Over the years, Utah-based venture capital firm Kickstart Fund has built an impressive portfolio by backing early-stage startups. Now, the firm is opening an office in Denver as it looks to continue backing innovative companies.
Along with the office, the firm also announced that it raised a $230 million fund to invest in startups in the Mountain West region, including Utah and Colorado.
“Today we are announcing our sixth fund. Between our seed fund and our follow-on vehicle, we are adding $230 million of fresh capital to put to work in Mountain West startups,” Gavin Christensen, founder and general partner of Kickstart, wrote on LinkedIn.
The firm was founded in 2008 and has primarily invested in startups based in Utah, Colorado, New Mexico and Arizona. According to its website, the firm has raised $2.7 billion in capital since launching and currently manages over $311 million in assets.
Since its launch, Kickstart has backed more than 150 companies in various industries, including outdoor appeal company Cotopaxi and online payment platform Cheddar Up.
In the next few months, Christensen will relocate to Colorado and launch the new office.
Kickstart isn’t the only VC firm to open an office in the Centennial State. Last year, Antler, an early-stage investment firm, also opened a regional office in Colorado. Although Antler is headquartered in Singapore, the Colorado office took a regional approach similar to Kickstart by only accepting applications from the Mountain West region.
“There’s a decent amount of downstream funds, a decent amount of seed funds and a lot of Series A and beyond funds,” Ryan Sommerville, an associate partner at Antler, told Built In last May. “What we’re trying to accomplish is provide an on-ramp to get to that point, which many founders lack. And Colorado, to me, is a really ripe ecosystem to be able to insert ourselves into that point in the journey.”
