Boulder Startup Week 2025

This is the most Boulder way to network, especially if you’re tired of the superficial talk at most events! This format is taken from Bart Foster’s BusinessOutside hikes where participants get to connect on a much deeper level and with far more people than they would otherwise. Starting from the Dakota Ridge Trailhead and going at an easy pace.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/xi1iHXE4u8uTdxiB6

We’re here because something big is happening across startups and product teams—and it's happening faster than a lot of us expected.
A few years ago, the model was simple:
 Raise a huge round of funding, hire an army of people, burn through cash, and hope to scale.
But today? AI is flipping that script.
According to a recent New York Times article, startups like Gamma, Cursor, and ElevenLabs are reaching tens of millions in revenue with tiny teams—sometimes just 20 to 50 people.
 The game has changed:

• Efficiency is the new flex.
  
  
  
• Tiny teams are the new giants.
  
  
  
• AI is the ultimate force multiplier.
  
  
  

And the role of the product manager is evolving right alongside it.
 Today’s PM needs to not only lead across engineering, UX, and strategy—but also learn how to leverage AI tools, workflows, and thinking to extend their reach without needing a team of 10 behind them.

Creative thinking and analytical rigor – they seem like an either/or but really organizations (and individuals) need both to generate inspiring ideas and execute meaningful innovation. Especially at the startup stage where design-centric voices tend to be outnumbered, purposefully practicing creativity can help you build a brand that better resonates with customers and craft a product experience that users love.

As an early non-technical hire at Scythe, and as the first self-proclaimed creative on the team, Billy Otteman jumped from a decade of branding agency experience straight into the deeply analytical engineering environment of the Boulder County-based robotics startup. He quickly learned to navigate the software and hardware spaces while building what has become one of the most engaging and exciting brands in its industry (again, self-proclaimed).

In this talk, Billy will share best practices for fostering a creative culture that leads to more compelling customer communication. He’ll also present strategies for conducting illumination exercises that increase customer empathy and discuss how impactful collaboration between design and engineering teams can make your products stickier. And so you leave inspired, he’ll lead the group in a few creative exercises for you to conduct with your coworkers.

Whether you’re a marketer surrounded by strict rationality looking for a creative spark or an engineer hoping to better communicate with your crazy creative counterparts, you’ll return to your team with effective creativity tactics that you can put to work right away.

Through Donor Advised Funds, companies can accept checks for fundraising and investors and corporations can fund investments in a highly tax efficient way.

Come explore this (charitable) funding strategy with us!

This session will be held in a fireside chat format at the Boulder Chamber. 

Natalie Levy, Managing Partner of She's Independent Investments, will interview Sarah Angello, Cofounder of Get Daffodil.

Audience Q&A will be welcome and encouraged.

My session will focus on how to infuse SaaS products with AI capabilities to stand out in a competitive market. I’ll share practical steps, lessons learned, and real-world examples from my own experience implementing AI – covering everything from small, incremental improvements to game-changing features like AI-based matching. My expertise lies in product strategy, AI integration, and helping SaaS teams discover ways to differentiate themselves through innovation and forward-thinking technology adoption.

Employee ownership is a proven yet often overlooked business model that drives productivity, stability, and wealth distribution. Companies where at least 30% of shares are broadly owned by employees experience faster growth, higher wages, better benefits, and greater resilience against economic downturns. With the passage of House Bill 24-1157, Colorado has doubled down on its commitment to employee ownership, codifying the Colorado Employee Ownership Office and establishing a $1.5 million annual tax credit to support businesses in their first seven years of employee ownership.

This panel will explore how more entrepreneurs can approach shared ownership—whether they’re launching a startup, scaling a business, or planning an exit. Experts will break down state incentives, legal considerations, governance models, and strategies to mitigate risks in financing and decision-making. Panelists include Matt Licina (National Center for Employee Ownership), Allie Clark (Foley & Hoag), Ashley Ortiz (Rocky Mountain Employee Ownership Center), Jason Weiner (Jason Weiner PC), and David Henry (Namaste Solar)—leaders with deep expertise in employee ownership transitions and operations.

