Denver Startup Week

Denver’s Startup Week is a fantastic annual event showcasing how many vibrant small businesses exist in the Front Range of Colorado. Startup Week started on Monday, September 16th and ended on Friday, September 20th. The Saturday immediately after startup week was an APIHackDay held at SendGrid’s offices in Denver. Below is a quick recap of the events I was lucky enough to attend.

Monday

The kickoff luncheon held at the Seawell Ballroom had a great collection of speakers: Bart Lorang (FullContact), Maddy (LoveGrown Foods), and Patrick Quinian (Convercent). Each spoke about characteristics necessary in an entrepreneur: courage, fearless, and persistence. The big name speaker was NY based Seth Godin. The evening was a tech cocktail kickoff event with various companies presenting their products with a “nerd party” held at Denver’s Beauty Bar.

Tuesday

Tuesday had a morning coffee + networking session where many non-technical entrepreneurs came to learn and make connections. In the afternoon, a quick talk on responsive design and cyber security by a panel of experts on the subject. The key takeaway from the security panel was “don’t be a low hanging fruit target”.

Wednesday

The highlight of the entire week is the Denver Startup Crawl. I had the chance to visit five(5) offices: PivotalLabs, AlchemyAPI, PaySimple, Ibotta, and finally Craftsy. All of these startups are up and coming in Denver and well known and respected. After the crawl, my first ever IgniteDenver: a collection of speakers that speak on any topic with the constraints of 20 slides in 5 minutes.

Thursday

Suds & Startups was a networking event held in RiNo (River North) and a talk on sales at StackExchange’s office.

Friday

Closing day was held entirely at Galvenize Denver. David Cohen and Brad Feld from TechStars were speakers. Immediately after the closing keynotes, there was a party outside of Galvenize in their parking lot.

Saturday

API Hack Day was focused on developing an application to help with Colorado flood relief. I worked on a team that was supporting SparkRelief to help support communication during disasters.