OVERVIEW

The best ideas move faster when the right people show up to help.

KickStart 2025 was UBC BizTech's flagship startup event. A week where teams went from strangers to co-founders, and from pitch deck to paying customers. Judges asked when they could invest. Mentors stayed late to unblock progress. And students proved that when given a real opportunity, they ship.

Partners & Sponsors

Presenting Sponsor — Fetch.ai

Keynote Partner — Andreessen Horowitz (a16z)

Supporting Partners — Innovation Lab by Fetch.ai, Investly by Fidelity Investments, vidIQ, Launch Academy HQ, Commerce Undergraduate Society of UBC Vancouver

Fireside Chat

Olivia Moore, Partner at a16z

Workshop Hosts

• Mike Chrabaszcz, Developer Advocate at Fetch.ai
• Ryan Tran, Software Engineering at Fetch.ai

Judges

• Floyd Sijmons, EiR at Foresight, VentureLabs, NVBC
• Shantanu Mehta, Investor at Spring Impact Capital
• Gabriel Ravacci, Co-Founder and CTO at Stealth
• Mai Tuyet Trinh, CEO at Stealth
• Chang Han, Lead EiR at Innovation UBC
• Aaron Stuart, COO at WUTIF Capital
• Angus Fudge, Investor at BDC Seed Venture Fund
• Abhay Ghatpande, PhD, MBA, VC at Sprout Fund VC
• Kevin Dhir, CEO and Founder at Galint Gaming Inc.
• Rahul Rao, CEO and Founder at CloudAdvisors
• Alexander Dungate, Co-Founder at OnDeck AI (YC S25)
• Tyler N., Founder at The Syndicate
• Tony Hui, Head of Product Engineering at vidIQ
• Melaniia Volkodav, Venture Capital at Panache Ventures

Industry Mentors

• Aayush Kogar, Co-Founder at The Creative Solution
• Kuzi Mutonga, Product Manager at Journey Capital
• Tiffany Scarlett, CEO at Tiffany Scarlett MediaVentures
• Grace (Yanyu) Zhang, Co-Founder and CEO at Guida
• Garreth Lee, Co-Founder at Mundo AI (YC W25)
• Peter Duan, Client Engagement Advisor at RBCx
• Sanket Mittal, Founder at Althra
• Christian Yang, Engineer at Meta
• Vallen L., VP Early Stage at RBCx

IMPACT

Teams that shipped real products in a week.

• One startup hit 250k organic impressions on X in under 48h.
• One incorporated during the week and has already onboarded its first manufacturing partner.
• Several passed 10 paying customers.