As wealth inequality grows and business leaders play an increasingly crucial role in balancing the economy, shared ownership offers a sustainable, strong alternative to status-quo business approaches. Entrepreneurs have an opportunity to build stronger, more equitable companies—and Colorado is making it easier than ever to do so.

Video is a powerful tool to tell your brand's story, engage with customers, and also raise funds. In this panel, myself and several production company owners, producers, and directors will discuss how video production is a essential to grow a company, and not just merely a way to "create content" for social media. I (Rob) will lead a discussion with the panel, and we will open up for Q&A at the end of the session.

Too many founders treat financials like a black box - only checking in when asked by investors, tax preparers or worse - when things go wrong! But understanding your financial statements is a superpower that can help you make smarter decisions, attract investors, accelerate growth and build a more resilient business.

In this hands-on session, we'll break down the three core financial statements (P&L, Balance Sheet, and Cash Flow Statement) in layman's terms. You’ll learn how to read them, what key metrics to watch, and how they all connect. We’ll also cover how to spot red flags early and use your numbers to tell a compelling story to stakeholders.

No finance background needed - just curiosity and a willingness to take control of your numbers.

What You’ll Learn:
1. How to read and actually understand your financial statements
2. The 3-5 KPIs every founder should track
3. How to connect your numbers to business strategy
4. Common financial mistakes and how to avoid them
5. Tips for working smarter with your accountant or bookkeeper

Who It’s For: founders, startup operators, and small business owners who want to level up their financial literacy and lead with confidence — no spreadsheet wizardry required.

One thing is certain—everything is moving faster than ever before and will never move this slowly again. The demand placed on leaders continues to outpace our capacity to keep up, feel confident, and uphold all our obligations at work and home. We are often more overwhelmed, distracted, and anxious than we want anyone to know, creating an epidemic sense of aloneness.
In this interactive session, Beck Sydow will share practical, accessible, and portable mindful skills they have been practicing and developing for over three decades. These practices provide leaders with a reference point to get grounded quickly and build awareness to know what the f**k is going on inside and around them, and skillfully operate from active choices that create the resiliency and agency we need to do great things without sacrificing our well-being and mental health.
#GiveFirst: Three participants will be selected from a drawing to schedule a private coaching session with Beck.

A discussion with entrepreneurs who have decided to take an alternative path to scaling their business. Learn from founders who have built and grown their business outside of the traditional venture playbook. We hope the conversation is far ranging… drawing from experiences across a variety of industry segments and company maturities.

Second Rodeo is a new take on an accelerator that helps early-stage founders scale their business in advance of taking on significant outside capital.

Our economy is not well designed for the work of care.
Social cooperatives are a kind of business designed to put workers and recipients of care at the center. The model emerged in Italy and has been spreading around the world—including to the United States. This discussion will explore how the social co-op model is already at work in Boulder and its prospects for taking hold more widely around the country.

Dive into the core techniques behind building and evaluating AI agents. This workshop will cover how to design effective evaluation frameworks, test agent behavior, and iterate quickly with confidence. You’ll walk away with practical tools to improve reliability, performance, and usefulness—whether you’re just starting or scaling production systems.

Presenters will be Jeremy Silva, Sarah Niemeyer, and Morgan Cox

The hiring process is often seen as a complex and tedious endeavor, weighed down by outdated systems and rigid workflows that frustrate both recruiters and hiring managers. In this engaging session, we’ll explore how innovative tools, designed to be both fun and functional, can revolutionize the way organizations approach hiring.We’ll delve into common recruitment challenges—such as aligning stakeholders, capturing job requirements, and navigating candidate bottlenecks—and demonstrate how a fresh, intuitive approach can foster collaboration, save time, and improve hiring outcomes. Using real-world examples and data-driven insights, this talk will highlight the transformative power of technology that prioritizes user engagement and simplicity.Whether you're a recruiter, a hiring manager, or a tech leader, this session will leave you inspired to rethink your hiring process and excited about the tools that can help you build better teams.

