Another year, another September, another Denver Startup Week — and we couldn’t be more excited! Last year, a record-shattering 19,000 people attended, and we expect an even bigger turnout for 2018. But Denver Startup Week hasn’t been the only one crushing it over the last 12 months. Denver’s tech scene has achieved some mile-high accomplishments, and as we prepare for this year’s event, we’d like to take a moment to reflect on our favorite milestones.
Denver Tech Companies Launch the CTRC
Colorado is home to more than 11,000 tech companies, with at least one new company forming every three days. To keep up with demand for talent, we joined a consortium of Denver’s most recognized tech companies and state and city economic organizations to form the Colorado Technology Recruiting Coalition (CTRC). The CTRC promotes Colorado as one of the country’s fastest-growing tech hubs to recruit world-class tech talent, initially targeting Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco Bay Area.
Charter members of the coalition:
- Four Winds Interactive
- Gusto
- Healthgrades
- HomeAdvisor
- Ibotta
- Ping Identity
- SendGrid
- Workday
- Xero
- The Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade
- Colorado Technology Association
- Downtown Denver Partnership
“The efforts of the Colorado Technology Recruiting Coalition will ensure that when the best and the brightest companies seek to relocate and expand to Denver, we are well-equipped with the world-class talent they need,” said Tami Door, President and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership.
Popular Tech Companies Migrate to Denver
And the “best and brightest companies” are rapidly relocating to Colorado. Over the past year, we’ve seen quite a few tech giants expand to Colorado, and even more are announcing plans to join us soon.
Just weeks after Denver Startup Week last year, Apple began hiring software engineers in Denver “to join an exceptionally skilled group.” Then earlier this year, social media giant Facebook began to build its presence in Denver by scouting talented tech workers.
That’s not all, five other San Francisco companies announced plans to join the Rocky Mountain migration: Slack, Strava, Accelo, Tapingo, and Maxar Technologies have set sights on making Colorado home.
And we can’t forget the possibility of Colorado hosting Amazon in the future. Amazon has been searching for the perfect location for HQ2, and Denver has made its list of 20 finalist locations. Fingers crossed!🤞
SendGrid Goes Public
We hit a huge milestone ourselves after Denver Startup Week last year! On November 15, 2017, we began trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol “SEND.” With that, we became the first company out of Boulder-based TechStars to go public and the second IPO of a company backed by Dave McClure’s 500 Startups accelerator seed fund.
We followed the IPO with our single largest email volume day ever when we delivered over 2.1 billion emails on Cyber Monday! Keeping the momentum going, we celebrated our second-highest total ever (2 billion emails sent) on May 24th, the day before the infamous GDPR compliance deadline, which rocked the digital marketing world as we know it.
We’re proud of the rapid tech expansion in Colorado and confident Denver Startup Week 2018 will inspire and educate the state’s rising entrepreneurs and startup enthusiasts. If you haven’t yet, make sure you register here and start building your schedule. A variety of teams from SendGrid will be presenting, so make sure you come and attend one of our sessions:
- Denver Startup Week Kick-off Breakfast, Sponsored by SendGrid
- From Inspiration to IPO — Scaling Communications, PR & Social Media
- Secrets to Building and Scaling a SaaS Sales Team
- Organic Content + Paid Media: An Unlikely Power Couple
- The Product Marketer’s Playbook
- The growth tactics used by Denver’s fastest growing startups
- Getting Serious, Product MGMT Processes
- How GDPR Will Impact Startup Growth
We look forward to seeing you all at Denver Startup Week!
