“This,” said Danny Newman, a serial entrepreneur while on stage at a monthly networking dinner at The Pearl in Denver last month, “is game changing.”

Newman’s contribution to the local startup community that evening was to lead a group of founders in something he’d never quite done before: Crowdsource an idea, develop a sellable product, create a marketing plan and go live with a new company — all before dessert.

His highly interactive session involved vibe coding, which essentially gives anyone the ability to dream of something, say it or type it (i.e.: “prompts”) and leave the grunt work to artificial intelligence tools. It was a big hit, at least among the three dozen or so humans who shouted out business pitches: “Uber for helper monkeys,” “Amazon tariff price tracker,” “a chat bot that gets to know you” and takes your place at awkward meetings.

The winning idea? An “Uber of poop,” based on the crowd’s cheers and squeals for an on-demand pet waste pickup service. 

Newman then took the audience through AI tools like Open AI’s o3, Anthropic’s Claude, Lovable, Manus and so many others to get the computer systems to handle market research, suggest a company name, develop a logo and web app, as well as set up pricing and a payment system. Within the hour, the on-demand pooper-scooper service for Denver’s busy professional appeared to be a good fit and The Turdminator was ready for business. Girl Scout cookies were served.

“Electric” was how attendee Ala Stolpnik described the evening, even as she pointed out that the reality of starting a tech company requires much more thought about security and user data. It needs real customer feedback that is absent in an AI vacuum. And what about staff? “It’s not something that is going to replace engineers or build software anytime soon,” she said.

But Newman’s contribution that evening wasn’t just to show off some trendy new tech. It was more about supporting the local startup scene. 

A successful founder who sold his retail-tech company Roximity and is now behind restaurant-tech service Switchboard, Newman had practically been raised by local entrepreneurs, who he hung out with as a teenager. The pandemic put an instant end to in-person events and a return has been slow. He’s figuring out how to get the band back together and meet new founders. Earlier this year, he turned an old warehouse he owns in RiNo into a coworking space called ID345, where he hosts vibe coding meetups every other week.

“I thought stuff was happening and I just wasn’t connected,” said Newman, now a father in his 40s. “In reality, everyone was just kind of craving this but not getting it. I do think a lot of folks who are community minded, the folks working on creating stuff, we’re all like, ‘Hey, I remember how to do this. And everyone really does need all of this again, so let’s get back together.’” 

And it’s not just the old-timers. 

Stolpnik, an ex-Googler who moved to Boulder three years ago and founded AI startup Wisary last year, has ventured down the turnpike about a half-dozen times to attend the monthly Thunderview CEO Dinners in Denver. They’re organized by Eric Marcoullier, a veteran of the Colorado startup scene known for co-founding companies that either went public or were later acquired by industry titans like Yahoo, Twitter and News Corp. 

While Stolpnik’s quite busy running her own startup, she said it’s been worth her time and effort to attend.

“This has been really, really great,” she said. “I’ve made connections, I’ve made some friends. It’s kind of lonely to be a CEO and especially a cofounder.”

After in-person events were quashed by COVID, founders are finding one another again, as they did more than two decades ago in Boulder and later Denver. 

It’s a little different now. The community is larger and more diverse. Gatherings seem more intentional, and often with an industry or technical focus, like artificial intelligence, quantum computing or vibe coding. There are a lot of new founders wandering around plus an increase in investors interested in keeping their money local. There are also a lot of familiar faces.

“Post pandemic, events went to almost zero and then kind of year by year, the really great organizations that were involved in the community have started to chisel their way back,” said Erik Mitisek, former Colorado Technology Association CEO and a cofounder of Denver Startup Week. “There’s been some new ones too, like the AI Builders Meetup, which has like 600-plus people every month. That’s brand new based on our AI economy. The work that’s happening with Elevate Quantum — totally new. Elevate Quantum didn’t exist two years ago and they’ve got a huge following, tens of thousands who are excited about the quantum economy in the state.”

Marcoullier, now a startup coach and investor, prefers to gather in person. He began hosting his own events to give back to the community and support founders. Besides the monthly dinners, which debuted in March 2023, he has “office hours” on Mondays at the Rayback Collective food truck park in Boulder and on Fridays at Union Station in Denver. 

But COVID really disrupted the startup community. He misses the cohesiveness of the smaller network in Boulder, the city he landed in to start Gnip, which was acquired by Twitter. COVID changed the community, but he’s doing what he can to bring something back.  

