Boulder Startup Week Event Picker
The Event Picker is your way to help create and vote on events for Boulder Startup Week May 14 - May 18! Browse events that have been submitted and let us know which ones that you are interested in attending to help shape our great community event. Submissions and voting are open until April 18! Here are some tips on creating an awesome event!
If you want to submit a event please do so here!
Endosymbiotic Evolution and the Internet
Submitted by Tom Bassett
Track: Community, Development, Future of Tech, Social Good
Featuring Tom Bassett
Description
Attendees will be exposed to concept and patterns seen in our biological evolution applied to our current process in evolution, namely that of the internet, and how this understanding can help us move forward in evolving the next generation of social tools. A new type of dynamic of community/social interaction will also be proposed.
The Power of Big Data for Cannabis Companies
Submitted by Natasha Irizarry
Track: Marijuana, Marketing
Featuring Natasha Irizarry, DJ Shott
Description
We will discuss the the lack of data on the cannabis industry and what that means for brands and consumers in the cannabis space. We will also go into detail on methods that can be used to obtain that data and what you can do with it.
Best Practices For Managing Yourself as a Solopreneur
Submitted by Tony Bacigalupo
Track: Community, Coworking, New to Boulder
Featuring Tony Bacigalupo, Amy Segreti
Description
When you work for yourself, you don't have any traditional support systems to help you keep track of everything you need to get done. Join us for a conversation where we'll all get together to discuss our best tips and tricks for managing ourselves, and brainstorm some community-based solutions to common challenges!
Agony & Ecstasy: Growing Customer-Funded Companies from $2M to $10M
Submitted by Jason Eckenroth
Track: Startup Stories
Featuring Bill Flagg, Jason Eckenroth, Christian Vanek, Dan Konigsberg
Description
Three local entrepreneurs that bootstrapped their companies past the $2M ceiling share stories, good and bad, of the pivotal moments of scaling a business. We'll focus on sales scaling, hiring/team/culture scaling, and growth strategy.
Looking for the hottest job in tech? Are you up for a challenge? Check out info sec.
Submitted by Jacqui Dietrich
Track: Development, Future of Tech, Internet of Things
Featuring This panel is organized by SecureSet Academy and features three cybersecurity employers and a recruiter who know how security teams get built.
Description
Wondering if you're ready to dive into cybersecurity? Colorado is #3 in the nation for jobs in cybersecurity. Postings are up 178% since 2004. Find out what the careers look like-- engineer, analyst or developer, in startups or large companies, and in any industry-- we've got you covered. You'll learn what it takes to become a cybersecurity professional.
Cut through the crap: Tips on how to step away from conflict and successfully grow your business during crisis
Submitted by Sandrine Heine
Track: Community, Health, Marketing, Startup Stories
Featuring Sandrine Heine, Speaker and Author
Description
Life happens, and when it does, a successful entrepreneur needs a clear vision on how to cut through the crap, remain centered and know how to respond versus react during high-stress personal and work-related situations. Communications expert and author, Sandrine Heine will guide attendees with straightforward, no bullshit advice on how to keep the baggage from home out of the office. She has led major corporate teams and knows how to help clients create the right vision and clear away the inner clutter. Heine's approach will help attendees make a positive impact on their business.
Why isn’t there a coworking community for me?
Submitted by Tony Bacigalupo
Track: Community, Coworking, New to Boulder
Featuring Tony Bacigalupo, Amy Segreti, Chris Shiflett, Ellie Swensson
Description
Boulder is home to a huge population of freelancers, contractors, startups, and small business owners. Some of us work in coworking spaces, while some of us work in cafes or from home. For those of us in the latter group, let's talk about what we would need to see in a great coworking community to make it worth our while!
P0wned: Info Security in Your Startup
Submitted by Jacqui Dietrich
Track: Development, Internet of Things
Featuring A panel of regional leaders from the information security community hosted by Alex Kreilein, CTO of SecureSet.
Description
Best practices to reduce exposure of your startup to risks from information security and third-party applications. Learn how to secure your $!%# from some of Colorado's top cybersecurity pros.
Your social presence: why it matters and how to improve it
Submitted by Olivia James
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing, Youth
Featuring SPEAKER: Josh Swihart, Aventeer Co-Founder & CEO ORGANIZER: Olivia James, Aventeer Marketing
Description
Your public social presence can tell employers all they need to know to make a hiring decision. How social can make or break your next great opportunity.
The age of the freelancer
Submitted by Olivia James
Track: Community, Coworking, Development, Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing, Youth
Featuring SPEAKER: Josh Swihart, Aventeer Co-Founder & CEO ORGANIZER: Olivia James, Aventeer Marketing
Description
Learn about the "gig economy" vs contingent workforce, how the rise in freelancing is changing the future of work and the benefits of joining this movement.
Panel: Freelancing in tech
Submitted by Olivia James
Track: Community, Coworking, Development, Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing
Featuring MODERATOR: Josh, Swihart, Aventeer Co-Founder & CEO PANEL: 4-5 Local Tech Freelancers (TBD) ORGANIZER: Olivia James, Aventeer Marketing
Description
Hear from professional freelancers: getting started, tips and tricks to build your business, manage your time, clients and work.
Big data: the science, the story and the impact
Submitted by Olivia James
Track: adTech, Development, Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech
Featuring SPEAKER: Rich Pedersen, Aventeer Co-Founder & CTO ORGANIZER: Olivia James, Aventeer Marketing
Description
Meta data, photo intelligence, social presence, customer data – the list goes on. How building intelligence systems pulls public information together to tell a story and change the way we make decisions.
Should We Slow Down to Start Up? Lessons from Brain Research behind the Mindfulness Buzz
Submitted by Christina Congleton
Track: Health, Social Good
Featuring Christina Congleton, Ed.M., contributor to Fast Company and Harvard Business Review ("Emotional Agility" & "Mindfulness Can Literally Change Your Brain"), former researcher at the Lazar Lab for Meditation Research - MGH/Harvard Medical School
Description
As a hub of both entrepreneurial excellence and spiritual innovation, Boulder is uniquely positioned to explore the meaning of mindfulness in modern times. But mindfulness has become such a buzz word it can seem kind of…annoying. We’ll look at the history and solid science behind the hype, and discuss what it really means for those in a start-up environment.
Half Baked dot com: Entrepreneurial Improv Theatre!
Submitted by Tony Bacigalupo
Track: Adventure, Community, New to Boulder
Featuring Tony Bacigalupo Amy Segreti + a fabulous panel of guest judges!
Description
Turn two random words into a company name, form a team, and pitch a fictional startup to a hodgepodge panel of people pretending to be venture capitalists! What could go wrong? In the longstanding tradition of BarCamps from around the world, Half Baked dot com is everything that's wrong (and oh so right) about the startup world all rolled into one highly participatory, chaotic, and consistently hilarious experience. Guaranteed fun for all!
Beyond the Label: Food and Consumer Product Law, Marketing, Accounting and Finance 101
Submitted by Liz Iracki
Track: Early Stage Startups, Food, Investor, Legal
Featuring John Rose - AVL Growth Partners Justin Dodge - EKS&H Chuck Cotter - Holland & Hart Ben Fenton - Boulder Food Group Kay Allison - Boulder Farm Team
Description
Building a successful food company requires more than a clever combination of ingredients and packaging. Join this panel of experts for a discussion around the complexities of building and effectively scaling a consumer product business. Topics discussed will include legal formation, brand protection, market research and packaging, tax strategies, capital strategy, and financial operations.
LogRhythm’s Success from Startup to Global Company
Submitted by Tyler Sparks
Track: Startup Stories
Featuring Chris Petersen, CTO and Founder of LogRhythm
Description
LogRhythm, a leader in security intelligence and analytics, empowers organizations around the globe to rapidly detect, respond to and neutralize damaging cyber threats. Learn the accomplishments and challenges of how Chris Petersen built LogRhythm from a startup to a global entity.
The TRUE cost of the “Pivot”
Submitted by Liz Iracki
Track: Early Stage Startups, Fail, Future of Tech, Investor, Startup Stories
Featuring Sam Francis, AVL Growth Partners Marie Bahl, Custom Shop Strategies Matt Talbot, Go Spotcheck *one other CEO, tbd
Description
You’ve got a great idea. Technology that will revolutionize. You’ve got investors to back you, assembled at team and kicked off development. The sky’s the limit. You’re off! It’s 18 months later. You’ve been distracted by “shiny objects”. Customers rather than product management are leading your development cycles. The market drivers aren’t what you thought they were. The buyers and price points are wrong. Your core technology isn’t built to support the entirety of the business or designed for scale. Investors are concerned. It’s time for … THE PIVOT. What does this mean? For your business? For investors? What happens now? What does it really cost to “pivot”? In terms of cash, revenue, time-to-market, resources. Why the pivot more closely resembles poor planning than the unduly lauded ability to nimbly respond to changing markets. Our panel will include the perspectives of early stage CEOs, CMOs and investors to help you understand the pitfalls associated with not fully and carefully considering key aspects of your business model and plan from the onset. You will learn the basic requirements of early-stage, high-growth companies and how to best support your nascent organization at each stage of growth.
Why You Should Give Open Book Management A Try
Submitted by Molly Wojcik
Track: Early Stage Startups, Startup Stories
Featuring Jerome Breche, Co-Founder & CEO, SnapEngage Chris Vieville, Sales Manager, SnapEngage
Description
SnapEngage attributes a large part of its profitable growth to their open book management practices. Transparency of company financials gives employees a stronger sense of ownership and aligns teams to work towards common goals and make better-informed business decisions.
