The Brain Guide to Denver Startup Week
Interested in brain health, brain science, or brain disorders? Want to impact behavioral healthcare, legislation, and neuro or cognitive diversity? You’re in the right place. This is the Brain Guide to Denver Startup Week.
We’ve broken down the week into event’s you can’t miss, opportunities to learn something meaningful, chances to interact, and opportunities for us to set the tone through questions and conversations. Here’s the rundown with more details below:
Can’t Miss
- Impact Founder Bus (daily)
- Women Who Startup Summit (Tuesday)
- Leading the Nation with Mental-Behavioral Health Support (Tuesday)
- Innovation + Impact: How Your Business Can be a Force for Good (Thursday)
- Mission Possible: Craft and Change Your Company Culture (Thursday)
- The Brain Crawl (Friday)
Learn Something Meaningful
- Great Minds Don’t Think Alike (Monday)
- Combating Opioid abuse with machine intelligence and machine vision (Monday)
- Roundtable with the Leaders of Denver’s Healthcare Innovation Community (Tuesday)
- Why is healthcare so hard to reform? (Wednesday)
Interact
- Make It Matter (Monday)
- Are You Ready To Talk About it now? (Monday)
- Behavioral Design and Social Impact (Wednesday)
- Doing Good with Design Thinking (Tuesday)
- Designing Workplaces for High-Performing Teams (Wednesday)
- Creating a Culture of Inclusion & Innovation (Thursday)
Can’t Miss
Impact Founder Bus
Daily
Born out of tragic loss in the startup community and fueled by hope, Kristin Darga is on a mission to make sure another entrepreneur isn’t lost. If you’re not already familiar with Impact Founder, you should fix that, (Kristin’s new book is a great way)! Our good friend and partner in the Brain Crawl, she has taken her combination of storytelling and startups to a whole new level for DSW this year via the Impact Founder Bus, an opportunity for entrepreneurs to share their experiences, good and bad, and to connect with others on a basic human level. You can book a time here, and I’d recommend you do so sooner than later as there are a very limited number of spots.
Basecamp Launched by Chase for Business
1245 Champa Street
Women Who Startup Summit
Tuesday 9/26 6:00PM — 10:00PM
Few events at DSW have been as impactful as the Women Who Startup Summit (The 2015 summit was a huge inspiration to Sigmend’s Startup Week events). Founder and CEO Lizelle van Vuuren has honed in on a beautiful way to approach diversity and gender equality from a place of inclusion and opportunity. As a male, I left feeling like an ally, not an enemy. The event is focused on female stories of success, “not because they’re women but because they are kicking ass, innovating, and making Colorado a thriving entrepreneurial community.” (Something I’ve seen first hand working for a ‘kick ass’ female CEO.)
More than just inspiration, Women Who Startup and the summit provide a blueprint to explore and promote neuro and cognitive diversity. In general, it’s an event I’d recommend to everyone, but the amount we can learn as advocates from their approach to diversity puts it near the top of our list as a can’t miss event.
CO — Leading the Nation with Mental-Behavioral Health Support:
Collaborate with Community Resources That Deliver
Tuesday 9/26 8:00AM — 9:30AM
AJ Cohen has earned his reputation as a connector with this event! Hosted by the Colorado Entrepreneurs Mental Health Network, it’s a smorgasbord of individual and organizational leaders in Colorado brain health. Most of their work goes without fanfare or praise, but these people are in the trenches fighting for mental health. They are the cause of landmark and fundamental changes to brain health in Colorado.
Fundamental, as in it’s no longer legal to lock someone in jail instead of taking them to the hospital during a crisis. Landmark, as in Colorado devoted 9 million dollars this year to provide additional school counseling and early prevention. They are behind massive growth and innovation in our behavioural health resources, funding, and facilities.
I’m particularly interested to hear Bev Marquez talk on ‘Stories from the call center trenches of the CO Crisis Services Help Line’. And of course the keynote from Dr. Michael Freeman, an expert in psychology, biological psychiatry, health policy, business and public health. This guy wrote the book on brain conditions and Startups. Literally — Are Entrepreneurs Touched By Fire.