“I feel like there is some sort of fundamental restructuring of how people engage in communities these days that is less focused on in-person interaction. I have no idea what that does to communities, but I certainly feel like it takes the place out of place,” Marcoullier said. “There are probably just as many, if not more, entrepreneurs in Boulder than there ever was. But that doesn’t mean they’re showing up to all the events.” 

Getting back startup momentum

Whether it’s coincidence, fate or just life, changes have been afoot in the past year. When the Boulder-bred Techstars business accelerator announced last year it was leaving town and ending the Boulder program, the last Demo Day was well attended. Local mentors and alums also began strategizing on how to bring it back. 

A controversial artificial intelligence bill that passed by state lawmakers last year, caught the tech industry by surprise. Conversations ensued and busy founders volunteered for committees as the tech industry coalesced over potential harm to all businesses, not just tech startups. 

In March, Denver’s annual entrepreneurial fest, touted as the nation’s largest entrepreneurial event of its kind, changed its name to Colorado Startup Week because “when you actually dissect all the parts, the participants and the panels, we were telling the story of Colorado so that’s why we changed the name,” Mitisek said.

“We lived through the golden ages of Denver where we were on the top five of every single list in the United States — best place to start up, best place to build a business, fastest growing economy,” he added. “The communities continue to recalibrate after the pandemic.”

Smaller, targeted events have popped up all over the metro. Over at Endeavor Colorado, which launched in September 2019 to help companies scale larger faster, they organize exclusive events often held at a board member’s home.

New York transplants like Eric Shu, a principal at Access Venture Partners in Denver, recently teamed up with newish Boulder-based VC firm Massive Capital Partners to organize the inaugural Deep Tech Summit in May to get investors connected to research-intensive technologies like robotics, space tech and quantum computing. 

Something is different right now.

“I think it’s momentum,” said Nicole Glaros, a former Techstars executive and investor who spent the past two years “soul searching.”

She’s back in the tech startup scene. Last month, she joined the highly regarded Matchstick Ventures as a partner and reconnected with her former Boulder Techstars colleagues. They’re also working to relaunch the Boulder Techstars that will return its original business model —  relying on local investors, mentors and alums.

“I think one of the things that we got right in the early days was it was a community-funded program,” said Glaros, who stayed busy during her hiatus — she initiated the grassroots effort to get a National Women’s Soccer League franchise in Denver.

“The capital really came out of local investors,” she said. “Those angel investors are individuals who then also got involved as mentors. What happened was there was a beautiful alignment between the people in the community that were funding the programs, the entrepreneurs that were in the program, the staff of the program. Everybody had it in their best interest to see these companies succeed.”

Techstars, which started in 2006, expanded nationally and globally and as it grew, the connection to Boulder seemed to diminish. 

“Techstars started raising very large institutional dollars. There were people from all over the country with these very large checks that were funding these local programs,” Glaros said. “They had returns on their mind. But they weren’t living in these communities. Their kids weren’t going to soccer practice together. And so we’re really bringing that piece back.”

It’s all about the money

But what has probably changed more so in the past 10 to 15 years is the money and its attitude. 

Promising Colorado startups once headed to the coasts to raise capital, which often meant moving the headquarters closer to investors. Colorado would lose companies. That’s rarely the case nowadays, credited to the decades-long efforts to build on the area’s startup reputation and perhaps even to COVID, which has given rise to what Kirk Holland, managing director at Access Venture Partners in Denver, calls the “shadow talent market.”

“When I think of the positive impacts (of COVID), the optimist in me and for Colorado in particular, we got an influx of talent, not only the kind just moving to Colorado but joining companies in Colorado,” Holland said. “I call it the shadow talent market. We have just a ton of amazing talent here in the mountains and all over Colorado that are working for the big companies, the FANGs, or maybe startups in other parts of the country. That’s a pool that we haven’t even fully tapped.”

According to the latest tech industry report from the Colorado Technology Association, the number of technology workers in the state grew 11% between 2021 and 2023, a greater rate than the state’s overall workforce growth of 6.1%. The number of tech-related businesses grew 24.3%, or double the rate of overall businesses. About 10% of the state’s workforce is employed in technology.

And companies in the state tend to attract more than their fair share of venture funding. According to PitchBook data, which tracks investments, Colorado ranked 12th last year in the amount of capital invested. Venture funding has fallen nationwide since the peak in 2022 with both the U.S. and Colorado seeing total capital raised last year cut more than half in two years.