Stress Management – Making Work & Home Healthier & More Productive
Submitted by Lisa Shanken
Track: Energy, Food, Health
Featuring Lisa Shanken - Certified Health Coach, Personal Trainer, Corporate Wellness Specialist, Culinary Instructor Torey Ivanic - Certified Homeopathy Practitioner, Certified Physician's Assistant
Description
Learn how to help employees manage stress, which leads to better health, increased moral and motivation, less absenteeism, and healthier habits. Helping employees get healthier also saves a company money by decreasing insurance premium costs and increasing employee productivity.
ReactJS Roundtable – Rapt Media
Submitted by Drew Dillman
Track: Future of Tech
Featuring Jonathan Woodard and the Rapt Media Engineering Team
Description
Attendees will take away our lessons learned in refactoring our application to a ReactJS + JSON API architecture from a monolithic Rails application with heavy controllers and views. Discussion topics will include Redux, component strategy, and testing. It'll be a moderated open dialogue among attendees rather than a directed "talk".
Security Awareness Tactics in the Workplace
Submitted by Tyler Sparks
Track: Development, Future of Tech
Featuring Greg Foss, Head of LogRhythm's Security Operations
Description
The audience will learn how to effectively develop and launch security awareness campaigns to educate their staff and improve the organization's security as a whole. The tactics shown in this talk will highlight how businesses can easily and effectively implement and support security techniques.
Homebrew Happy Hour @ Amplio Digital
Submitted by Alex Herndon
Track: Community, Coworking, Marketing, New to Boulder
Featuring Alex Herndon, Kevin Weiss
Description
Networking in Boulder, see office space available to rent by the desk, drink homebrew made by the Amplio Digital team.
Under the hood and behind the meter in Tesla town.
Submitted by Kristoffer Torvik
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Energy, Internet of Things, New to Boulder, Startup Stories
Featuring Organizer: Kris Torvik Tentative speaker list: Founder of Colorado Cleantech Startup of the year 2015, Basic 3C. City of Boulder - Muni, Community, EV charging generalist Electrom Instruments - EV Drive Unit expert Tesla Motors and/or General Motors R&D - whoever I can get to come out to share thoughts Navigant Research, RMI or GTM: Analyst - Briefing
Description
Hear stories from companies venturing into electrification of transportation. Join the conversation, and build critical mass in Tesla Town, Boulder.
Food Industry Mixer
Submitted by Ashley Colpaart
Track: Community, Food
Featuring Sponsored by: The Foid Corridor, Faegre Baker Daniels, Salad Ground Kitchen and more!
Description
A social mixer bringing together the best and brightest in food innovation and FoodTech
IOT Design: Everything you’ve wanted to know about design, certification, and the manufacturing of physical products
Submitted by Callie Wentling
Track: Design, Development, Internet of Things
Featuring Dan Bodenstein, Boulder Engineering Studio; Edmond Johnson and Seth Schell, Premier Manufacturing; Vincent Greb, NTS; and more from Operations experts and our own local Startup Rockstars!
Description
IOT is all about the use and exchange of information based on physical sensors embedded in the world around us, informing us on our environment or automatically reacting to adjust it. If you're interested in developing your own IOT device, join us for a Q&A with those who concept, design, test, manufacture, and execute these ideas and get a glimpse into what it takes to create your own physical product. The content is up to you -- don't be scared to bring your most basic or focused questions to this panel of experts!
Get Shit Done and Still Go to Yoga: Holistic Productivity for Entrepreneurs
Submitted by Amy Segreti
Track: Community, Coworking, Early Stage Startups, Health
Featuring Amy Segreti
Description
As an entrepreneur or freelancer, you know how important it is to follow through with high-powered motivation and drive—but, you still want to be able to sustain the holistic, nurturing aspects of your life. In this workshop, I’ll show you how to craft your day from the inside out so you can have time for both. This workshop is for you if: You already work for yourself (or want to) but find it hard to stick to a schedule; You struggle with finding the time for your loved ones, pleasure, play; You want to get shit done and feel productive—but you want to do it all while maintaining time for the things that really matter. Join me for an electric workshop where you will receive guidelines, blueprints and tangible worksheets to help you design a schedule that really works for you—the complete, authentic you who will love how you live, every day.
First Investor: The importance of recognizing the investment your family will make in your entrepreneurial venture
Submitted by Kathy Yates
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Health, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring Kathy Yates, speaker, and a panel of three entrepreneurs and spouses/partners to entrepreneurs will openly discuss the benefits and challenges of an entrepreneurial life.
Description
Presented by people who have lived it, the attendee will be exposed to the benefits and challenges of the entrepreneurial life on relationships and families. Attendees will hear what works and what doesn't work in negotiating the demands of family life while getting a business off the ground.
Ello: Building an online creative community – why values matter
Submitted by Mark Gelband
Track: Community, Future of Tech, Social Good
Featuring Mark Gelband (moderator/organizer) - A panel of well-known local creators and Ello users will discuss how community gets built online and offline, the promise of the Internet gone awry, ads & human data farming, how online community represents real-life community
Description
An attendee will learn the benefits of building creative communities, how selling private data and ads, degrades online community, spoils positive behaviors and erodes the likelihood of online community extending to community practice in the real world. Attendees will benefit from a robust discussion successful creative practitioners and how their practices online have helped their careers, personal growth and communities offline.
Reinventing yourself weekly to survive!
Submitted by Dana Leventhal
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Fail, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring Tom Kalinski, Jay Kalinski, DB Wilson, Duane Duggan
Description
If you don’t know how to adapt, you’ll never survive! We’ll discuss eye-opening strategies, actionable advice, and transformative lessons that will keep your start up in business.
Going Open Source by Default
Submitted by Jay Zeschin
Track: Community, Coworking, Development, Future of Tech, Social Good
Featuring Jay Zeschin - Ello Co-founder & Chief Information Architect
Description
Attendees will learn the challenges, successes and value of building technology as part of a larger open source community. When companies talk transparency, does that transparency stop at the door, the books or the tech?
Legal Lessons Learned from High Profile Tech Companies
Submitted by Tricia Meyer
Track: Legal
Featuring Tricia Meyer, others TBD
Description
As we have seen from many high profile technology companies, sometimes key legal issues are overlooked in the early stages. Facebook, Snapchat and Uber are a few of the companies we will highlight to help you learn from mistakes made and prevent you from going down that same path. Tricia Meyer of Meyer Law and other industry leaders will guide you through pitfalls that many high profile technology companies have encountered and explain how to avoid them, the importance of contracts, classifying your workers properly, protecting intellectual property as well as dealing with privacy concerns.
How well do you know your users? Growing an agile, lean company with great UX research.
Submitted by Jo White
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring Jo White, PhD. Lead UX Researcher, Willis Towers Watson.
Description
Keeping the user at the heart of your focus ensures you're understanding real problems in context rather than building solutions and hoping they stick. In a fast moving entrepreneurial or intrapreneurial environment it can be challenging to keep research a top priority. In this session Jo will share how research can inform product design and create empathy for user problems in a way that increases your strategic resilience in the market, and resonates with your intended user base.
Crowd Sourced Innovation: Monetizing intellectual property in the sharing economy
Submitted by Jim Sears
Track: Legal
Featuring - Molly Kocialski, USPTO, Director Rocky Mountain region, previously senior patent council for Oracle America. - Wayne Stacy, Cooley Law, Competitor vs. competitor litigation. - Jason Haislmaier, Bryan Cave, Open source software licensing. - Yoriko Morita, Patents Integrated, Patent licensing professional - Tom Mckinnon, Agribotix, Cloud processing of agricultural drone data. Panel moderator: - Roger Glovsky, Glovsky Law, entrepreneurial organizer Floor moderators: - Jim Sears, Community-IP: Panel organizer - Dave Fish, Dakota Ridge Design Solutions, Engineer
Description
Attendees will benefit from participating in a broad stakeholder discussion on the evolving role of IP in the sharing economy. An expert panel of lawyers, investors, start-up companies and innovators will lead a fast paced discussion including interaction with the audience using a traveling microphone.
Don’t Forget the Upper Funnel: Digital Marketing ‘Above’ Acquisition & Conversion
Submitted by Jeff Rozic
Track: Marketing
Featuring Jeff Rozic, digital brand strategist at Google/YouTube, moderates a panel of digital marketers from Boulder-area brands.
Description
Listen to a diverse panel of digital marketers talk about successes and trends in building a digital brand, developing content strategy for video and beyond, and mastering the upper funnel of marketing that brings customers from Awareness to Consideration and closer to Action and Active User.
Remaking Your Inner Maker
Submitted by Meredith Olsen
Track: Fail, Marketing
Featuring Meredith Olsen
Description
We are all Makers. This session will get you moving along the path of creativity inspired by key insights and a hands-on activity.
Why Your Software Project is Failing
Submitted by John Basso
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Fail, Future of Tech, Startup Partnerships
Featuring John Basso, Amadeus Consulting
Description
Did you know that only 29% of software projects were successful in 2015? This discussion will answer why most software projects fail and how simple it can be to avoid failure; attendees will leave with an effective 5-step process to ensure software project success and increased business value.
Watson for Startups
Submitted by Madeline Allen
Track: Design, Development, Future of Tech, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring Madeline Allen, IBM Consultant Zach Walchuk, IBM Watson Evangelist
Description
Learn how you can use Watson to support your Startup business objectives AND get started using it yourself and ask questions during the event!
Seeing the future – AI and computer vision
Submitted by Peter Simmons
Track: Future of Tech, Internet of Things
Featuring Peter Simmons SelfAwareApps
Description
How computer vision and artificial intelligence are enabling Android to see and understand the world around us
Handle Stress like a champion – deepening your abilities to handle stress without losing your health and happiness.
