David Cohen just put up The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boulder Startup Community . It’s a short presentation that you can look at below and is a great way to get a lay of the land in the Boulder Startup Community. This will be an organic document so if you are doing something that you want us to add, just leave a note in the comments and we’ll update the doc. ...
I’ve been a huge fan of Xconomy since its debut several years ago. It’s been a refreshing resource for a bunch of startup communities, including Boston (where it started) and Seattle. Over time they’ve added New York, Detroit, San Francisco, and San Diego and are now considering expanding to Boulder / Denver (I encouraged them to combine both as each city is on fire and there’s no reason not to link them together at this point.) ...
At some point in the future, the machines will take over. At that time the machines can create Feldborgs if they so desire; until then there is only one of me. After a day like today it’s hard to accept that I can’t go to every city on the planet and talk about Startup Communities. Today I was in LA – starting at LaunchPad LA , followed by a meeting with Ivee (so, so cool), then an interview with Jason Calacanis for This Week In Startups , and finishing up with a fantastic evening at Cross Campus , first with about 20 VCs who are the core of the LA VC community and then 300 or so entrepreneurs talking about Startup Communities until late in the night. It was an awesome day and my last travel day of the year. ...
I’m a huge supporter of CU and CU Boulder in particular. While it’s not my alma mater, I’ve probably contributed as much or more time and money as I have to MIT, where I spent seven years. Amy and I strongly support three institutions of higher education – MIT, Wellesley (where she went to school), and CU Boulder. I was shocked and stunned to get an email from the CU President Bruce Benson yesterday. Here are the first few paragraphs, on the CU President letterhead. ...
Please ask Boulder City Council to vote NO on proceeding with inadequate decision criteria November 15. There is a critical vote in Boulder City Council on this Thursday, 11/15, about the “Off Ramps” in the exploration to explore the municipalization of Boulder’s power system. My understanding was that this was still in an exploration phase. Apparently, this particular vote is to effectively eliminate the “off ramps” that would potentially cause Boulder not to municipalize in case it wasn’t economically feasible. ...
Some time ago a group of entrepreneurs including my partner Seth Levine came together to talk about how to promote entrepreneurship in Colorado and celebrate the fact that entrepreneurship has become a huge part of the Colorado business ecosystem. The result of that discussion was Colorado Entrepreneurial By Nature – a grass roots branding campaign whose goal is to get Colorado entrepreneurs to rally around their shared love of our state and our entrepreneurial culture. ...
Today I read the following headline in the Boulder Daily Camera: “Phillips 66 to sell 432-acre campus in Louisville .” This was quite a reversal from the headline in the Denver Post 4.5 years ago titled “Conoco deal fuels optimism .” For anyone who drives up and down Highway 36 between Boulder and Denver (or from Boulder to DIA) we regularly see this huge, empty, relatively ugly former StorageTek headquarters site which has been sitting “about ready to be developed any day we promise” by Conoco Phillips. As of today, this is no ambiguity that Conoco Phillips (now Phillips 66) won’t be developing anything on the site. ...
A few months ago TechStars ran a program for military veterans called TechStars Patriot Boot Camp . It was powerful and well received. Since then I’ve had a few emails exchanges about the lack of veterans, especially entrepreneurs who are veterans, in Boulder. Several negative perceptions and biases arose and as the conversation continued, Taylor McLemore and Dave Cass asked if they could put a guest blog about the issue and their perspective up on this blog. I agreed and thought what they wrote up was important. It follows. ...
[embedit snippet=”crowdrise”] While the fires in Colorado have calmed down and the firefighters are in the process of getting them contained, there continues to be plenty of fire danger as the firefighters continue to work incredibly hard. It’s going to be a tough summer for fire in Colorado and I’m proud of all the support this community has given out of the gate to people impacted. As of this evening we’ve raised $43,000, including the $20,000 match from me, Amy, and NewsGator. A number of companies have signed up to match gifts and Crowdrise , who has helped us get this online fundraiser up and running in the last 24 hours, has been awesome to work with. ...
My friends at NewsGator have started a fundraising campaign to help victims of the Colorado wildfires. In addition to getting the campaign up and running, NewsGator has committed to a matching gift of $10,000. Amy and I decided to match that gift from our foundation, so the matching gift is now $20,000. I’d like to encourage everyone involved in a startup in Colorado (or anyone in the world) to help your neighbors in Colorado Springs, Fort Collins, and Boulder who are victims of the current fires that are raging. There are two ways to do this: ...