Start School Session: Kickstart Founder & General Partner Gavin Christensen

When Gavin Christensen started Kickstart, investing in Utah startups was not the obvious bet.

That was precisely the point.

Gavin began his career on the East Coast in consulting before returning to Utah to join vSpring, one of the first venture firms focused on backing Utah entrepreneurs. He fell in love with the idea that something special was happening here, even if there was not much evidence yet to prove it.

Eventually, he struck a deal. He would take over vSpring’s New Mexico office if they would let him pursue what he called his “crazy seed fund idea.”

So in 2007, Gavin moved his family into a double-wide trailer in the mountains of New Mexico and started Kickstart.

Then the Great Recession hit.

Kickstart’s first fund was just $4 million. The idea of a dedicated seed fund in Utah was so unusual that Gavin remembers people congratulating him on the “great service” he was providing the state and jokingly asking where they could donate.

But Gavin believed Utah entrepreneurs deserved seed-stage capital, and more importantly, he believed there were enough great entrepreneurs here to make it a real business.

He was right.

Nearly two decades later, Kickstart has become one of the most influential venture firms in the region, while Utah has developed into an entrepreneurial ecosystem filled with founders, investors, talent, and capital.

Now another massive technology shift is underway.

AI is changing what it takes to build a company, what customers expect from software, how many people startups need, and which existing businesses are vulnerable to disruption.

For Gavin, that creates uncertainty.

It also creates enormous opportunity.

That is the entrepreneur we brought into Start School this week. Here is what we took away.

Do Something Non-Consensus, and Be Right

Gavin teaches a class at BYU, and one of the ideas he shares with his students is deceptively simple.

If you want to do something special, do something non-consensus and be right.

When Gavin started Kickstart, Utah seed investing was decidedly non-consensus.

There was not a long list of successful Utah technology companies proving the thesis. There was not an established funding ecosystem waiting for him. Gavin simply believed there was something unique about the culture.

Entrepreneurship mattered here. Successful founders invested their money, time, and mentorship into the generation coming behind them. There was a sense that when one Utah company succeeded, the entire community could benefit.

The obvious opportunities attract everyone.

Sometimes the biggest opportunities are the ones other people have not learned to believe in yet.

The Economy Is Up for Grabs

Every major technology wave creates winners and losers.

Gavin believes AI may create more of both.

The earliest stage of a major technology shift often favors places with enormous concentrations of capital, infrastructure, and talent. Today, that means much of the foundational AI development is happening on the coasts.

But foundational technology eventually becomes infrastructure that everyone else can build on.

AWS helped enable an entire generation of SaaS companies. Gavin believes AI will create an even more powerful intelligence layer that entrepreneurs everywhere can use to solve problems that previously seemed impossible.

That could be particularly important for Utah.

Utah became exceptionally good at taking emerging technology, applying a strong sales culture, and turning it into successful B2B software companies.

Now the expectations are changing.

Simply saying you are a software company means almost nothing. AI allows companies to move faster and accomplish more with fewer resources, which means customers are beginning to expect more too.

At the same time, enormous portions of the economy are still operating on spreadsheets, paper, and outdated systems.

Those industries are opportunities.

As Gavin put it, “The economy is up for grabs.”

And that is great news for disruptors.

Not Every Great Business Should Raise Venture Capital

Venture capital gets a disproportionate amount of attention in entrepreneurship.

Gavin thinks most businesses should never take it.

He estimates that only somewhere around one to five percent of businesses should seriously consider venture funding.

That is because venture capital comes with a very specific expectation.

Growth.

A venture firm might make 30 or 40 investments in a fund. A large percentage of those investments will fail completely. Ultimately, only a handful may generate most of the fund’s returns.

That means investors are not simply looking for good businesses.

They need companies with the potential to become extraordinarily large businesses.

A founder might build a company worth $15 million or $20 million, sell it, and create an incredible outcome for themselves and their family.

But if that founder took venture capital with the expectation of pursuing a multibillion-dollar outcome, selling early may not represent the outcome their investors signed up for.

Before raising money, founders need to ask themselves what they actually want.

Do you really want to build a venture-scale company?

Do you understand what your investors need in order to win?

