As part of the Startup Colorado initiative, my colleague Mike Weiner and I are spending December 7th in Fort Collins.  Our goal is to meet as many people involved in the entrepreneurial ecosystem and figure out if there are better ways to tie what we are doing in Boulder with Fort Collins.

As part of our trip, we are going to hang out for an hour or so and would like to meet with anyone who wants to come hang. We’ll be at the Advisors-in-Residence which is 320 East Vine Drive, Suite 120 starting at 11am.  If you want to come talk startups, you know where we are.

As Dean Phil Weiser develops Colorado Law and meets the opportunities and challenges ahead for legal education, he is building his team with a number of positions open.  If you are interested, or know great candidates who are, they can reach out to Phil directly (phil.weiser@colorado.edu) and read more below:

An Academic Entrepreneur to Build New Programs  – Director of Special Projects

Every couple / few years, I head back to Ann Arbor, Michigan to spend a few days reconnecting with my alma mater and to check out the startup ecosystem.  My visit usually includes meeting with entrepreneurs, spending time with the different organizations that support entrepreneurs and guest lecturing.

I’ve always thought that Ann Arbor has all of the raw materials to become a hot bed for startup activity.  The University of Michigan is a great anchor tenant university, there are excellent students, professors and researchers and it’s a place where people want to live.  To date, I have been unpleasantly surprised with the general process, outside of some notable wins in the biotech and medical industry.  But that all might be changing.

In 2003, my trip led me to almost give up hope.  There literally was no activity on campus outside of university supported research.  I was told by one administrator that Ann Arbor would focus on biotech, medical and manufacturing and that software “was stupid.”  In meeting with students, especially in the engineering department, I felt there was more apathy toward entrepreneurship than excitement.  That trip left a very bad taste in my mouth and I wasn’t sure if / when I would return. (Outside of returning for football games.  That would be stupid to not).

In early 2009, however, I gave it another try and there were signs of life.  Community leaders (outside of paid U of M employees) began to emerge.  Community events and mentoring, as well as burgeoning campus support was seen.  I wrote a blog post here about my thoughts back then.  Instead of apathy, there was a strong level of frustration, which left me hopeful. Normally, frustrated entrepreneurs find fixes to what bothers them.

Fast forward 2.5 years and the energy and progress has leaped ahead.  I was energized by the grass roots organizations like Tech Arb and Tech Brewery.  The sheer amount of younger folks involved in company creation was exponentially higher than just a short time ago.  Instead of apathy and frustration, there was a real sense of excitement, accomplishment and hope.  Also, the whole attitude of the community seemed to have change.  Whereas Michigan has always looked poorly upon failure (which is a natural part of entrepreneurship), people that I spoke to inside and outside the innovation economy looked at these company builders as rock stars.  That, alone, is a huge component to a successful startup community and one that has been sorely lacking previously.  And instead of infighting among the different entities that try to support entrepreneurs, they were much more coordinated and congenial than they were during my last visit.  My partner, Brad, was equally impressed and wrote up a summary of his thoughts here.

There are plenty of other signs that others are noticing including the recent activity of California-based VCs funding Ann Arbor companies, Sam Zell donating $5 million to the law school for entrepreneurial studies.

There are two people, too, that really shined in my visit.  If you are part of the Ann Arbor tech scene and don’t know them – get to know them.

First up is Wes Huffstutter.  Wes works at the Tech Transfer office.  Normally, I avoid folks like this like the plague.  Not Wes.  He is totally tied into all the activity going on and is a super connector.  But he’s also a mentor.  Perhaps my favorite part of the trip was when one of the Tech Arb teams complained to Wes that he missed his mentoring office hours that day, as he and I spent the day together.  Seeing that type of reaction from a startup really showed me Wes’ range in helping out folks.  That, and he completely set Brad and I up to meet all the right people during our  trip with no work from us, whatsoever.

Second up is Dug Song.  This guy is a monster.  (Good type, think Cookie, not Godzilla).  I met Dug the last time that I was in Ann Arbor and we shared some thoughts about how to jumpstart the ecosystem.  Dug gets a ton of credit for creating and mentoring a lot of the activity locally.  If you want to see how thoughtful he is, read his open letter to Brad and I.  It talks about a lot of his and community’s accomplishments (not in a boastful way).

Oh yeah, and the weekend was fun too, as Michigan crushed Nebraska 45-17 and that didn’t suck either.

Bottom line:  Ann Arbor is getting its act together.  There is still a lot of work to be done, but I’ve never been more optimistic.

If you’d like to see what the student start-up scene is like in Boulder, check out the Third Annual CU New Venture Challenge Championships on the evening of Thursday, March 10^th in the Wolf Law Building on campus. Supported by Silicon Flatirons and several other academic partners, this campus-wide business plan competition encourages students from different disciplines to come together and form a team that includes many different areas of expertise, from law to engineering. Teams are mentored by local business leaders in a similar system to the TechStars model, encouraging a stronger connection between the campus and the community.

