviews. If you need feedback on your draft, or if the review is taking a lot of time, you can try asking for help on the talk page of a relevant WikiProject. Some WikiProjects are more active than others so a speedy reply is not guaranteed. How to improve a draft Wikipedia:Contributing to Wikipedia – a basic overview on how to edit Wikipedia. Help:Wikitext – how to use the markup Help:Referencing for beginners – how to include references Wikipedia:Article development – how to develop your article Wikipedia:Writing better articles – how to improve your article Wikipedia:Verifiability – make sure your article includes reliable third-party sources You can also browse Wikipedia:Featured articles and Wikipedia:Good articles to find examples of Wikipedia's best writing on topics similar to your proposed article. Improving your odds of a speedy review To improve your odds of a faster review, tag your draft with relevant WikiProject tags using the button below. This will let reviewers know a new draft has been submitted in their area of interest. For instance, if you wrote about a female astronomer, you would want to add the Biography, Astronomy, and Women scientists tags. Add tags to your draft Editor resources Easy tools: Citation bot (help) | Advanced: Fix bare URLs Declined by Pegnawl 56 days ago. Last edited by OpalYosutebito 24 days ago. Reviewer: Inform author. Resubmit Please note that if the issues are not fixed, the draft will be declined again.

Submission declined on 19 February 2026 by OrangeWaylon (talk). This draft reads like an advertisement. Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, not a platform for promotion or marketing. Drafts that are exclusively promotional may be deleted without notice. Wikipedia articles must be written neutrally in a formal, impersonal, and dispassionate way. They should not read like a blog post, advertisement, or fan page. Rewrite the draft to remove: promotional language: see Words to watch; personal commentary: opinions or direct addresses to the reader; informal language. Instead, only summarize in your own words a range of independent, reliable, published sources that discuss the subject. If you have a conflict of interest (e.g. you are the subject, an employee, or a relative) or are being paid to edit, you must disclose this to comply with Wikipedia's Terms of Use. Declined by OrangeWaylon 3 months ago.

• Comment: Insufficient WP:SIGCOV, deals and fundraising are not sufficient articles Pegnawl (talk) 01:13, 10 April 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: The title of this draft either has been disambiguated or will need to be disambiguated for acceptance.
  If the title of this draft has been disambiguated, submitters and reviewers are asked to check the disambiguated title to see if it is the most useful disambiguation, and, if necessary, rename this draft. If this draft is accepted, the disambiguation page will need to be edited. Either an entry will need to be added, or an entry will need to be revised.
  Please do not edit the disambiguation page or insert a link to this draft unless you are accepting this draft.
  The disambiguation page for the primary name is Kick start (disambiguation).
  You may ask for advice about disambiguation at the Teahouse. Robert McClenon (talk) 21:13, 16 March 2026 (UTC)

• Comment: Seriously? You have five sentences of content, and 42 sources! Talk about WP:REFBOMBING. I suggest you get rid of the majority of those, if you wish for this to be reviewed any time soon. It is much better to support a draft with 4 solid sources that establish notability, than with 42 flaky ones that don't. DoubleGrazing (talk) 11:37, 25 February 2026 (UTC)

Kickstart Fund (also referred to as Kickstart or Kickstart Seed Fund) is an American venture capital firm with offices in Cottonwood Heights, Utah, and Denver, Colorado. The firm provides institutional capital to early-stage startups within the Mountain West region of the United States. As of 2023, Kickstart manages approximately $487 million in assets under management across six investment funds.^[1][2]

Kickstart Fund was founded in 2008 by Gavin Christensen during the onset of the financial crisis and Great Recession.^[3][4] The founding of Kickstart addressed what Christensen identified as a capital gap in the Mountain West region and was the first dedicated seed-stage venture fund established in Utah.^[5] Seed-stage funding for early-stage technology companies in Utah and surrounding states was limited, with most institutional venture capital concentrated in Silicon Valley, Boston, and other established technology centers.