Submitted by Alex Gil
Track: Community, Coworking, Development, Early Stage Startups, Energy, Food, Health, University
Featuring Myself. I am the founder and owner of a local Exercise, Nutrition and Lifestyle coaching business - Vitalé Studio www.vitalestudio.com
Description
Daily Strategies that will deepen his/her ability to handle stress. Learn breathing techniques, nutrition, exercises and mindset that decreases the physiological loads of stress that can makes us sick, tired and disengaged and less productive.
How does product, design and engineering work effectively on an agile team?
Submitted by Tessa Reuber
Track: Design, Development
Featuring Pivotal Labs: Jenn Dearth, Nick Wade, Ethan Andrews
Description
A designer, developer, and product manager walk into a bar.... jk. This panel discussion aims to offer practical advice for multi-disciplinary agile software teams. We'll discuss our process, the benefits of having a Balanced Team, and lessons we've learned from our time collaborating at Pivotal Labs.
Designing Innovation on Purpose
Submitted by Ben Beierwaltes
Track: Design
Featuring Brian Baker of First User Group
Description
Brian Baker will explain the customer first methods used to create some of the most loved products of our time. Move beyond the whiteboard and learn how one of the most awarded designers gives your user exactly what they want.
Boulder Canyon Motorcycle Cruise
Submitted by Lee Blazek
Track: Adventure
Featuring Myself
Description
There appears to be a lot of motor cycle enthusiasts in the start up community. This would be a social ride to Nederland, have lunch and come back.
Starting up a family vs Starting up a Business – How they can go hand-in-hand (or kill you ; )
Submitted by Verity Noble (Simple Startup)
Track: Community, Coworking, Early Stage Startups, Startup Stories
Featuring Amazing parent's in our community.
Description
Connect with other incredible parents and their kids (yes, kiddos will be welcome too!) and let's discuss redesigning work to suit our lives, how parents can be the best hires for a startup, and how doing both things at the same time can actually be beneficial.
Apps vs. Responsive Websites: The Future of Mobile Development
Submitted by Lauren McDaniel
Track: Design, Development, Future of Tech, Marketing, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Lauren McDaniel, Project Manager - Mobomo Kevin Coyle, Business Analyst - Mobomo
Description
When evaluating the right mobile solution for your startup, you must know what to invest in. With this event, you'll gain a better understanding of the pros/cons of building a mobile application vs. a responsive website; and in turn, the future of mobile development with progressive web applications and other growing technology.
How to Build a Service Driven Engineering Team
Submitted by Meaghan Cuniffe
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Internet of Things, Social Good
Featuring Edward Kim, Co-Founder and CTO of Gusto + Gusto Engineers
Description
How do you transform your engineering culture? It starts by finding the thing that stitches you together. For our team, that bond comes from a culture of helping others. We'd love to share our story and inspire others to build a team that is bonded to create a team that works in harmony toward a common goal.
Beat the 97% Failure Rate in IoT
Submitted by Ben Beierwaltes
Track: Internet of Things
Featuring Brian Baker of First User Group
Description
Brian will talk about the 3 different models of successfully manufacturing hardware and how you can succeed where others have failed. He will also cover how to choose great partners and current scams in the Boulder ecosystem.
Growing Your Startup Team (Balancing Today’s Shoestring Budget & Future High Growth Potential)
Submitted by Nicole Magabo
Track: Early Stage Startups
Featuring Chuck McCoy, Peggy Shell, Katie Johnstone from Creative Alignments
Description
Despite the temptation to only pull new hires from your network, it’s crucial to build a hiring strategy early-on that considers key factors such as: your employer brand, the culture that will motivate your future team, a compensation strategy that allows room for growth over a long period of time, and a hiring process that respects both your and your candidates' time.
Best Practices in Video Marketing
Submitted by Don Poe
Track: Design, Marketing
Featuring Don Poe, VP of Client Services
Description
Everyone wants a viral video - but is that really the best solution for your company? How do you convert a 'Like' into an actual sale? This session will teach you easy strategies to help you make a video that will get your customers to find you and buy from you. We’ll have interactive exercises to help you apply the learning in your own business, so make sure you bring your tablet or smartphone!
Hiring & Recruiting Office Hours with Creative Alignments
Submitted by Nicole Magabo
Track: Office Hours
Featuring Peggy Shell, Chuck McCoy and Katie Johnstone from Creative Alignments
Description
This is an opportunity to engage with local recruiting and hiring experts working with companies at all stages of their growth process in the tech, natural products and professional services industries across Colorado, the U.S. and abroad. We can help you with any of your hiring and recruiting challenges including: (i) how to find the top passive candidates, (ii) how to weed through the noise of active candidate pools to get to the quality folks faster, (iii) retention challenges, (iv) creating a hiring budget, and (v) defining hiring processes to improve employer brand.
Effective Ways to Hire Top Technical Talent
Submitted by Nicole Magabo
Track: Development
Featuring Peggy Shell, Katie Johnstone and Chuck McCoy from Creative Alignments
Description
There is temptation to only consider that “unicorn” hire that can wear many hats and do it all for you. But by using some creative thinking you may be able to fill your technical toolbox with a team of specialists/experts that will get you up and running that much sooner. In this session, we’ll share how tech companies can hire candidates with competitive packages tailored to attract enthusiastic people who are just as excited as you to bring your vision to life.
Angel Investing 101
Submitted by Kirtane Chiron
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor, Social Good, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Peter Adams Dave Harris
Description
This workshop provides a high level introduction to Angel Investing. Topics covered include how to work with Angel Groups to make better decisions and share in due diligence, how to value an early stage company, key term sheets provisions you should know, evaluating an exit strategy, screening for good deals and syndicating with other investors.
Pitch Academy
Submitted by Kirtane Chiron
Track: Early Stage Startups
Featuring Peter Adams Dave Harris
Description
The RVC Pitch Academy is a workshop designed to polish your investor pitch, sharpen your strategy and provide a background on what investors are looking for, connecting with your audience, and negotiating a successful deal.
Building a Boulder-Based Brand : Founders Share Their Lessons
Submitted by Jessica Saba
Track: Community, Food, Health, Social Good
Featuring Jessica Saba, Founder of Good Point Projects, will be moderating a panel or presentations by JJ Rademaekers of Cocomels ; Dr. Allen Lim of Skratch Labs ; and, Willow or Mara King of Ozuké Pickled Things.
Description
The audience will hear how each founder has made decisions to build a company which embodies the defining ethos of the Boulder business community. Unwavering demand for the best ingredients for health, happiness and environmental sustainability, a company culture that supports balanced lifestyles and the decision to only put products on shelves that improve the lives of customers, producers and employees. The audience will hear various perspectives on what makes a company built in Boulder so special.
Flex for Success
Submitted by InspiringApps (contact - Michele Connors)
Track: Community, Coworking, Office Hours
Featuring Dave DuPont, CEO of TeamSnap Sara Fell, CEO of FlexJobs Trish Thomas, CEO of Atomic20 Brad Weber, CEO of InspiringApps
Description
Flexible work policies don’t simply benefit your employees, but can also be a strategic business decision that supports your company’s success. What policies support work-life balance? What benefits are experienced by the business? What are the challenges? Join us as a panel of Boulder business leaders discuss what it looks like to create a workplace that successfully leverages flexible work polices.
The State of IoT (Internet of Things)
Submitted by Ryan Diebel
Track: Future of Tech, Internet of Things
Featuring Ryan Diebel; Alex Glazer; up to four panelists working on businesses in the Internet of Things (IoT) space. Panelist are to be determined.
Description
Attendees would hear from a panel of experts in the Internet of Things space about their views of the current state of the industry as well as their predictions of the future of IoT.
Bootstrapping: 10 tips for building a great company without VC funding
Submitted by Trent Hein
Track: Early Stage Startups, Startup Stories
Featuring Trent Hein (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, AppliedTrust) and Ned McClain (Co-Founder and Co-CEO, AppliedTrust)
Description
This high-energy talk covers tricks and tips gained from 15+ years of running a bootstrapped company, from founding to acquisition. Bootstrapping is a funding approach without VC involvement -- we'll share how we made it work in our favor.
The Product Development Process behind BB8(?)
Submitted by Adam Tornes
Track: Development, Investor, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson from Sphero, Brad Feld
Description
I'm Director of Colorado Product (www.coloradoproduct.com) and PM at Twitter. We're working with Sphero on an event focused on the product process behind the development and launch of BB8.
JavaScript Widget Development 101
Submitted by Ryan Angilly
Track: Development
Featuring Ryan Angilly
Description
Ramen has built a feature-packed JavaScript widget over the past couple years, but it wasn't easy. There are few good manuals for how to build these things, so in this talk we'll go through how to build one with a focus on all the gotchas
Backwards: From fundraising to bootstrapping.
Submitted by Ryan Angilly
Track: Early Stage Startups, Startup Stories
Featuring We're putting together a panel of fundraisers-turned-bootstrappers to talk about the decision to not go after that next round. If selected, we'll get to hear from companies like Ramen and StatusPage.
Description
With all the hoopla around the "Series A crunch" etc., many companies are going back to bootstrapping. We'd share stories of what caused us to go back to bootstrapping after having started off in the traditional fundraising mode.
Building Successful SaaS Products
Submitted by Ryan Angilly
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring This would be a presentation by Ryan Angilly w/ possibly a Matt Haltom cameo if he's up for it ;)
Description
We're going to talk about "Product Success": how seemingly mundane and oft overlooked things like error pages, 404 pages, status pages, in-app chat, and changelogs are actually a critical piece of creating a great SaaS product.