Brands of all kinds struggle to build trust and demonstrate authority to their customers, but in today’s crowded digital era, this is more important than ever. Effective communication about your products, services, or organization is what sets you apart from your competitors.

The human brain is drawn to CLARITY and away from confusion. Most organizations are confusing their customers, and they don’t even know it, causing them to lose sales, and donations, or be passed up by their competition. In this session, Ian will teach you how to tell your story using the StoryBrand framework, giving you the tools to clarify your message and get your customers, donors, event attendees, or audience to respond.
You will walk away with a plan to effectively communicate about your organization and be able to start applying what you have learned that day.

Forget the myths and hype cycles of “lovemarks”, “1,000 True Fans”, and “Growth Hacking”. Shoppers, brands, and ads all follow regular, empirical, predictable patterns (aka scientific laws). Sadly, most business owners and marketers don’t know these laws — much less how to use them — and end up wasting massive amounts of time & money on fruitless things. In this workshop, you’ll learn the most important of these Brand Laws for startups, and we’ll go through ways to apply them to your business so that you can grow efficiently & effectively. Session Learning ObjectivesLearn the 3 most important Laws of Brand Growth for startups (it’s unlikely you’ve ever heard them).Learn practical, useful ways to apply Brand Laws to your own business.Learn the limits of how Brand Laws impact you — which is where Brand Levers come into play.A little about EthanCross a scientist with an improv comic, and make him do marketing for 20 years for some of the world’s great brands, and you end up with something like Ethan Decker. Through his company Applied Brand Science, Ethan teaches business leaders the “new science” of how people really shop, how ads really work, and how brands really grow. He makes complex ideas simple, useful, and sticky. Ethan was voted “Best session at SXSW” in 2023, has 12,000 followers on LinkedIn, and his TEDx talk is among the top 1% most-viewed TEDx talks of all time. He’s also a nice guy & easy to work with.

Predicting the downfall of social media has been a popular topic over the last few decades. Foreseeing that demise is a favored pastime of many prognosticators— and yes, the signs are there. The question is: What are you going to do to thrive in the current, post-platform exodus of audiences?

It’s time for companies, big and small, to reframe their approach to social media. During our session, we'll dig into why traditional tactics are failing, how platforms have changed, and why going viral is not a strategy. How a shift in focus from audiences to advocates, customers to communities, broadcasting to belonging can unlock a more impactful, more sustainable strategy to connect with audiences.

AND we’ll address the core issue that got lost along the way: Social platforms were never built for brands—they were built for people. We’ll address how we get back to the opportunities we lost in the rabid-pursuit of likes and followers instead of advocacy and belonging.

Change is coming… get ahead of it.

The future lies in connecting, not in chasing.

Finding and crafting common space where mutual benefits are valued, for brands and their advocates.

It’s about returning to the roots of community: authenticity, trust, and shared purpose.

Join us to learn how to reframe your approach—we’ll share real-world insights, examples, and steps to help you move from broadcasting to bonding.

Colorado is a leading hub for health innovation. In 2024 alone, life sciences companies in the state raised $2.15B. And according to new research from CBRE, Denver-Boulder now ranks among the top 20 life sciences R&D clusters worldwide, with Boulder at the epicenter.

With more than 30% of the state’s biotech, medtech, and digital health assets concentrated in Boulder and along the U.S. 36 Corridor, the region includes powerhouse companies and promising startups.

Colorado BioScience Association (CBSA) leads the health and growth of life sciences in Colorado. CBSA President & CEO Elyse Blazevich, who is also a medtech founder, brings some of Boulder’s leading life sciences founders together for a panel discussion offering stories from the frontline on what it takes to build, scale, and succeed in Boulder.

Location for Innovation: What makes Boulder and Colorado the right place for health innovation.
Raising Capital: How founders secured their first rounds, and what uncertainty with federal and state funding sources means for early-stage companies.
Founder Stories: Honest stories about challenges, wins, and what it takes to move science from the lab to the patient.

Whether you’re thinking about spinning out your research for CU Boulder, preparing your first round, or curious about growing a life sciences business in Colorado, this session offers valuable takeaways and new connections.