Final business plan presentations begin in the Courtroom at 5:30pm with a job fair beforehand at 4pm in the law school café featuring local start-ups such as Next Big Sound, Power Tagging, and more. In addition to the winning teams, the event will feature recognition of several successful CU graduates who have gone on to start their own companies like Sarah Schupp of University Parent and Nathan Seidle of SparkFun. Refreshments and light snacks will be served.

Last year’s winner was strEATchefs, the popular gourmet food trailer inspired by Top Chef winner Hosea Rosenberg, and many past participants who may not have won any official prizes or even decided not to formally compete ended up becoming very actively involved with entrepreneurship in Boulder, such as Everlater going on to participate in TechStars.

This will be a great showcase event highlighting how entrepreneurship at the university is connected with Boulder’s exciting start-up scene. Register here: http://cunvcfinals.eventbrite.com/

Two local entrepreneurs I know just started Techployment, which is a simple idea, but goes after a growing problem in the local tech arena: tech companies finding great tech professionals, and vice versa. Techployment helps solve this problem by vetting the best local tech opportunities and and sending a daily email highlighting them in a succinct way. And while most employment sites/blogs/posts tend to get visited by only those actively looking for a job, Techployment is primarily focusing on those that already have a job, but want to stay up to speed on local opportunities. The grass could be greener at a company across town, and this is an easy way to find out about it.

So if you are looking for a job or just want to know what is out there, go to Techployment and sign up. No username. No password. Just your email and you’re good to go.

And if you are a tech start-up looking for some key hires, using Techployment will get you to some eyeballs that traditionally don’t see/look for exciting new opportunities/greener pastures.

For all of you out there interested in metrics-based marketing (and if marketing is your thing, you should be interested), here is a must attend event.

Sponsored by Trada, Silicon Flatirons, CU Marketing Department and SendGrid, this event promises to share their collective knowledge along with a host of great speakers.

Tickets are limited to 75 people.  This is going to be an intimate event.

The website for the event is here.

From website FormDs.com, this is a somewhat surprising map of Form Ds from the last year by state.  Form Ds are filed when a company raises money, so it’s a great proxy of where companies are getting funded.  (The original map can be found here).

You’ll note that per million people, Colorado is in the top bracket for financings.  Now, many will argue that a place like California has a much greater population and therefore there is dilution to this study.  However, the population difference is 37 million to 5 million (7x), but there is way more than 7x the amount of venture capital money and presumably amount of startup companies as well in California compared to Colorado.

The conclusion:  Clearly Colorado is importing a lot of VC money has has high quality companies to fund.  As we like to say in Boulder:  ”We Love Our Bubble.”

Boulder has definitely received its fair share of good press relating to its startup ecosystem.  Whether the topic was the 50 Best Places to Start a Business, to Bloomberg / Businessweek declaring Boulder the BEST town for startups, or even the New York Times declaring us a magnet for high-tech, it has been nice to see the efforts of the Boulder community paying off.

Today, Fox Business is spending the day in Boulder interviewing people about what they think is special about this unique 100,000 person town that we live in. 

Here were my thoughts:

Under the “I wish I had written that article” category for patents, Techdirt completely takes to task the notion that letting the USPTO create a ton of extra patents will create more jobs.

I won’t insult the author, Mike Masnick, by trying to summarize it.  It should be read in its entirety here.  In short they’ve called out folks who are trying to rewrite patent history in order to gain personal advantages today. 

Last week, Silicon Valley Bank hosted a roundtable discussion featuring members of the New Democrat Coalition and SVB clients from the venture capital community.  The event allowed Silicon Valley entrepreneurs and innovators to discuss first-hand with legislators focused on championing innovation a variety of ideas for promoting U.S. economic growth.  SVB summed up the event well in a press release. 

As part of the discussion, there was a focus on the Startup Visa effort that has been introduced in both the Senate and House of Representatives (including by Jared Polis in the House).

I think Jared says it best:

"As a former entrepreneur, I know first-hand what it takes to build a company — and I know what opportunities a successful company can create for its workers, its suppliers, and its community.  If an entrepreneur has an idea for a company that will attract investors and hire workers, we should be welcoming and encouraging that entrepreneur to start their company in the U.S.,"

Furthered Mary Dent General Counsel of SVB when speaking about the impetus of the event:

"There is a great deal of evidence showing the profoundly positive effect that venture-backed companies have on our economy — creating jobs, creating entire new industries, and promoting U.S. competitiveness around the world," said Mary Dent, SVB’s general counsel. "Congress hears a lot from companies that have already made it.  We want to make sure they also hear from the growing companies that will shape our economy in the future.

Kudos to SVB for organizing such a worthwhile event and the New Dems for supporting their efforts.  Among all the issues that are important to our continued leadership role in technology and entrepreneurship, the value of initiatives like Startup Visa can not be overstated.