Raising Capital Without a Bank or VC
Submitted by Marco Vienna
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Investor
Featuring Marco Vienna (Kickfurther), Sean De Clercq (Kickfurther), Aaron Walls (Brewjacket), Anthony Franco (mcSqaures)
Description
All product and hardware companies face the same dilemma: they need to finance inventory long before it starts making revenue and all lack access to financing. mcSquares (a current Boomtown product company) BrewJacket, (a local beer hardware company) and Kickfurther (a FinTech and previous Boomtown company) provide insight to the financial roadmap and the options available.
Jews, Brews, and Startup Gurus
Submitted by Michael Rosenzweig
Track: Community, Social Good
Featuring This would be our 5th year having this event. We generally do not have any speakers, rather host a fun happy hour for people in the community to connect. Flatiron Tribe, which is the young adult programming arm of the Boulder Jewish Community Center would be hosting and organizing this event and we usually get a few local sponsors, including the Boulder Jewish News, a local nonprofit.
Description
This is always a feel-good event, we get together, share a drink and some food, connect about what we've learned so far from the week and look forward to what is to come.
Not just a robot, but an opportunity
Submitted by Chris Lessard
Track: Community, Future of Tech, Startup Partnerships, Youth
Featuring Chris Lessard- Lead teacher at The Acorn School for early childhood development
Description
How technology supports youth in learning and the advantages of partnering with the community to bring new, impactful experiences into the classroom.
Not just a robot,…but an opportunity
Submitted by Chris Lessard
Track: Community, Future of Tech, Youth
Featuring Chris Lessard, Adrian Leverett
Description
How technology supports youth in learning
The New Golf: Biking with Big Shots
Submitted by Rachel Beisel
Track: Adventure
Featuring Rachel Beisel
Description
These days, networking can take on all kinds of creative forms, and one of the most popular around Boulder is biking. Nicknamed "the new golf" for the high-level connections that can be made between people in spandex, biking is a great opportunity to chat with some of thebig shots around town, as long as you can keep up on the hills! This ride will be around 20 or 30 miles and is designed for people who have some previous experience on a road bike. Company founders, management, and executives will be attending, along with venture capitalists and professional cyclists.
PlaySpace
Submitted by Jesse Lawrence
Track: Early Stage Startups
Featuring Jesse Lawrence, Joseph Logan, Steve Juntunan, Mark Healey, Sarah Krolick, and more TBA.
Description
The PlaySpace is essentially a space where C-suite execs can roll up their sleeves and delve into pre-validated problems. A presentation of PlaySpace and an introduction to BoulderBits would kickoff the day. Our team will be a well vetted group that will have structured times through the day that an audience acting as volunteers (15-25 people) will be asked to help the team collect materials/data that they need to develop their presentation. The audience participation sessions would last an hour, take place a maximum of 3 times that day. At the end of the day the PlaySpace team would execute the final stage of the PlaySpace process in front of a larger group (50-150 people) by delivering a presentation that includes the materials collected by the volunteers throughout the day. The event attendees will learn about PlaySpace, BoulderBits and participate in the Startup Studio experience.
Cannabis Industry – Why You Should Target Women
Submitted by Cathryn Olchowy
Track: Marijuana, Marketing
Featuring Cathryn Olchowy, Co-Founder of CannaJane Katherine Gregory, Co-Founder of CannaJane Wanda James, CEO Cannabis Global Initiative, Owner Simply Pure Dispensary and Edibles Other speakers TBD
Description
Everyone knows the cannabis industry is growing rapidly, but do you know that there is a huge underserved market in creating products and services that appeal to women? Attendees will learn why this opportunity exists and how to address it.
Yoga with Rob Loud
Submitted by Rachel Beisel
Track: Adventure
Featuring Rachel Beisel, Rob Loud
Description
Experience a vinyasa yoga class and discussion with Rob Loud, one of Boulder's most famous yogis. It wouldn't be a Boulder-style Startup Week without a little yoga! Join us for a 1 hour vinyasa yoga class at the beautiful Riverside Park with celebrity instructor Rob Loud. Rob is an ERYT 200 certified yoga instructor and teaches full-time in his hometown of Boulder, CO as well as Denver. His passion for yoga and ability to serve as an effective teacher is apparent through prioritizing his personal practice....and his hair color choices. Rob empowers, inspires, and shares his love of yoga through every connection. Rob’s classes are creative, challenging, intelligent, FUN, and bring depth beyond physical asana. Stick around for some Q&A about Boulder's yoga community afterwards! Don't forget your yoga mat, towel and hydrating beverage of choice too!
The only real failure is failing to try.
Submitted by Daniel Zacek
Track: Fail
Featuring TBD
Description
Aimed primarily at those curious about or new to the startup scene, this talk will dispel some myths about the risks and fear that keep people with passion and ideas from becoming entrepreneurs. Destigmatizing "failure" and embracing it as part of the startup journey will be a central focus.
Success is not a direct route
Submitted by Daniel Zacek
Track: Fail
Featuring TBD
Description
When we look at successful startups, it looks like a straight line from idea to exit. But the reality is that most companies have made mistakes and often come perilously close to disaster along the way. Several entrepreneurs will discuss their winding road to success.
Inconvenient Truths of Code Maintainability for Startups
Submitted by Enrico Teotti
Track: Development
Featuring Enrico Teotti
Description
A founder or product owner will only gain visibility of unmaintainable code side effects--low deliverable mixed with bugs and high developers turnover--when it's too late. At that point recruiting talent to work on your startup app will be very hard and pivoting to meet market objectives unlikely. Learn instruments to increase awareness and visibility of unmaintainable code and how to reply to common justifications you hear from tech leads and CTOs.
A Mental Health Guide To Entrepreneurial Success
Submitted by Michael Behmer
Track: Community, Development, Early Stage Startups, Energy, Health, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Michael Behmer Jim Griffey
Description
Participants will learn how to survive the highs and lows of entrepreneurship. Learn strategies and interventions that allow your best thinking to resonate through all areas of your life.
Product Management Primer
Submitted by Jenn Dearth
Track: Design, Development, Marketing
Featuring Jenn Dearth, Pivotal Labs
Description
The PM practice is growing at more than 12% a year, and Glassdoor rated it as one of the top 10 jobs of 2015. Find out what Product managers do, and how they work with UX teams. We'll also share a case study or two about the importance of having a strong Product Manager in your organization.
How to be a Product Manager for a Platform Product
Submitted by Jenn Dearth
Track: Design, Development, Marketing
Featuring Jenn Dearth, Pivotal Labs
Description
Platforms make it easier to solve a problem exists for multiple businesses or products. This session will cover how we take what we know from PM and Lean practices and apply them to platforms.
Build and Maintain Large Ruby applications
Submitted by Enrico Teotti
Track: Development
Featuring Enrico Teotti, Pivotal Labs
Description
This presentation will talk about the challenges of building large Ruby web applications and how to maintain existing ones. I will use an analogy and examples adapted from real applications that I worked on during my 10 years of experience with Ruby outlining: technical limitations of the language, how to use a modular dependency structure to enforce boundaries in complex domains.
Who the F*ck am I?” How to Market Yourself with Your Personal Brand
Submitted by Madison Taskett
Track: Adventure, Marketing
Featuring Madison Taskett
Description
A strong personal brand is what separates the Tim Cooks from the nobodies in today's saturated market. In this talk, we'll discuss the psychology behind why a personal brand is the new resume, and give actionable steps to cultivate your own personal brand, and snag your next job.
Why Your Content Sucks (Hint: You Don’t have a Messaging Problem, You have a Psychology Problem)
Submitted by Madison Taskett
Track: Marketing
Featuring Madison Taskett
Description
If you don't understand the psychology behind why your customers buy, then your content will always be fighting a losing battle. In this talk, we'll discuss how the brain makes decisions when it comes to purchasing a product, and give actionable steps to improve your content and see higher conversions.
Native Development… or Not?
Submitted by Michele Connors
Track: Development
Featuring Panel TBD
Description
Listen to a panel of experts discuss the benefits and drawbacks of developing mobile apps natively vs. using cross-platform tools. Native apps are developed for a single platform (iOS or Android) using the language native to the device. Cross-platform development uses a third-party tool to write code that works across devices. Is one way better than the other? Does it depend on the project? Join us to learn more!
7 Business Lies We Wish Were True
Submitted by Jessica Dewell
Track: Early Stage Startups, Fail, Startup Stories
Featuring Jessica Dewell - speaker
Description
Idealistic and realistic can create inner conflict about what we think needs done versus what we do to create long term business value. We'll dig into seven common areas where we put on business blinders that affect major decisions about every area of business from what technology to use to shared meaning of business mission and values.
I have a great idea for an app…. now what?
Submitted by Devin Edgerton
Track: Design, Development
Featuring Devin Edgerton, Producer at Bolder Interactive and Jon Caroll, Director of Product at Sphero
Description
Bolder Interactive and Sphero has launched multiple applications for Microsoft, Disney, Intel, and more. Learn how to get your project off the ground and the do's and don'ts of building and launching an application.
VR and AR as tools to shorten the creative cycle
Submitted by Devin Edgerton
Track: Design, Development, Future of Tech
Featuring Devin Edgerton, Producer at Bolder Interactive and Jon Caroll, Director of Product at Sphero
Description
Bolder Interactive, Sphero and the local gaming community have an open discussion on the future of immersive environments, augmented and virtual reality.
Qualified Investor Fundraising Strategies
Submitted by keith chatfield
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor
Featuring Ray Burrasca
Description
Understand options and requirements for an effective fund raise from qualified investors
Cocktails in the lab
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Future of Tech
Featuring TBD
Description
Have some drinks and see a hands on demo of virtual and mixed reality.