The event ends with updates from leading brain organizations in Colorado including Colorado Mental Wellness Network, Mines and Associates, Mental Health First Aid Colorado, Colorado Behavioral Health Intervention Center, Deva Seed, and yours truly on behalf of Sigmend. It’s a lot to fit into 90 minutes, so make sure you leave some time to talk with the presenters afterward.
Jake Jabs Center at CU Denver
1475 Lawrence Street
Innovation + Impact: How Your Business Can be a Force for Good
Thursday 9/28 3:30PM — 5:00PM
At first glance this didn’t seem like a candidate for our brain guide to DSW. After a closer look at the host and panelists, it was a clear choice as a can’t miss event.
- First off, Kim Coupounas TED talk ‘less is more’ is a powerful story of anxiety, joy, and the emotional toll of 5 miscarriages and 3 failed invitro. (Spoiler Alert — she’s now a proud mother!)
- Natty Zola has been a mentor and friend of Sigmend from the start. As an organization, Techstars has addressed brain health ‘head’ on with posts, events, and webinars featuring founders and mentors like Brad Feld and Jerry Colonna living openly with their experiences.
- While Brad is the most vocal advocate from the Foundry Group, Seth Levine joins other startup leaders opening up with his recent post, ‘drowning’. The post starts, “I’m struggling and I’ve avoided talking about it”, and goes on to show his plan to change that. The last step? ‘Speak out. I’m taking stands about the things that are important to me. I’m ignoring the haters. More on this in a separate post…’
This event’s a sleeper in terms of obvious relevance to the brain, but the all star cast earns it a spot as a can’t miss brain event.
Herman Miller | Workplace Resource
1899 Wynkoop Street, Suite 150
Mission Possible: Craft and Change Your Company Culture
Thursday 9/28 4:00PM — 6:00PM
This one’s a clear choice. Direct from the DSW description: ‘we will dig into the neuroscience of identity and the social science of culture.’ Now you might be thinking we’re a little biased (seeing as Heather J. MacKenzie is a member of OPEN Labs and a speaker at the upcoming brain crawl). Well, you’re right. We are biased, and for good reason.
In addition to being another kick-ass female founder herself, Heather is ‘radically transforming how we finance, support and celebrate women-led Ventures that are creating a better world’ through her work with SheEO. Her post on her experience as mother of a child with bipolar is incredibly touching and insightful. Not to be outdone, her counterpart for the event, Nicole Gravagna, PhD is an expert in neuroscience, behavioral economics, and motivational psychology. She addresses all of those in her book, MindSET Your Manners where she examines change and conflict both on a personal level and at the organizational management level. Did we mention this was a can’t miss?
Brain Crawl
Friday 9/29 4:00PM — 7:00PM
Ok, we are definitely biased with this one! But we’re not alone. We’ll have cutting edge brain tech, interactive neurotransmitter education, renowned psychiatric experts, and speakers like Eric Marcoullier, Heather MacKenzie, Shira Frank, Michelle Rousseau, Amy Reichlin, Impact Founder, Sean Kearney, & Video contributions from celebrity thought-leaders like Comic, Actor, and Writer, Adam Cayton-Holland.
The only thing that could make the event better is free drinks. Oh wait, we’ll have those too!
WeWork Union Station
1550 Wewatta St.
Learn Something Meaningful
GREAT MINDS DON’T THINK ALIKE:
ARTISTS AS INNOVATORS IN BUSINESS, GOVERNMENT & SOCIETY
Monday 9/25 3:30PM — 5:00PM
The link between brain conditions, creativity, and art spans back millennia. (Think Vincent Van Gogh, Edvard Munch, Georgia O’Keeffe) Laura Callanan, founding partner of Upstart Co-Lab explores the connection between artist and innovation including an inclusive look at diversity. ‘Research and experience have shown that diverse teams go farther, and that cognitive diversity is as important as gender and racial diversity.’ It’s a very popular event so make sure to arrive early for seating.
Larimer Social
1427 Larimer Street
Combating Opioid abuse with machine intelligence and machine vision
Monday 9/25 12:00PM — 2:00PM
Opioid overdoses and addiction are one of the most pressing brain health challenges, and certainly the most publicized. Not for long, Self Aware Apps founder Peter Simmons is using advanced tech to better understand health and wellness. This narrowly missed the cut as a can’t miss, and it promises to be a fascinating dive into the connections between machine intelligence and brain health.
