RevRoad Closes its Doors. Kind Of.

In a turn of events both shocking and yet not totally surprising, the RevRoad experiment has come to an end.

Sometime in the last week, the RevRoad website shifted from this —

to this (on Sunday, 26 January 2025) —

Additionally, based upon my review of dozens of LinkedIn profiles this morning, it appears that layoff notices began a week ago today at RevRoad (on Tuesday, 21 January 2025).

So, although it's kind of a bummer to publish this type of downer news on Day Two of Utah Tech Week 2025, the reality it's still financial and monetary news that Utah's business community needs to know, especially the tech ecosystem of central Utah County.

RevRoad: A Quick History

Launched in 2017, RevRoad positioned itself over the years as a "business accelerator," a "venture accelerator," a "venture services firm," and a "sweat equity firm," a company specifically targeting young inventors and creators passionate about their change-the-world-ideas, individuals with typically little or no concept about how to start or run a business.

Call them pre-entrepreneurs or pre-preneurs.

As such, budding startup founders would apply to be accepted into RevRoad's 9-to-24-month programs where they would have access to a variety of "free" services, services ranging from legal to accounting assistance and from marketing to operations help, as well as shared office and meeting spaces.

On its website, RevRoad positioned these services with values ranging from $250,000 to $500,000.

In exchange, the startup shareholders would "pay" RevRoad an ownership percentage of their company, ownership stakes rumored to average between 7% to 15%.

Steep? Perhaps.

But in its seven-plus years in business,

RevRoad "helped 70+ startups ... (with) customized solutions grounded in proven principles," driven by the opportunity to "partner with (RevRoad's) go-to-market and product development teams."

As explained in the firm's launch video embedded below, Bruce Hassler, RevRoad's then-CTO said,

"With RevRoad, we provide support for the entrepreneurs so that they don't have to do that, they don't have to do it by themselves."

My cursory review of the dozens of portfolio companies highlighted on prior RevRoad websites show that at least a few went on to raise traditional investment monies, including firms like Salt Lake City, Utah-based Nomyx which landed $1.75 million in Seed Round funding in late December 2024.

Speaking of which, 2022 saw the launch of Provo-based RevRoad Capital, a "sister company" to RevRoad, yet a completely separate firm, one which announced the close of its inaugural fund with $61 million in October 2023 with a focus on early stage investments.

What's Next?

On the one hand, in what the company describes as "maturing," things will apparently continue forward at RevRoad for its current cohort of startups, even though it is not accepting new applicants.

Yet, as stated on the RevRoad website and as shown the LinkedIn post below, things have definitely changed for the "sweat equity firm."

That said, when the LI post above says "our fund is full," readers should be clear that that statement does NOT refer RevRoad Capital, but only to the monies set aside for operating RevRoad itself and that it had "invested" (or is currently "investing") in the 70+ startup portfolio companies that have come through its doors over the past seven years.

In fact, RevRoad Capital is still quite active in early stage investing, thank you very much.

That being the case, in a way that's not yet totally clear to this writer, RevRoad itself may still open its doors for public events, such as the three-hour AI Immersion Workshop it's holding this Thursday afternoon (30 January 2025) during Utah Tech Week at its offices in the Kiln building in Provo.

However, whether RevRoad continues to hold such public events in the future is yet to be known.

On to a different yet related topic ...

Arguably one of the most challenging aspects of RevRoad's transition is the fact that a number of now former employees are looking for work — how many, the company has not disclosed.

Obviously, RevRoad is not the only Utah-based firm to experience a Reduction-in-Force over the past 12 months, nor is it the one with the greatest negative impact from such RIFs.

But whether in efforts subtle or not-so-subtle, at least a dozen or more "former" RevRoad employees are now actively #LookingForWork or #OpenToWork, from the C-Level down to the Entry-Level.

So if your organization has current openings, you might point your hiring managers and execs to the RevRoad page on LinkedIn.

For now, however, call it an end of an interesting era.

Editor's Note: For the curious reader, the "Hero Image" used at the top of this report was captured and downloaded from the Events page of the RevRoad website (https://www.revroad.com/events), and it is also available on its FAQ page as well (https://www.revroad.com/faq).

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