The Human Brain, Artificial Intelligence and the Singularity
Submitted by Jessica Hogan
Track: Future of Tech
Featuring Jeff Rose, CEO of ThinkTopic
Description
Artificial Intelligence (AI) has seen a lot of hype recently from big dollar startup acquisitions to doomsday predictions. These lead to more questions than answers such as - What is at the core of AI advancements? What’s driving the hype? And what are the true promises and perils of a “super intelligence?” Join ThinkTopic CEO, Jeff Rose (formerly of DeepMind), as he walks through the design of the neocortex, how the mechanism of the human brain translates to AI software, and the reasons why machine learning is taking off today. Finally, get a “hype-free” view of its potential while engaging in some fun thought experiments on future AI utopias and dystopias.
A support structure for IoT backed by Avnet.
Submitted by Brian Tucker
Track: Design, Development, Future of Tech, Internet of Things, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Still being worked on, Avnet is a large company, we have many resources and partners that we believe would be interested in participation.
Description
Best practices for early stage start-ups working on hardware development. Avnet's ability to support the IoT design efforts all the way through to domestic to global manufacturing needs.
CO Ed Tech Meetup Happy Hour
Submitted by Katy Kappler
Track: Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories, University, Youth
Featuring Organizers: Katy Kappler, Graham Forman, Susan Van Gundy, Lauren Almond
Description
Boulder has a thriving ed tech start up community that is generally under-represented by the events at start up week. This happy hour is hosted by the existing CO Ed Tech Meetup team, and connects members of that community to share stories, network & offer hands on product demos. http://www.meetup.com/EducelerateCO/
Machine Learning
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Future of Tech
Featuring TBD
Description
Machine Learning allows computers to solve some very hard problems, but not be specifically programmed with logic in the problem domain. Come learn about machine learning from our technical experts.
Pour Over Stations for just-brewed coffee to go
Submitted by Nicolas Anzellini
Track: Food
Featuring Nicolas Anzellini Susana Lara-Mesa
Description
A good way to explore and learn the different flavor profiles behind different types of coffee.
New to Boulder… Now What?
Submitted by InspiringApps (contact - Michele Connors)
Track: New to Boulder
Featuring A panel of professionals who recently moved to Boulder
Description
New to Boulder? Wondering what to expect if you move here? Come and get the insider scoop from a panel of people who moved to the Boulder area within the past year. These newly-minted locals still remember the challenges they faced, but have enough perspective to share some wisdom. Topics will include things like housing, the social scene, outdoor pursuits, getting connected, etc. A great opportunity to meet other newbies and get your questions answered.
Pitch Battle
Submitted by Matt
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor, Startup Stories
Featuring Organizers: Matt Holmes, Mike Kilcoyne, Ian Golden, Andre Rodriguez Possible Judges (already in contact): Anthony Franco, Seth Levine, Matt Craine, Shaw Lathrop, Jim Franklin, etc.
Description
I organize monthly Pitch Battles with meetup.com/startupdenver (with 1200+ members) and would like to host a pitch battle in Boulder for exclusively Boulder startups. Our format is 4 startups, 5 minute pitches, and 10 minutes for feedback & Q&A.
Grow your Versatility Factor (balance of masculine & feminine strengths) for startup success
Submitted by Patty Beach and Roger Toennis
Track: Future of Tech, Startup Stories
Featuring Patty Beach, CEO LeadershipSmarts and Roger Toennis CEO Mtusker, Denver New Tech Board Members and co-creators of the Versatility Factor Profile
Description
As a startup leader you need a balance of masculine and feminine strengths (high versatility) to lead effectively. Through an interactive group exercise Patty Beach and Roger Toennis help participants explore how Versatility impacts every aspect of startup success from securing funding to scaling the business. Attendees will receive a free Versatility Factor assessment.
Parkour Training for Physical and Mental Mastery
Submitted by Ryan Ford
Track: Adventure, Early Stage Startups, Health, New to Boulder
Featuring Ryan Ford (@ryandemonford) Amos Rendao (@amosrendao)
Description
Come explore a world-class parkour facility (APEX Movement Boulder) and if you dare, learn some of the fundamentals of parkour. Experience the mental and physical benefits of basic, low-impact parkour training as you learn to roll, balance, and vault under the guidance of our renowned coaches. No prior experience is needed, all levels of ability are welcome.
Why Working Remote Doesn’t Have to Mean Working Alone
Submitted by Mat Vogels
Track: Community, Coworking, Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech
Featuring Mat Vogels and 3 other remote workers
Description
Tips, tricks and thoughts from a panel of remote workers on how they work, feel included on a team (even if a thousand miles away), and most importantly - stay productive. Also a discussion on the power of co-working spaces, and how they've not only reinvented the way of remote working, but should be the new standard for working at all.
Co-Founders Boulder Meetup
Submitted by Johan Borge
Track: Community, Investor, New to Boulder, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Johan Borge; Jason Freshly and I local Keynote speaker with 5 companies pitching their startup
Description
Check http://www.meetup.com/CoFounder-Austin/ Are you new to the Co-Founder meetup? Do you have a project in mind you are looking to get off the ground? Are you looking to find a job or join a great startup? Ready to get on stage and pitch? Check out our awesome group that can help you navigate to find your next co-founder, employee, investor, or user! Mix and Mingle with others in the same boat. Enjoy a great night of pitches, networking, food, and beverages!
Analyze Boulder: Startup Week Edition
Submitted by Jennifer Zawacki
Track: Community
Featuring Speakers TBD
Description
Analyze Boulder is a community of data geeks who live, work, and play in Boulder, Colorado. Come check out local presenters giving fast, accessible, high-energy TED-style talks about various data topics, and network with our members.
Open source tools for high tech startups
Submitted by Shirish Bahirat, PhD
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Internet of Things, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring Shirish Bahirat
Description
For new startups, managing funds are always critical, this talk presents utilization of open source platforms to develop high tech and innovative products
Personalized Compensation Transparency
Submitted by Patrick Harrington
Track: Future of Tech, Social Good
Featuring Patrick Harrington, Co-Founder and Chief Data Scientist, Paysa Inc
Description
Paysa leverages AI and Machine Learning to understand what you should be paid, you uniquely. Paysa builds up the labor market from the ground up so we can let users understand how to navigate the labor market with transparency, fluidity and optimality.
Rock your market with your powerful mission
Submitted by Carl Dierschow
Track: Marketing
Featuring Carl Dierschow, Small Fish Business Coaching
Description
When you're trying to connect with your target customers, you have to focus on what makes you different and compelling. For businesses on a mission to change their corner of the world, I'll show you how to create the marketing which will make you stand out from the crowd!
Marketing 101 for Food Startups
Submitted by Juli Dimos
Track: Early Stage Startups, Food
Featuring Juli Dimos - Managing Partner, VOCO Jennifer McGhee - Managing Partner, VOCO Other panelists TBD from the Naturally Boulder community.
Description
Denver and Boulder together are one of the major epicenters for food startups in the nation and 80% of VOCO clients are food companies from early stage startups to large CPG companies. Working closely with our clients, VOCO has amassed a series of tips and tricks to navigating the world of early & late stage food startups.
All the Mistakes Startups Make With Their Patents – From an Investor’s Perspective
Submitted by Russ Krajec
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor, Legal
Featuring Russ Krajec - author of "Investing In Patents: Everything A Startup Investor Needs To Know About Patents"
Description
Most patents are worthless - mostly from badly managing the process and from lack of due diligence on the invention. Learn from an investor what are the key best practices every startup company should follow to protect their IP.
Designing websites in the browser – without code
Submitted by Mat Vogels
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring Mat Vogels
Description
Attendees would learn best practices to designing and launching a website while using modern day web tools - without even knowing code. Experienced web and design professionals will learn the benefits of designing and creating real websites in-browser, instead of starting in apps like Sketch and Photoshop.
What is Feminine Business Culture?
Submitted by Myka McLaughlin
Track: Community, Startup Stories
Featuring Founder of WINC (Women in Community), Myka McLaughlin as panel facilitator. Founder of Emerging Women, Chantal Pierrat. Founder Merge Lane, Sue Heilbronner. Founder EarthvisionZ, Carla Johnson. Founder Way of the Happy Woman, Sarah Avant Stover. Founder StartUp Phenomenon, Carrie Van Hyest. Founder The Women's Network, Lois Shannon.
Description
In this interactive event, the panelists will share their experience as female founders and explore with each other and the audience: Is feminine business culture something you consider or relate to? What is feminine business culture? How are you creating it in your organization? What impact does it have on both men and women?
Beginning to Scaling your Customer Success Strategy in a the SaaS world OR It’s never too early to think about Customer Success
Submitted by Amy Mustoe - Sr. Director of Customer Success at SendGrid
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing
Featuring I would suggest a panel with some Customer Success leaders in similar (to SendGrid) Boulder Companies. I can gather at least 3 that come from different size companies, teams, points of view.
Description
No matter the stage of your start up... idea stage, 1 year, 2 + you should have a strategy around obtaining and keeping your customers. In a typical Saas company when customers pay over time (no long term contracts) Customer Success is vital to growth and profitability. You will not be successful unless our your customers are continuously receiving value from you. Learn from several local teams that have started CS from the ground up.
The Battle of Fast Food Web Design
Submitted by Mat Vogels
Track: Design, Development, Future of Tech
Featuring Mat Vogels and panel of other designers TBD
Description
As the web has evolved, it's become both an opportunity for new websites, design and experiences - So why then do we see so many websites that look exactly the same? Join us for a battle where the ideas of fast food (homogeneous) web design are defended from both sides of the fence.