Innovation Unleashed: The Power of Customer Discovery highlights the vital role customer discovery plays in truly understanding and shaping a successful business. Through insightful panel discussions, attendees will explore how customer discovery is essential for validating market fit, refining strategies, and driving sustainable growth. Panelists will share firsthand experiences of how customer discovery helped them refine their business plans, pivot effectively, and build stronger, more customer-centric ventures. This event underscores why deeply understanding customer needs is not just beneficial, but fundamental, to startup success.Drawing on the expertise of NSF I-Corps Hub West founders and instructors, we will explore the intricacies of identifying target customers and key decision-makers as innovative ideas progress toward commercialization.It's okay to pivot (REALLY IT IS)! Through real-life examples and experiences, the panelists will provide insights into the process of pivoting in startups, including the factors that necessitate a pivot, the strategic considerations involved, and the potential outcomes.

Do you feel ill-equipped to be selling, yet here you are? Are you struggling to articulate your value in a way that resonates with investors, customers, and partners? Are you struggling to stand out in a crowded digital landscape? In this high-impact session, you'll learn how to harness the power of strategic storytelling to drive measurable business growth across multiple channels—even if you consider yourself a "technical person" who doesn't naturally gravitate toward sales.

Perfect for technical founders, engineering leaders, and product-focused professionals who struggle to communicate their value effectively, as well as marketers bridging the gap with sales, and sales leaders short on time. Especially valuable if you're preparing for fundraising, sales meetings, or product launches and your expertise isn't generating the traction you deserve.

Through a combination of proven frameworks, real-world case studies, and interactive exercises, you'll discover:
• How to craft a compelling elevator pitch that translates complex solutions into clear value propositions in 30 seconds or less
• Techniques to transform technical features into captivating product demonstrations that highlight customer benefits
• Narrative structures that address investor concerns while showcasing your vision and market opportunity
• Content frameworks specifically designed to trigger buying decisions and build trust without feeling "salesy" or inauthentic
• Cross-platform storytelling strategies that maintain cohesion while optimizing for different audience behaviors

Unlike theoretical communication sessions, this workshop delivers actionable techniques developed and tested in competitive startup environments. You'll leave with customized narrative tools for fundraising conversations, sales presentations, and marketing materials that you can immediately implement.

By the end of this session, you'll understand how today's most successful entrepreneurs use strategic storytelling to secure funding, close sales, and build customer loyalty. More importantly, you'll have the tools to craft your own revenue-generating narratives that resonate with investors, partners, and customers alike.

Clear communication is a must in business; sometimes that requires a difficult conversation. Many leaders find it difficult to initiate and navigate these discussions effectively, uncertain of the right timing and approach. This often leads to either rushing into them or avoiding them entirely, hindering progress from the current state to the desired outcome. Through an insightful discussion followed by an interactive workshop, we’ll help you see how being “nice” plays into this dynamic and give you practical strategies and tools to confidently handle difficult conversations so they move you towards your goals.

After the interactive workshop you’ll walk away with...

- Knowing how to lean into a difficult conversation to move towards a goal; rather than coming out as the “bad guy” or getting stuck in the same old loop
- With tactics for using difficult conversations to strengthen your relationships and move you towards your goals
- With the opportunity to connect with other business leaders who are facing similar challenges

We'll be addressing challenging conversations, which is one part of our proven process desgined to develop a cohesive team culture where everyone is motivated, excited, and clear on the roadmap of the company. How to overcome the challenges of not having the right team in place, and how to get your team clear and connected to the mission of the company. This will increase revenue, customer acquisition, retention, and everything in between. We'll be addressing principles that can be applied to people hiring your first team member , or their 500th and making sure they are the right fit!