Denver Place (Conference Room)
999 18th Street
Roundtable with the Leaders of Denver’s Healthcare Innovation Community
Tuesday 9/26 11:00AM — 12:00PM
Colorado is leading the nation in innovative healthcare solutions, and these leaders are driving healthcare innovation in Colorado. Checkout the roster on this one:
- Jeffrey Nathanson President, 10.10.10
- Mike Biselli President, Catalyst HTI Unity Stoakes — Co-founder and President StartUp Health
- Scott Booker CEO HealthGrades
- Steve Adams CEO, Prime Health
- Aaron Duke VP Product, CirrusMD
Enough said.
Why is healthcare so hard to reform, what is leading the latest round of innovation, and why are so many entrepreneurs interested in getting involved?
Wednesday 9/27 4:00PM — 6:00PM
Another all star line up here tackling a beast of a problem. Healthcare is one of the most contentious issues we face as a nation. The fact that many organizations still mandate documents be sent by fax should give you an idea of the adoption of change in healthcare.
The good news is we have people like Kim Gandy of Play-it Health, Kevin Krauth of Orderly Health, Andy Altorfer of CirrusMD, Dr. Mark Prather of Dispatch Health, and Nicole McNew of Prime Health on the job. Healthcare is hard, but this group is up to the challenge.
Industry
3001 Brighton Blvd
Interact
Make It Matter
Monday 9/25 2:00PM — 3:30PM
We’ve got a problem to solve, and this is a perfect event to take a cutting edge approach. This event’s focused on tackling socially meaningful problems with advanced prototyping, multi-material 3D printing, and synthetic biology… I think I’m in love.
Inworks
CU DRAVO BLDG., FIRST FLOOR,
1250 14TH STREET
Behavioral Design and Social Impact
Wednesday 9/27 11:00AM — 1:00PM
The title says it all on this interactive event. GRID Impact is hosting a two part session where you’ll not only learn about behavioral science and social innovation projects, you’ll also have a chance to workshop what you learn and apply it to your own work or life.
General Assembly
2420 17th Street, 3rd Floor
Are You Ready To Talk About it now?
Monday 9/25 10:00AM — 4:00PM
Free 20 minute therapy sessions courtesy of COEMHN.com! There’s a long week ahead. Take advantage of this resource to start off from a healthy, grounded place. It’s like a massage for the mind.
Basecamp Launched by Chase for Business
1245 Champa Street
Doing Good with Design Thinking
Tuesday 9/26 2:00PM — 4:00PM
As anyone who attended our workshop at DSW last year can attest, we are big fans of using Design Thinking to approach societal problems. This year, Dave Maren, VP of Strategy at Spire Digital will teach you more about Design Thinking before an interactive workshop where you can put what you’ve learned into practice. Brain health would be a great problem to practice on.
Spire Digital
940 Lincoln Street
Set the Tone
Designing Workplaces for High-Performing Teams
Wednesday 9/27 2:00PM — 3:30PM
If you have questions on neurodiversity and brain health in the workplace, odds are Kate Hyatt, Chief People Officer, Healthgrades. Melissa Marlow, Principal, Acquilano Leslie Inc. or John Robbins, President and CEO, Pear Workplace Solutions have an answer. Of course they can’t answer a question you don’t ask.
GoSpotCheck
1520 Market Street, 80202
Creating a Culture of Inclusion & Innovation
Thursday 9/28 10:00AM — 11:30AM
The collective credentials of Koert Bakker and Rachael Shayne could be a post on their own. This is an incredible opportunity to ask questions and understand the dynamics of founding a company and culture that fosters neurodiversity and supports brain health. Again, we’ll never know unless we ask!
General Assembly
2420 17th Street, 3rd Floor
Other Great Events
Why It Pays to Give a Shit:
The Importance of Compassion in the Business of Design
Thursday 9/28 9:30AM — 11:00AM
Herman Miller | Workplace Resource
1899 Wynkoop Street, Suite 150
Startup Confidential:
The Raw, Unfiltered Truth about Starting a Company
Wednesday 9/27 6:00PM — 10:00PM
Galvanize (Platte Street)
1644 Platte St.
Founder F*ck Ups
Wednesday 9/27 2:00PM — 3:30PM
Galvanize (Golden Triangle)
1062 Delaware St.