Not Your Average Non-Profit – How to Apply Startup Principles to Social Good Endeavors
Submitted by Becca Gallery
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Social Good, Youth
Featuring Becca Gallery, Isaac Lutz, Alex Milewski
Description
Join the founders of Block 1750, a local non-profit community center that uses Hip Hop to work with youth and increase diversity in Boulder, CO to learn how to apply startup principles to the non-profit/social good world.
Why Some Startups Suck at Marketing, Then Fail to Grow, and What to Do About It
Submitted by Chris Deardorff
Track: Marketing
Featuring Chris Deardorff
Description
Attendees would first learn some of the biggest pitfalls startups make when it comes to marketing and how to avoid them. Then, attendees will learn how high-impact product marketing principles (specifically around marketing strategy and planning, positioning and messaging, and go-to-market execution) can bring about high growth results in a short amount of time.
Speed Experting
Submitted by Verity Noble
Track: Early Stage Startups, Marketing, Office Hours, Startup Partnerships
Featuring A whole bunch of awesome individuals from bookkeepers and CPAs, to designers and SEO experts. Organized by Verity Noble, FUN Manager at Simple Startup.
Description
Like speed dating but with experts who can answer your burning business questions (and a much lower chance of getting laid ; ) Want a lawyer's advice on your legal structure, need a CPA to run an eye over your financial model, looking for inspiration for redesigning your website, or wondering how 'skiing' can be written off as 'client entertainment'? Pick the brains of a room full of experts for FREE : )
How To Start A Startup
Submitted by Mike Seiler MSEE
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Marketing, Startup Stories
Featuring Mike Seiler, Wayne Radinsky
Description
There's startup theory - then there is what really happens. Mike Seiler, MSEE shares his adventures and startup blues in bootstrapping a startup. Audience participation encouraged.
Money Talk: Why a Strong Brand Matters for Fundraising, Valuation, and Startup Success
Submitted by Nick Herff
Track: adTech, Early Stage Startups, Marketing, Startup Stories
Featuring Matt Jenkins, Executive Vice President of The18 and Amber Hickory, President of Greenhouse Partners
Description
As valuations are reaching sky-high numbers, it is increasingly important to build tangible brand equity in a startup. Attendees will learn from real world examples how a strong brand is advantageous in fundraising, improves future valuation prospects, and supports success in the consumer market.
How to bootstrap your early stage QA efforts, and what to look for when hiring professional testers
Submitted by Brian Borg
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring Myself
Description
We all know software testing is necessary, but how can you do it on the cheap until the money is there to hire a professional? What are the most important tips to keep in mind, and what are the best free tools out there to use? Brian Borg, a QA professional since the late 90's and owner of OnPath Testing, a local software test services company, discusses how to manage your test efforts when you have a limited budget, and when you do have the funds, what to look for when hiring QA professionals.
Growth Hacking with Technology
Submitted by George Schildge
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing
Featuring George Schildge and Brian Stalzer
Description
We will explore the use of technology to generate sales and create a predictable sales model. Creating a sales and marketing lead generation machine with technology. Learn how to setup and use a closed loop system from inbound and outbound marketing.
Online Sales & Services: Do I have to collect tax?
Submitted by Joni Johnson-Powe
Track: Early Stage Startups, Internet of Things, Legal
Featuring Joni Johnson-Powe, JD, CPA - CEO Taxnologi Solutions, LLC Judy Vondaran, JD, CPA - Partner TaxOps
Description
The current tax landscape is nothing short of exceedingly complex. Years ago, it was primarily only global and multi-state companies that dealt with state and local tax filings. However, with the explosion of internet-based businesses and the concept of nexus, main street companies started selling products and services online — crossing state borders and triggering major change in terms of state and local taxation. We'll help understand what this means for your start-up and solutions availble to manage this complex area.
3 Themes That Makes Success, In Business and In Life.
Submitted by Luke Harris-Gallahue
Track: Early Stage Startups, Future of Tech, Marketing, Startup Stories
Featuring Just myself, I would be speaking on this topic for 30 minutes.
Description
We are flooded by tips and tactics but forget the big picture often times. I'm going to discuss 3 themes that define success, first is Being Present, and i'll tell you exactly how to do it with actionable advice not just theoretical recommendations.
The Patent and Trademark Story
Submitted by Jamie Brandess
Track: Early Stage Startups, Legal
Featuring Bing Chou (Moderator and Organizer) Jamie Brandess, Boulder SBDC (Organizer) Joshua Hallock, U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (Speaker/Organizer) Panel of entrepreneurs TBD
Description
From the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, attendees will learn information about different forms of intellectual property (focusing on patents and trademarks), key issues, and resources available. From a panel of entrepreneurs, attendees will learn best practices and lessons learned when navigating issues of intellectual property.
Art Appreciation, Creativity and Innovation
Submitted by Renita Wolf
Track: Art
Featuring Renita Wolf Website www.PoeWolfPartners.com www.linkedin.com/in/RenitaWolf
Description
Art appreciation can improve business results by building the skills needed to increase creativity and innovation. Skills that can be used to solve business challenges in the areas of business complexity and ambiguity, innovation, communication and presentation, and customer and employee satisfaction. Attendees will learn: (1) The difference between creativity and innovation and how they work together to deliver an original and useful solution. (2) The Systematic Inventive Thinking Model and how working within parameters can increase creativity. (3) The importance of art appreciation and how it can improve business results by building the skills needed to increase creativity and innovation. (4) With a focus on increasing their own appreciation for art, attendees will learn what to look for in a work of art.
What to Expect with Hardware Certification
Submitted by Ed Pantzar
Track: Design, Development
Featuring Wes Stanway, Lead Hardware Engineer at eGauge Systems
Description
Learn the trials and tribulations of working with certification bodies to bring electronic products to market. This talk will focus mainly on Safety (UL/ETL) and Emissions (FCC/CE) testing for the US and major international markets.
The Content Ceiling | How to Get Attention in an Overflowing World of Content Marketing
Submitted by Andrea Steffes-Tuttle
Track: Marketing
Featuring Content marketers and brands using creative methods to create more value through content marketing. Some ideas for speakers: Rapt Media representative for interactive video, B2B business using podcasting, B2C business using channels like instagram and YouTube to connect with their audience
Description
Content marketing is no longer a differentiating strategy. Therefore, marketers need to create more value for their audience in order to succeed using this strategy. Learn how to approach your content strategy in a unique way using technology.
Sales Growth Hacking: How to Achieve a 56% Reply Rate on Cold Emails
Submitted by George Schildge
Track: Early Stage Startups, Marketing
Featuring Brian Stalzer and George Schildge
Description
Learn the secrets of email marketing hacks that can help double your response rates and grow your pipeline. Email marketers are constantly looking for ways to improve email open and response rates, testing and trying out every technique under the sun to boost ROI for their clients. [Top of the funnel]
Create Business Value & Drive Business Performance: Working Capital Management
Submitted by Renita Wolf
Track: Early Stage Startups, Office Hours
Featuring Renita Wolf
Description
For a successful start-up, it’s extremely important to manage working capital. Cash flow is proxy in the investor community for the strength of how well a company is run. Working capital has the power to create or destroy value for shareholders. Attendees will learn the fundamentals of working capital management, including the impact to customers, suppliers and partners. Attendees will also learn about processes and supporting technology that can reduce working capital requirements and metrics for measuring and monitoring liquidity trends.
CU Startup Summit
Submitted by Sierra Moller
Track: University
Featuring 2 CU entrepreneur alumni, and a speaker representing CU New Venture Challenge, Catalyze CU, Spark, Idea Forge & Hack CU
Description
There is an explosion of entrepreneurial happenings at CU! Let's highlight a few, and invite our amazing Alumni to get involved. Added bonus: students will get the chance to meet existing alumni in the entrepreneurial community in Boulder.
Women of BSW
Submitted by Yoriko Morita
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Social Good, Startup Partnerships, Startup Stories
Featuring I'll hit up my contacts to get a number of women in startups for a discussion of their experiences.
Description
Come and join other women at BSW and share your experiences (I'm surprised no one has suggested this topic yet). Yes, being in tech can seem like trying to break into an old boys club, even if they're the nicest guys around, and we can still all support each other through the journey.
Things I wish I knew 6 months ago – Key lessons to launch your startup after startup week
Submitted by Paul Heffner
Track: Early Stage Startups, Fail, Marketing, Startup Stories
Featuring Paul Heffner, CEO of Finance Pals, CEO of EasyGlitz
Description
I founded 2 companies last October after Denver Startup Week. One failed and one is successful - learn from my many mistakes and hear my keys to success. Some topics are picking the right startup to launch, marketing, networking, getting your first customers and figuring out when it is time to quit or grow!
Bookkeeping and Cash Flow Forecasting Tips for Bootstrappers
Submitted by Paul Heffner
Track: adTech, Design, Development, Early Stage Startups, Investor, Startup Stories
Featuring Paul Heffner, CEO of Finance Pals
Description
Learn how to avoid common mistakes when trying to get your books to balance and creating a cash flow forecast. When you get it all right it will make taxes and investor discussions much easier. It will also help you understand your business and figure out the best ways to grow without running out of money!
Pitch to Investors
Submitted by Nicole Glaros
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor
Featuring Nicole Glaros
Description
If you're an entrepreneur that plans on seeking funding for your venture, Nicole will walk you through how to create a killer pitch for capital.
Marketing Data Demystified ~ Keys to Predictable and Profitable Growth
Submitted by Shane Stone
Track: adTech, Early Stage Startups, Marketing
Featuring Shane Stone
Description
If you have analytics overload and struggle to get the right information at the right time, then this discussion is for you. No two businesses are the same but some general "business physics" exist. In this discussion we'll get real about what metrics actually matter and how to apply them. You'll come away with a foundation countless businesses have used to predictably scale from $1M to $10M and beyond.