At the intersection of AI and Biotechnology, meet a panel of founders that are making life-saving medicine. Each founder has raised significant venture capital and is developing technology in cancer, immunology, or metabolic disease. Panelists include Joel Dudley (Partner @ Innovation Endeavors VC), Jerome Fox (Founder/CEO @ ThinkBio, CU Boulder), Doug Chapnick (Founder/CEO @ BioLoomics, ex-CU Boulder), John Meyer (Founder/CSO @ Ambrosia Tx), and Joey Azofeifa (Founder/CEO @ Arpeggio Bio, ex-CU Boulder)

Succession planning isn’t just about who will take over for you in the future—it’s about setting yourself and others up for success now. This workshop will help you uncover the more than 30 hidden roles in your business using role charts and role descriptions (not org charts and job descriptions!) to delegate effectively, set expectations, and foster accountability. Small and founder-led businesses will especially benefit from being able to visualize how many roles they are personally filling and how it's creating bottlenecks and preventing their ability to scale. Attendees will use their created role charts to identify opportunities to outsource, prioritize their hiring needs, and start positioning their business up for long-term success.

Attendees will walk away with:
- A role chart template to bring clarity and alignment to the roles within their organization.
- Techniques for assigning and delegating work through role descriptions.
- Strategies for setting expectations and holding people accountable

This panel followed by networking will feature folks from the AI realm - talking about the hurdles involved and best practices in maintaining company culture as you scale up- should be as interactive

Details coming soon! 

Join us for the 2025 NextCycle Colorado Pitch Competition!

Register here: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/2025-nextcycle-colorado-pitch-competition-tickets-1302412182899

This inspiring event will feature a lineup of innovative teams presenting their end-market business concepts as they compete for two prizes.
The pitch competition winner will receive a $5,000 cash prize provided by Resource Recycling Systems (RRS). The people’s choice winner will receive a $500 cash prize from the Circular Economy Development Center (CEDC) and registration to the Summit for Recycling Conference, sponsored by Recycle Colorado.
By attending this free event, you'll gain insight into cutting-edge circular economy solutions, meet passionate entrepreneurs, and connect with key players in Colorado’s sustainability ecosystem. Enjoy light bites, a cash bar, and a chance to network with industry leaders, investors, and sustainability advocates.
NextCycle is designed to promote circular economy-based ventures and foster innovation in sustainable design, reuse, repair, compost, recycling or material recovery solutions for end markets in Colorado. NextCycle Colorado is funded by Colorado Circular Communities (C3) Enterprise.
Don’t miss this opportunity to support groundbreaking ideas and discover new investment opportunities!

2025 NextCycle Colorado Teams

• Blazin’ Joe (Golden, CO) - transforming coffee waste into eco-friendly fire logs and starters.
• Cold Spark (Longmont, CO) - using cryomilling technology to recycle EV batteries and electronic waste.
• Driven Plastics (Pueblo, CO) - incorporating recycled plastic into asphalt to create stronger, more sustainable roads.
• High Plains Biochar (Laporte, CO) - converting agricultural and forestry waste into biochar.
• Maple Ridge Rubber Paving (Saskatoon, SK, CAN) - engineering recycled rubber into sustainable paving and resurfacing solutions.
• Refound Goods (Denver, CO) - hosting an online marketplace for secondhand furniture and home goods more accessible.
• The Source Zero (Fort Collins, CO) - expanding zero-waste shopping with a mobile delivery service and commercial warehouse.
• SURPStone (Grand Junction, CO) - repurposing plastic waste into durable, high-quality pavers and landscaping materials.

Judges:

• Juri Freeman - Executive Director, Circular Action Alliance
• Alice Havill - Founding Partner, Fractal Climate
• Andrew Maxey - CEO of Vartega, Inc. (NextCycle Colorado Alumni)
• Jesse Stedman - Founder and CEO of Trash Panda Disc Golf (NextCycle Colorado Alumni)

Emcee:

• Jay Mays - Founder of Pitch Lab

Thank you to Colorado Circular Communities (C3) Enterprise for sponsoring the NextCycle Colorado Pitch Competition!

Thank you to our partners!
Circular Action Alliance
Circular Economy Development Center (CEDC)
Closed Loop Partners
Fractal Climate
Pitch Lab
Recycle Colorado
Resource Recycling Systems (RRS)
Trash Panda
Vartega