Boulder Startup Week 2025

Are you capturing the full value of your product, or leaving money on the table? Most companies default to pricing based on costs or competitors, missing the opportunity to align price with actual customer value. In this interactive session, you'll discover the psychological factors that influence how customers value products and learn practical ways to ethically optimize your pricing strategy. This workshop is designed for founders and product leaders who want to boost profitability while delighting customers. Through three hands-on activities, you'll learn new strategies for interviewing customers to identify what they truly value; understand how product positioning impacts what your users are willing to pay; and recognize the mental models customers bring to every purchasing decision. With a 4.7/5 rating from past participants, this workshop works. You'll learn why top companies price based not on what they cost to build, but on the real value they bring to each type of customer – and how to use these ideas to grow your business today.

Sales can feel intimidating, especially for founders who didn’t set out to be salespeople. But the truth is, no one is better equipped to sell a product/service than the founder. This session will break down the fundamentals of founder-led sales in a way that feels natural and authentic—so you can grow your business without second-guessing yourself.

You’ll learn how to connect with customers in a way that builds trust, navigate objections with confidence, and close deals without feeling pushy or transactional. We’ll cover practical techniques like storytelling, active listening, and asking the right questions to guide conversations toward a “yes.” You’ll also get hands-on strategies for structuring sales calls, following up effectively, and building a repeatable process that doesn’t require you to reinvent the wheel every time you talk to a prospect.

By the end of the session, you won’t just understand the mechanics of selling—you’ll have a clear, actionable plan tailored to your business. Whether you’re still trying to land your first customers or you’re looking to refine your approach, you’ll walk away with the confidence to sell in a way that feels right for you.

As AI agents rapidly transform from science fiction into business reality, a critical question emerges: are we sacrificing security for innovation? While companies race to deploy autonomous AI systems that can operate independently across digital environments, the security implications remain dangerously unexplored.

In this timely and provocative panel discussion, our cybersecurity experts will pull back the curtain on the hidden vulnerabilities of the agent revolution. Drawing from frontline experience, they'll examine real-world security risks posed by AI agents operating with unprecedented levels of autonomy and system access.

Attendees will gain valuable insights into:

-The unique attack surfaces created by agentic AI systems
-How malicious actors are already exploiting weaknesses in agent architectures
-Practical strategies for implementing security-by-design in agent development
-Governance frameworks that balance innovation with robust security protocols
-The evolving regulatory landscape and its implications for startups building agent-based solutions

Whether you're building proprietary AI agents or integrating third-party systems, this session will equip you with the knowledge to protect your organization while still harnessing the transformative power of agentic AI.

Join us for an eye-opening conversation that goes beyond the hype to address the security challenges that everyone in the AI revolution needs to confront—before it's too late.

Cyber Expert Panel Members:
Andrius Useckas
Bryan Becker
Dan Ward

Moderator:
Aaron Walls

Quantum computing is all around us and many don’t realize how close we are to seeing it in everyday life. The panelists are building atomic clocks, quantum sensors and quantum internet that will be part of the fabric of our daily lives. The Colorado ecosystem is the epicenter of this technology and with the recent Federal funding with Elevate Quantum and ground breaking of a new facility to support the industry, the region is poised continued growth within the industry.

As psychedelics move from underground subcultures to the forefront of psychiatric research, the entrepreneurial landscape around them is rapidly evolving, and Boulder is poised to become a key hub for innovation and access. Colorado is the second state to establish a regulated framework for psychedelic use, including healing centers where individuals can experience guided psilocybin journeys from licensed facilitators.
This panel brings together founders, investors, legal experts, and researchers who are actively shaping the future of psychedelics—from mental health treatments to clinics, retreats, and digital platforms. Together, we’ll explore what it takes to responsibly participate in this high-risk, high-reward space where science, ethics, accessibility, and business intersect.
Beyond the business opportunity, we’ll also examine why a growing number of entrepreneurs - from both inside and outside of the psychedelic sector—are turning to psychedelics for personal insight, creativity, and resilience. In a leadership landscape marked by uncertainty and burnout, psychedelics are emerging as powerful catalysts for deeper self-awareness and values-driven decision-making.
Whether you’re an investor, founder, or simply curious, this conversation will offer a grounded look at the risks, rewards, and transformative potential of psychedelics… for the industry, the people leading it, and for you.

As a founder or early employee at a SaaS startup, design decisions can make or break your product adoption and growth trajectory. Yet most startups struggle with when to invest in design, who to hire, and how to evolve their design practice as they scale. Drawing from experience leading research and design at Fuego UX, this session unpacks practical frameworks for implementing effective design processes at each stage of your startup journey.

We'll walk through the essential design milestones that align with your funding rounds and business goals - from DIY design in the earliest days to building sophisticated design systems as you scale. You'll learn when to hire your first designer, how to leverage fractional design talent, and when to build an in-house team. We'll explore practical methods for sharing and testing designs with real users, documenting feedback, and transforming insights into actionable product improvements.

For founders without design backgrounds, you'll gain actionable strategies to develop your design intuition and vocabulary, helping you make informed decisions even before you can afford dedicated design talent. For technical teams, we'll cover collaboration models that integrate design thinking throughout your development process.

By the end of this session, you'll walk away with:

A stage-appropriate design roadmap aligned with your current growth phase
* Hiring guidelines for design talent based on your product maturity
* Simple but effective user testing methods that won't break your budget
* Strategies to evolve your design system as your product grows
* Frameworks for cross-functional collaboration around design

Bring your specific design challenges for the Q&A portion, where we'll tackle real examples from the audience.

Brad Feld and Jaclyn Hester will have a fireside chat about the evolution of a startup community. They cover topics like the importance of existing leaders to hand off the torch to the next generation, why the development of the startup community is not a straight line up and to the right, and how to incorporate concepts from Brad's upcoming book Give First: The Power of Mentorship into your daily activities in the startup community.