B Corp BBQ
Submitted by Corey Kohn
Track: Community, Social Good
Featuring Corey Kohn (dojo4), Emily Utz (dojo4), Robb Shurr (Walden Hyde), Katie Dunn (Walden Hyde).
Description
Learn why it's ultra cool and advantageous to your business and your community to have your startup certified as a B Corp and how to do it. Connect with other people who are B Corps or thinking about certifying.
From Boulder to the Beyond: How to Scale your Brand Online
Submitted by Andrew Comer
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups, Marketing
Featuring Andrew Comer; Ryan Seaver; Larry Olson; Mike Worley
Description
The success of your company will depend on your ability to build a well-designed, properly-targeted web presence. The vast majority of Americans now shop online regularly, and even more are seeking information about products, services, and the people behind them. This event will feature a panel discussion by creative and marketing experts focusing on how a brand can find and grow its base of loyal fans. Whether you’re building a brand, creating a website, or looking to ensure your advertising dollars are well spent, this panel will provide insights and answer your questions. Oh, and we’ll have beer too!
Can You Automate a Relationship? : Personal Sales in a Digital Age
Submitted by Ryan Seaver
Track: adTech, Community, Early Stage Startups, Marketing
Featuring Andrew Comer, Danny Randa, Mike Worley, Ryan Seaver
Description
Digital technology has improved aspects of our daily lives in everything from driving directions to weather updates, sharing photos with family and friends, and general communication. This technology also directly impacts the automation and resulting efficiencies in our business lives, including most recently the sales process of how companies interact with their customers – through emails, video conferencing, and even text messages. Technology is often built as an immediate aid, but sometimes it can become a distraction that distances us from the human interaction still required for successful and lasting sales relationships with your potential customers. How do you make digital technology more personalized in order to sell? This event will feature a panel discussion by variety of industry experts reviewing the complications of connecting with others through modern technology. Oh, and we'll have beer too!
The Ins and Outs of Audits and Reviews
Submitted by Kat Buxton
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Investor, Legal
Featuring Jason Sibley, RSM Colorado Audit Practice Leader
Description
You received funding, but now your investor has requested an audit or review. We’ll share what to expect during your first audit/review, how to prepare and how an audit can help you uncover strategic opportunities to support your vision.
Hack the Dot with Name.com
Submitted by Simone Johnson
Track: Development
Featuring Simone Johnson, Nadine Struzziero, Jared Ewy
Description
Name.com is partnering with Quick Left to bring Hack the Dot to BSW. Programmers, creatives and entrepreneurs with gather for an evening of code collaboration in which teams will be provided with domain names used to create an innovative application concept.
3 Ways to Help Your Startup Catch Fire
Submitted by Maria Brown
Track: Marketing
Featuring Maria Brown, VP , manger of Boulder office; Scott Signore, CEO, Matter Communications
Description
Here's specific programatic steps for getting press and analysts to pay attention to your startup (and no, a PR firm is not one of them).
Legal pitfalls and lessons learned (war stories)
Submitted by Yoriko Morita
Track: Fail, Investor, Legal, Startup Stories
Featuring Local attorneys and founders (working on specific people)
Description
Learn what NOT to do in dealing with the legal aspects of your business -- the names may be changed to protect the guilty.
Founder/attorney speed dating
Submitted by Yoriko Morita
Track: Early Stage Startups, Legal
Featuring Attorneys interested in meeting startups, startups looking for good attorneys
Description
Attorneys will connect with potential startup businesses needing legal services; startups will meet potential legal service providers that can help them grow.
When QuickBooks is Slowing You Down
Submitted by Kat Buxton
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, University
Featuring Matt Kenney, Technology and Management Consulting Principal
Description
QuickBooks is an excellent solution for early-stage companies, as it is built to be easy to install, flexible and used by non-accountants. However, those benefits at startup often become limitations as businesses grow. In this session, learn why you should consider an enterprise resource planning system and how to select a solution to meet your expanding needs from startup to mid-market and beyond.
Boulder Startup Map Making Sesh
Submitted by Arieann DeFazio
Track: Art, Community, Startup Stories, University
Featuring Arieann DeFazio
Description
Lets all put our collective knowledge of the Boulder Startup ecosystem and make an awesome map! Event will consist of a lot of giant post its, string, and a damn good time making a lasting piece of art for our community. Once the event is over the map will be digitized and made public. Hopefully we will end up with something like this :) http://bit.ly/1RmEKvy
Best Practices in Email
Submitted by Lauren Ribando
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups, Marketing
Featuring I am open to joining another Event panel in need of speakers, my topic would work well on Marketing, Development, Strategy, and Small Startup Tracks
Description
Email is an indispensable tool to remind customers of an online presence and serves as the only way for dot coms to engage with customers when there is no storefront for them to visit, yet it often gets treated as an afterthought with most companies lacking a team dedicated to email marketing and transactions. In this presentation I will share best practices on how to create an effective email campaign whether it be to welcome new customers and make a valuable first impression, notify them of a purchase or other transaction, or keep them engaged with the latest offerings. I will cover all components of producing a an effective email campaign including content strategy to keep customers engaged and avoid unsubscribes, designing for inboxes from desktop to mobile, optimizing across the infinite number of email user interfaces, as well as the many (often unknown) limitations faced on these platforms and effective strategies to overcome them.
Start Up Essentials: Everything You Need To Know About HR That Could Prevent A Lawsuit!
Submitted by Elizabeth Scolnick
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, Fail, Legal, Startup Partnerships
Featuring Kendra Prospero
Description
As a start up organization, you are faced with a multitude of responsibilities that determine your success or failure. One of the most pressing priorities is surrounding Human Resources and the essential policies and practices you must have in place to avoid any legal ramifications. Discover the top 25 illegal questions never to ask an employee. Hear expert and valuable advice surrounding taxes, hiring, firing, employee handbooks, and more. Learn the top 3 HR policies every start up organization needs to have in place now.
Office Chair Race – That’s sooo Boulder
Submitted by Simone Johnson
Track: Adventure
Featuring Simone Johnson Nadine Struzziero
Description
Participate in Quick Left's Office Chair Race! Gather a team of 3 to 5 co-workers and deck out an office chair for the race down Pearl St. With team member's in tow, you'll be given clues to a Boulderite themed scavenger hunt. Final destination includes drinks and good ol' Boulder networking!
Become a Maker Today: An intro to prototyping and digital product creation for business people, managers, and anyone who wants to learn!
Submitted by Nick Fredman
Track: Design, Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring
Description
This would be a rapid-fire overview to idea creation. Within an hour you can learn the basics of Sketch3 and making a clickable prototype using Marvel!
How Technical Marketing Impacts Our Daily Lives
Submitted by Simone Johnson
Track: Marketing
Featuring Simone Johnson Nadine Struzziero
Description
Marketing affects almost every aspect of our daily lives. In 1 day, you are exposed to over 5,000 different types of marketing messages. Listen in on this panel of Marketers, who will discuss how technology changed the landscape of today's marketing.
Speed Consulting
Submitted by Courtney Fanning
Track: Community, Design, Development, Early Stage Startups
Featuring Nick Kishfy + Speakers TBD. The strength of this session will come from a diverse set of industry folks.
Description
Is your idea worth $1 or $1 million? Maybe you've started on an idea already or maybe your secret is hidden within the depths of your hard drive. Now is your chance to get in front of tried and true industry folks and talk out your idea, poke holes in your assumptions, and help you take your idea to the next level. You've got 15 minutes. Ready, set, GO!
Assembling a Startup Dream Team
Submitted by Courtney Fanning
Track: Early Stage Startups
Featuring Nick Kishfy, Duncan Shaw
Description
At some point in the growth of your startup, recruiting will be one of your greatest challenges. Many of us think we’re really good at evaluating people, but the truth is we’re not, and perks like snacks, raises, and title changes only make people happy for a short period of time. Your success rides on your ability to hire the right people from the start so educate yourself about common pitfalls and best practices from seasoned vets who have built companies from the ground up.
Bridging the Gap: Should Designers Code?
Submitted by Courtney Fanning
Track: Design, Development, Tech to the Future
Featuring Chad Totaro, Matt Rossi, panel speakers from other companies TBD
Description
Hear from a panel of designers and front-end developers on what they think the future of product design looks like. What does it mean to be a designer who codes? Is it enough to be educated about code or should product designers be pushed to ship production ready code and know multiple languages? Brace yourself for a battle of the ages.
Avoiding the Bleeding Edge
Submitted by Courtney Fanning
Track: Development, Early Stage Startups, University
Featuring Will Farrell
Description
Sometimes it's hard not to pick the sexiest piece of tech you can find for your startup, but it's probably a bad idea. Learn about evaluating technical decisions and selecting winning, reliable technology for your lean startup.
Fostering Startups
Submitted by Courtney Fanning
Track: Startup Partnerships
Featuring Heimir Sverrisson, Nick Kishfy, Duncan Shaw
Description
If you’re like most startups, you won’t hit the ground running with a robust team of skilled designers or developers. If you’re lucky, you’ve got an MVP and a little funding, but you need a product and users before you can even think about assembling your own team. Enter the Agency. Learn how agencies assist startups by providing expert software development experience to kick-start kick-ass ideas. This talk is about how the methods used can help startups shorten their time to market using an experienced team to lay the groundwork for a successful software product while a permanent team is being formed.
Growth Hacking: How to Become a Technical Marketer
Submitted by Simone Johnson
Track: Marketing
Featuring Simone Johnson Speakers TBD
Description
Are you a marketer who seeks to become more technical so you can scale your business, find new customers and gain viral growth? Listen in on this panel of growth hackers who will discuss the best creative and analytical strategies for becoming a technical marketer.