Kickstart's investment activity has coincided with significant growth in Utah's technology startup ecosystem. As of 2023, Utah saw 71,262 small business applications, an increase of approximately 9% from the previous year. Salt Lake County alone recorded 26,690 business applications in 2023, representing significant growth from prior years.

Major technology companies with significant operations in Utah include Domo, Pluralsight, Qualtrics, and Vivint. These companies, along with Kickstart portfolio companies, have contributed to the development of Utah as an established technology hub.

In February 2023, Kickstart announced the closing of Fund VI at $230 million, along with a dedicated follow-on fund. The combined fundraise nearly doubled the firm's assets under management to approximately $487 million.

In conjunction with the Fund VI announcement, Kickstart established a permanent office in Denver, Colorado, representing the firm's first expansion of physical presence outside of Utah since its founding. General Partner Dalton Wright, a co-founder who had been with the firm since 2008, relocated to lead the Colorado office and oversee regional expansion.

Kickstart Fund is led by founder and General Partner Gavin Christensen, who has managed the firm since its establishment in 2008.Christensen is also a member of the board of the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), the industry's principal trade organization.

General Partner Dalton Wright co-founded Kickstart in 2008 and has held partnership roles since inception. Before establishing Kickstart, Wright worked to help launch Mexico's first early-stage technology venture fund. Wright is a member of the Kauffman Fellows Society, a selective organization of venture capital professionals.

General Partner Kat Kennedy joined Kickstart in 2022. Prior to joining Kickstart, Kennedy served as president of Degreed, an enterprise learning platform.

General Partner and Chief Financial Officer Alex Soffe manages the firm's financial operations, including capital reporting, asset management, and transaction structuring.

Since its inception in 2008, Kickstart has closed six institutional investment funds. Following the close of Fund VI in 2023, Kickstart manages approximately $487 million in total assets under management.

In addition to its primary seed funds, Kickstart maintains a dedicated follow-on fund to support continued investment in portfolio companies as they progress beyond the seed stage.

Kickstart's investment strategy is geographically centered on the Mountain West region, defined as Utah, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, and adjacent states.

Kickstart focuses on pre-seed and seed-stage investments, though the firm also participates in Series A and later funding rounds as follow-on investments in existing portfolio companies.

Sectors represented in Kickstart's portfolio include B2B software-as-a-service, financial technology, health tech, consumer tech, and digital marketplaces. Notable investments include:

• Lucid Software^[12]
• Podium^[13]
• Angel Studios^[14]
• Spiff^[15]
• Cotopaxi^[16]
• Rad AI^[17]
• Music AI^[18]
• SonderMind^[19]

Galileo, a financial infrastructure and API platform, was acquired by SoFi (formerly Social Finance) in 2021. The acquisition was valued at approximately $1.2 billion.

Spiff Acquisition by Salesforce (2023)

Salesforce, a major enterprise cloud software company, announced the acquisition of Spiff in December 2023 for $419M.^[20] Spiff is a sales operations and performance management software company. Salesforce identified Spiff as complementary to its Sales Cloud product suite and indicated plans to integrate Spiff's capabilities into its broader platform.

Angel Studios, a community-driven film and entertainment production company, went public in 2025 after raising capital including from Kickstart Fund. The company pioneered a crowdfunded model for film production where its "Angel Guild" of approximately 1.5 million members vote on and finance which projects get produced and distributed. Angel Studios achieved significant commercial success with productions including "The Chosen" (a crowdfunded series viewed over 300 million times) and "Sound of Freedom" (which grossed approximately $250 million globally).

In 2014, Kickstart created Campus Founders Fund (CFF), a student-operated venture capital fund focused on making small angel investments in companies founded and led by university students and recent graduates. The fund is sponsored and funded by Kickstart but maintains operational independence, with all sourcing and investment decisions madeby student investment committees.^[21]

The fund was created as an extension of Kickstart's mission to develop the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the Mountain West. According to Kickstart co-founder Dalton Wright, Campus Founders Fund was designed to identify early-stage student entrepreneurs and provide them with capital, mentorship, and network access during the critical early stages of company formation.

Venture capital

Seed money

Official website Category:Venture capital firms