The Ledger
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Matt Smith: Mountain West corridor founders are more capital-efficient and scrappy
“Ever since 2008, it's kind of been this thesis that there's a more capital efficient, scrappy, kind of differently built entrepreneur between Phoenix and Bozeman, Salt Lake and Denver, kind of in that corridor.”
Smith: Founders must treat venture investors as customers buying a vision
“One lesson, I guess I would say I took away from raising capital as an entrepreneur. Is that investors were also my customer. I was selling them a vision.”
Smith: Domain parity with founders in 15 minutes is a red flag
“Always gives me a little bit of pause when I'm. 15 minutes into a conversation and I kind of out of questions and like, I feel like I've reached. Somewhat understanding of what the, you know, call it like 80% parity with the founder. I have, I'm a little bit l…”
Smith: Helping with hires 5 through 10 is high-leverage for seed investors
“Hiring right at the precedency level. Most of the expertise that you need is not in the company yet. Once you read series A, series B, you probably have a fair amount of experience inside the company, and you have more networks inside the company to find, you …”
Smith: Founders claiming everything is perfect make investors immediately nervous
“I'm way more interested in working a founder that has that kind of ethos versus one that's, hey, it's all up and to the right. Everything's perfect. You know, no need to ask too many questions because we've got this figured out. Like I'm always immediately ner…”
Smith: Venture capital market will return to equilibrium over next two years
“So I think it's coming back, but I do think that over the next Call it two years. I don't know if I have a crystal ball good enough to look at four years, but call it over the next two years. I see a return to kind of normal. I wouldn't say like back to like s…”
Smith: Rapid AI Disruption Is Forcing Kickstart to Be Very Selective
“It feels like AI is raising the bar on an early stage startup on what they can do, what they can accomplish. And so it's making us be very selective in the investments we make because in three months we might be disrupted by something new.”
Smith: Strong SaaS Acquisition Multiples Currently Range From 7x to 12x
“And so I would say like in general SAS, At an exit level, where we're seeing, you know, companies be acquired right now, I would say a good outcome is in the high single digits to, you know, call it like seven to 12, would be like, that's a good strong outcome…”
Smith: Kickstart will write 14 checks of $140k for Colorado startups
“We're gonna write 14, 140,000 dollar checks, which is really early for us. We're gonna do them in really favorable terms. We've done some of them uncapped or really, like, really friendly discounts.”
Smith: Kickstart Invested in $2M Revenue Startup at 11x-12x Multiple
“Recently we just did a student investment in a company that's Well, let's see, I'm just trying to think that math through. They are doing they're approaching two million in revenue and we invested on a like a low twenties post-money valuation. So call it like,…”
Kickstart Targets 10% to 15% Ownership With $500K to $3.5M Checks
“We're looking to get, for our fund, we're looking to get, you know, somewhere from 10 to 15% ownership into a company. We're looking to invest somewhere from 500 K to three and a half million.”
Kickstart made 13 new and nine follow-on investments in the past year
“In the last 12 months, we have done 13 investments, 13 new investments, and call it like Eight follow on investments, nine follow on investments, I guess, in portfolio companies.”
Kickstart portfolio company went from three to 15 competitors in seven months
“Like there's a company that I invested in last summer, and we knew it that it would be more of a land grab, kind of a, like a race type of opportunity for the company. I think they had two or three formidable competitors when we made the investment. We picked …”