Does your market, team, momentum, and ambition support that kind of outcome?

Venture capital can be an incredible rocket booster.

But not every great business needs a rocket booster.

Make It Hard for an Investor to Say No

Founders sometimes approach fundraising as if investors are there to help them figure out their business.

That is not how Gavin sees it.

Kickstart wants to invest in exceptional founders and exceptional teams.

His advice to founders is to think about one question:

“Why can we not say no to you?”

Venture investors may see hundreds or even a thousand pitches in a year. A founder might raise capital once or twice during that same period.

Trying to game that process with clever fundraising tactics is unlikely to be the differentiator.

Tell the best story you can.

Know what you need.

Know what you are trying to accomplish.

Demonstrate why you and your team are uniquely equipped to solve the problem.

And understand that a rejection does not necessarily mean an investor thinks you have a bad company. The opportunity simply may not fit what that particular firm needs at that particular moment.

In fact, Gavin says Kickstart has passed on plenty of founders who later proved them wrong.

He is happy when they do.

Great Founders Care About the Problem More Than the Outcome

Building a billion-dollar company is not normal.

It requires enormous amounts of effort, sacrifice, mental energy, and time.

That is why Gavin does not believe money or status are enough to sustain the best entrepreneurs.

Eventually, building gets too hard.

The founders who keep going tend to have something deeper.

They care about the problem so much that pursuing it becomes almost irrational. There is an emotional commitment to solving it and a level of grit that cannot easily be manufactured.

But Gavin has also seen another trait separate exceptional founders from everyone else.

They grow.

A founder who can lead a five-person startup may eventually need to lead hundreds or thousands of employees. They have to become better leaders, communicators, visionaries, and cultural rallying points along the way.

That requires curiosity.

The best founders are constantly learning, adapting, and becoming the person their company needs next.

Love the Competition, Not Just the Victory

After nearly two decades of investing, Gavin has learned something about winning.

The victories are surprisingly short-lived.

An exit happens. A milestone gets reached. Recognition comes. Then life continues.

What sustains him is the competition.

Gavin pointed to Rafael Nadal, who has talked about missing competition more than winning after retiring from professional tennis.

That idea resonates with him.

Great leaders learn to enjoy solving hard problems. They find energy in the grind, curiosity, learning, setbacks, and getting back up the next day to do it again.

Leadership is less about occasional bursts of heroic effort and more about showing up with renewed energy day after day.

It also means bringing other people with you.

The best leaders Gavin has worked with are honest, hardworking, curious, and smart. But they also invest deeply in the people around them.

As an entrepreneur, you need people who are willing to stay in the fight with you.

That loyalty is earned by caring about their careers, their families, and their success, not just what they can do for your company.

Success Amplifies Who You Already Are

Entrepreneurship requires imbalance.

There are going to be periods when building something demands more of you than almost anything else.

But Gavin believes founders eventually have to decide where the firewall exists between the company and the rest of their lives.

Because failure is not the only thing capable of wrecking your life.

Success can do it too.

Money, fame, and status are powerful, but Gavin describes them as morally neutral. They do not automatically make someone better or worse.

They amplify who that person already is.

That is why Kickstart tries to have conversations with founders about their marriages, families, mental health, and lives outside the company.

The goal should not simply be to win financially.

It should be to win across the board.

Build the company.

Create opportunities for employees.

Take care of your family.

Protect your relationships.

Come through the experience as a better and more complete person.

Gavin Christensen started Kickstart by making a bet few people believed in.

Utah entrepreneurs were worth betting on.

Today, the evidence is everywhere.

But the lesson from Gavin’s story is not simply that he correctly predicted Utah’s rise. It is that entrepreneurship rewards people willing to see opportunity before consensus catches up.

AI is creating another one of those moments.

Companies will disappear. Industries will change. Old assumptions about software, teams, and business models will be challenged.

And somewhere in all of that disruption are opportunities that do not look obvious yet.

Find the problem you care enough about to keep solving when things get difficult.

Build something capable of earning the right kind of capital for the right reasons.

Become the kind of leader great people want to follow.

And do not wait for everyone else to agree with you before you start.

Watch the full session above. Take notes. Come to the next one ready to build.

Show up. Give more than you take.