Likewise, the number of venture investors based in Colorado is also up from where it was 15 years ago — up 168% to 99, as of this week, according to PitchBook. The state’s active community though has followed national trends, which has seen a significant decline since 2022 as investors pulled back due to economic uncertainty.

“People do not realize how many investment firms are all of a sudden active and on the ground and even domiciled in Colorado,” said Dan Caruso, who sold his last telecom startup Zayo Group for $8.4 billion plus debt in 2019 and recently wrote a book about the industry, called “Bandwidth.” 

Caruso, who invests through his family fund Caruso Ventures and is on the board of Endeavor Colorado, is a major force in the local ecosystem. He also has been very intentional about promoting the region by making himself available to media, producing a podcast and speaking up in front and behind the scenes to grow quantum, AI, space tech and other deep tech. 

Something’s working and the state is seeing additional payoffs. Boulder just lured the Sundance Film Festival away from Utah. 

“I think it’s the collective momentum of those investors who are getting momentum. They’ve raised their first fund, they’ve raised their second fund and may be on their third. … In some cases, it’s people who’ve moved from Silicon Valley and planted their roots here as investors, which is a big deal,” he said. “Sundance could be an amplification of that or a contributor to that.”

Denver Ventures is a new VC that debuted this month with a $20 million fund. But the folks behind it have been around since 2016, and were known as Denver Angels. The term “angels,” which typically refers to wealthy individuals who invest in companies, no longer seemed appropriate as more investors got involved. Amounts grew larger and the group wanted something more organized. So David Prichard, who started as CEO in 2019 when there were about 100 members, began organizing. 

Now Denver Ventures numbers around 850 members. “Over 500 members have actually written a check and the other ones intend to,” Prichard said. Some investments are in the seven figures, like a $4 million investment in Centennial-based Boom Supersonic, which is developing a passenger aircraft to fly at supersonic speeds. And more investors want in.

“We get about 10 new investors a month engaging with our organization. And that’s completely organic. We’ve never done anything to market or try to bring them in,” Prichard said. “I think that’s a great testament to how many people in Colorado really do want to invest in these entrepreneurs. 

Long-time Colorado VCs, like Access Ventures, have also recruited new blood like Eric Shu from New York. Shu took the lead and worked with Massive VC, a relatively new VC in Boulder, to put on the inaugural Colorado Deep Tech Summit at the School of Mines in May.  

“As someone relatively new to the region, it’s been a privilege to join a startup community with so much depth,” Shu said in an email. “And what I think is even more exciting is that the tech community here is constructively competitive, actively pursuing and building coalitions and initiatives.”

Meanwhile, prominent Boulder venture capitalist Brad Feld emerged from a two-year hibernation (his words) in April.

Feld is like the papa of the community, having moved to Boulder in 1995 when few venture capitalists paid any attention to middle America. He’s a cofounder of The Foundry Group, which helped many young Colorado startups with a financial boost. 

He’s the guy who wrote “Give before you get” in a book where he coined the term “startup communities.” It wasn’t about altruism but creating a positive feedback loop. The ethos was simplified to #GiveFirst at Techstars, which he cofounded with current CEO David Cohen, David Brown and now-Gov. Jared Polis.

Even though Feld checked out publicly for two years, mostly out of exhaustion, he said he responded behind the scenes when asked — helping the state get designated as an official U.S. hub for quantum computing. He also put his name on a letter opposing the state’s new controversial artificial intelligence law, passed last year. 

“I haven’t been visible, but I think I’ve been helpful,” said Feld, who has a new book out on GiveFirst, and is back blogging, responding to emails and showing up. “I am encouraged by the number of next-generation founders who are now rolling into and playing leadership roles and defining their version of where this goes.”

He points to local tech CEOs, like Bryan Leach of Ibotta and Lee Mayer of Havenly, who grew their companies without leaving Colorado. And the newer venture firms like Matchstick Ventures headed up by Natty Zola and Ryan Broshar, and Denver-based Range Ventures cofounded by Chris Erickson and Adam Burrows. 

Last year, Foundry announced it had raised its final fund. Feld said that doesn’t mean he’s done. It’ll take several years to invest the fund and even longer to manage it. He’s sticking around, he said. But he’s not planning to be in the spotlight. 

“I really firmly believe that a vibrant startup community stays vibrant because the old people get out of the way,” Feld said, while attending the Techstars Workforce Demo Day in Denver earlier this month. “I’m about to be 60. I’ve been here for 30 years. I can continue to be involved and be engaged but the leadership needs to evolve.”