Data-Driven LeadGen: Hacks & Tools to take you from Start to Sales
Submitted by Rachel Beisel
Track: Marketing
Featuring Rachel Beisel, Christa Ghent
Description
Get introduced to Lead Generation methods and discover how inbound and outbound strategies to build complex systems that will maximize Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) and Sales Qualified Leads (SQL) for your business. This fun, data-driven workshop is a fast-paced mix of lecture, hands-on exercises, and discussion. Your instructors, Rachel Beisel and Christa Ghent, will deliver practical takeaways that startup founders, marketing and sales teams can start using immediately.
Geeks Who Jam
Submitted by Rachel Beisel
Track: Adventure
Featuring Stu Stern, Rachel Beisel
Description
We are a group of hard-core techies who also like to jam. We've been casually gathering every Tuesday night for impromptu jam sessions in the Gorilla Logic office on Pearl Street and recently decided that we wanted to open up the space and the music-making opportunity to all our Boulder (and other nearby) neighbors who wish to join and collaborate on some good music, geek talk, and drinks/food. We've got all the gear: instruments, speakers, recording capabilities, (and other nerdy, super techie and geeky gadgets) to make it a fun time, guaranteed--now all we need is YOU!
Location is Everything: How satellites and mobile technology are changing the world
Submitted by Jordan Winkler
Track: Development, Investor, Tech to the Future
Featuring Organizer - Dr. Jordan Winkler Speakers (lots of options) - PlanetLabs, MapBox, ESRI, CartoDB, DigitalGlobe, Uber, Google, Apple, CU Geography
Description
Location is becoming increasingly important across industries ranging from self driving cars to targeted marketing. Attendees will hear talks from industry leaders on how data from mobile devices and satellites is changing the way we see the world.
The Accidental Technology Salesperson…Why Technology Salespeople Fail
Submitted by Bob Bolak
Track: Marketing
Featuring Bob Bolak
Description
How to shorten your selling cycle to get new commitments faster, take control of the selling process to shift the focus from price to value and effectively and efficiently qualify new opportunities by reducing the number of painfully long “I want to think it over decisions” from prospects .
Fail FAST Fail CHEAP- Taking The Fear Out of Innovation
Submitted by Rick Rothwell
Track: Development, Failure
Featuring Rick Rothwell
Description
Learn how to take the fear out of innovation by learning how to Fail FAST Fail CHEAP. Individual ideas will probably fail- learn systems that will allow you to keep the mission alive- even though an individual idea may fail.
Mental Illness & Suicide Prevention by & for Entrepeneurs
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Health, Youth
Featuring TBD
Description
Mental Illness is an pervasive undercurrent in the startup world, and in America at large; but is not often talked about. Come hear our panelist of mental health and suicide survivors talk openly about the cultural, psychological, and physiological forces at play.
[Open] House of Genius
Submitted by Tim O'Shea
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Investor
Featuring Myself, Jake Wells, and Kristen Sejera would serve as organizers. We'll curate a diverse panel of contributors from across the community to provide feedback to one presenting entrepreneur making an ask in the community. We'll apply the House of Genius collaborative format in an open setting, incorporating the audience as a panel member.
Description
House of Genius reinforces the collaborative genius that we all may share in service to our community innovators, entrepreneurs, dreamers, and doers. An attendee will be a participant in the process, sharing their best ideas on par with those from investors, serial entrepreneurs, mentors, and other talented members of our panel.
Marijuana Startups: Catalyst for the Wellness Movement
Submitted by Mason Levy
Track: Community, Early Stage Startups, Health, Internet of Things, Marijuana, New to Boulder
Featuring Mason Levy
Description
We will discuss the transitions occurring within our healthcare system and how cannabis is positioned to be a catalyst for this change. Healthcare is shifting from a reactionary system that prescribes drugs to fix a set of problems to a preventative approach that seeks to solve the root cause and promote wellness and quality of life.
The Evolution of Cannabis Startups
Submitted by Yilak Tibebu
Track: adTech, Development, Early Stage Startups, Food, Health, Investor, Marijuana, Marketing, Startup Partnerships, Tech to the Future
Featuring Yilak Tibebu
Description
As founder of a cannabis startup, I plan to help attendees learn how the cannabis industry has changed in size & shape over the past couple years. They could walk away from with knowledge that can help them launch their own startup or get hired by one of the big hitters in the space.
Mapping Mindfulness Practice to the StartUp Life
Submitted by Michael Rich
Track: Health
Featuring Michael Rich
Description
An understanding of the challenges the start up life poses for our minds and bodies, and why mindfulness practice directly mitigates those challenges. Instruction & experience practicing mindfulness, and guidance for how to integrate it into your life.
ChatOps: The rise of the bots
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Tech to the Future
Featuring TBD
Description
The rise of Slack has created an entirely new distribution channel for new web applications. Learn about trends in the Slack ecosystem with developers of chat applications.
Mixed Reality: Digital meets Virtual
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Tech to the Future
Featuring Vikas Reddy, Evan Fletcher, Jeff Powers
Description
Learn about Mixed Reality: a future where rich information displays, digital characters, and more are remixed into our physical space.
Digital Photography 2.0
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Tech to the Future
Featuring Jeff Donenfeld, Kevin Owocki
Description
Learn about the latest trends in photography: light field photography, depth-aware cameras, drone photography, wifi-connected cameras, and more.
Cryptocurrency 2025
Submitted by Kevin Owocki
Track: Tech to the Future
Featuring TBD
Description
What will the distributed Internet look like in 2025? How will cryptocurrencies disrupt finance?
Test: How Local Economic Development Can Give You More Time to Crossfit
Submitted by Kia M. Ruiz
Track: Community, Development
Featuring Boulder Economic Council, Boulder County, open to other speakers
Description
Are you using your civic connections to make your startup more efficient? Explore ideas to work with cities and the benefits of their grants to make your life easier with case studies and Boulder connections.
Marketing Cannabis Products
Submitted by Micah Tapman
Track: Marijuana, Marketing
Featuring Meghan Larson (CEO of Adistry), Josh Kappel (attorney), Travis Howard (dispensary owner and attorney)
Description
Learn: Rules and regulations unique to the cannabis industry and how they create business opportunities. Benefit: Opportunities for entrepreneurs to solve hard problems and help cannabis companies market products and services to customers.
How to be a CTO: Leading an engineering team
Submitted by Miles Matthias
Track: Development
Featuring Miles Matthias Organizer Nader from Kapost Jonathan from Rapt Media Ian Douglas from Simple Energy
Description
Being a CTO is not something that your Computer Science degree prepares you for. It's a unique role (especially within a startup) where a deep technical understanding of building software and of the company's vision has to blend with managing a team of people working towards the same vision. Lessons shared from experienced startup CTOs.
Building mobile games
Submitted by Miles Matthias
Track: Development
Featuring Miles Matthias organizer
Description
Lessons learned from building indie mobile games - development frameworks, plot structure & character development, when to advertise, when to get investment, and when to seek a business partner.
Hemp, the Other Cannabis
Submitted by Micah Tapman
Track: Health, Investor, Marijuana
Featuring Sean Murphy (CEO of Hemp Business Journal), Patrick Rea (CEO of CanopyBoulder), Andrew Stoll (investor)
Description
Learn: Information about the hidden $600m industry of hemp, the red-headed step-child of marijuana. Benefit: How to get involved in this booming industry that is good for the Earth, humans, and is incredibly lucrative.
Funding Trends in Cannabis Tech
Submitted by Micah Tapman
Track: Early Stage Startups, Investor, Marijuana
Featuring Micah Tapman (Managing Director of CanopyBoulder), Ryan Hunter (CEO of NES), Aeron Sullivan (CEO of Tradiv)
Description
Learn: What are investors looking to fund in the cannabis sector and what are the terms of those funding deals? Benefit: Insight into crafting appealing investment opportunities for active cannabis investors.
Building Artificial Intelligence
Submitted by Miles Matthias
Track: Development
Featuring Miles Matthias organizer
Description
AI is the future of computing but a very complicated matter. Developers with experience in this field can share lessons learned, the current state of the field, and the future of AI.
Building Virtual Reality (VR)
Submitted by Miles Matthias
Track: Development
Featuring Miles Matthias Organizer Kevin Owocki / Vikas Reddy from Occipital
Description
Virtual reality is a really exciting tech that will rock our future. Developers in this field can share lessons learned, the current state of the field, and the future of VR.
Software Development Challenges in the Cannabis Sector
Submitted by Micah Tapman
Track: Development, Marijuana
Featuring Daniel Cox (developer), Connor Penhale (developer), Kyle Sherman (developer)
Description
Learning: The most pressing challenges facing the cannabis industry and where software developers are struggling to create solutions. Benefit: Ideas for new startups/solutions and connections in the industry.
10,000 steps today, so what?!
Submitted by Nico Valencia
Track: Health
Featuring Fitbit, Google/Apple Health, Headspace, TicTrack, SleepTimer, etc. anyone involved in tech fitness/health tracking, etc.
Description
We spend large sums of money on gear to obsess over health and fitness data points, but what does it all mean? Join us to put all the pieces together into something that can noticeably change your life.
The Future of Boulder and Startups
Submitted by Andrew Hyde
Track: Community
Featuring Andrew Hyde Aaron Brockett
Description
What is the future of the startup scene in Boulder? Join tech leaders, community members and City Council members to check in and see our vision for the great future of Boulder!
Sponsors
If you are interested in sponsoring Boulder Startup Week we would love to hear from you! Email us here »
