There’s tech in them thar hills
Has there ever been a better time to be an entrepreneur? In the tech world you can bring in resources from every corner of the globe where fully effective, remote teams are the new status quo. Silicon Valley has become passé. Yeah, there are still a ton of investors and talent by the bay, but why pay those rents or purchase a million dollar hovel? I understand the urge to embark on the garage rite of passage of the young techie; to walk in the footsteps of Jobs, Musk or Bachman. But you don’t need to be on the coast to start the next Abierto.
Take the Denver/Boulder market as an example. This is an area I’ve been proud to call home for almost thirty years . When I started school down at Colorado College in the early nineties the primary industries were oil, snow, cows and Coors. Now, it’s the new Tecca. We get 80,000 people a year moving into the state. Granted, this is probably 20% weed driven, or at least it was when it was first legalized. That’s old hash now that other states have jumped on the pot train. Giving credit where credit is due, Governor John Hickenlooper played a huge role in making the state a great place to do business. Today that growth is almost entirely tech driven. I recently read that the unemployment rate in tech is south of 2%. And that sub 2% you probably don’t want to hire anyway. If you want tech talent these days, you gotta steal it.
The opportunities are rich
This is no complaint! This is a sign of very fertile ground. Another sign is the amount of investment interest, capital and guidance that’s moving to the mountains. There are government backed jump-start programs like GoCode Colorado that I’ve had the pleasure to participate in as a mentor. The groups that enter do so because they’re hungry and passionate about business. Not every idea is a winner but the diversity of thought is exhilarating. Then there are the more established incubators like Tech Stars, Boomtown, Galvanize and many others. Pitch deck competitions are as prolific as craft beers. Wipe the foam from your mouth and you’ll miss the next one.
There’s also a lot of newcomers to the scene. I was lucky enough to receive an invite to be a prospective CEO for one of these semi-newcomers, 10.10.10, as part of the latest healthcare cohort. 10.10.10 was started by Tom Higley who is one of the true titans of industry in the area. He’s also very approachable and one of the most interesting people I’ve had the pleasure to have a conversation with. The concept of 10.10.10 is to bring 10 seasoned entrepreneurs together for 10 days to work on 10 wicked problems. They surround you with a ridiculous amount of resources and thought leaders in the field and say ‘go!’ What an amazing experience.
Programs like 10.10.10 attack the hard stuff. A wicked problem takes on complex adaptive systems. These are systems that have a lot of actors with a lot of different incentives often at odds with each other. Big topics like healthcare or cities. The goal of the program is to create impact entrepreneurs. They look for business minds to create companies that will change the paradigm and improve society while doing it. Another core concept to 10.10.10 is something Tom calls founder/opportunity fit. This should be a guiding principle for any entrepreneur. Founder/opportunity fit means finding an opportunity that resonates with who you are. You need to feel that hum deep in your bones, something that has a lot of deep meaning and purpose to you as a founder. While participating in an incubator or a program like 10.10.10 it’s easy to get excited about damn near anything. The question becomes: will you continue to be excited about it three months down the road, or three years? This takes some serious soul searching, but it’s worth it.
Enough about 10.10.10. Next up is the ever evolving Denver Startup week. This event pulls in people from around the country and the world. Most of the speakers are donating their time solely because they’re in love with whatever topic they’ve decided to share with you. This is a full week of free expertise, waiting to be absorbed.
Get Involved
There are so many opportunities to get involved with the start-up scene that it’s a shame to miss out. Even if you don’t have an entrepreneurial bone in your body, it’s worth giving it a try. We all have skill sets that the world needs, so pitch in and help. Be a mentor, join an advisory board, enter a hackathon, go attend a finale of any of these programs!
I’m sitting on three advisory boards and one thing I’ve found is that almost all companies struggle with slightly different flavors of the same problems. When discussing the problems of other companies, you are guaranteed to find inspiration to solve your own problems. Helping is its own reward. Cheesy but true. It makes you feel good, it expands your network and almost every cool opportunity I’ve been presented with has been the result of me helping somebody else at some point in the past. That whole karma thing is real.
From Attendee to Architect
As an example, one of the companies I’m working with as an adviser is Spigot Labs. Spigot is a technology company that invisibly connects event attendees with who they met, what they saw, and what they tasted with just a tap of their RFID bracelet or tasting glass. This could be contact information at a conference, sharing employment information at a job fair or beer tasting data at a festival. You name the event and the founder, Scott Vitale, has figured out a cool way to connect the people and data in attendance. He bootstrapped the technology and the company from the ground up. He took knowledge, gained in part while working at a healthcare company that used RFID tech to enhance clinician workflow, to build an MVP. Then he did the founder thing — everything possible to make the idea work.
Scott has spent the last couple years tweaking and pivoting and, most importantly, listening to his customers to understand how they are really using the product. Each iteration brings Spigot closer to product/market fit. It’s been a true pleasure to help and counsel a founder with this type of drive and with such an obvious growth mindset. He put together an advisory board not to stroke ego but to learn from and to utilize the collective skill sets to grow the business. He goes into each board meeting willing to have his ideas challenged and his mind changed.
Some level of bullheaded optimism is necessary to get a business off the ground but just as important is the ability to face hard truths. Learning that skill comes almost entirely from experience and throwing your hat in the ring. It requires taking risks and being willing to fail. It may sound intimidating but it will make you feel alive. That’s why it’s so important to get involved with this start-up community no matter where you are in your career. There’s never been a better time to learn from the people with the guts to do it right now.
It’s also a hell of a lot of fun.
See how Spigot Labs is changing the look of beer, wine, and food festivals with just a tap: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FjQJdivTpBg
