Boulder Colorado Tech Startups Spotlight

OK–as a recent Boulder transplant, now here 3 months by way of Seattle, Washington, it has come to my attention that there are not just a couple of start ups scattered around, here and there, willy-nilly– there are in fact start ups a plenty here in Boulder, Colorado!

When I worked at Microsoft, we were always getting tipped into new up and comers around the Seattle area and I thought in my gray Seattle haze that Seattle was the Tech Mecca, oh, but after living here in Boulder I find I was indeed wrong in that assumption!

I have bumped into many techies in the local coffee houses and as well have discovered other networking opportunities by way of TechCocktail.com and the very well renowned Boulder start up kings TechStars – who with their 10,000 sq foot office (The Bunker) on Pearl street in the heart of Boulder help new technology start ups get funded, get off the ground, and learn from the best mentors in the industry! The impressive list of mentors at TechStars includes team members from Foundry Group a venture capital firm that focuses on investing in early stage information technology companies, which also happens to be located in Boulder. TechStars was founded by David Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis in 2006. In the Tech Stars mentor spotlight they have tech giants such as: Matt Mullenweg Founder, Automattic (WordPress.com, Akismet), Jeff Clavier Founder, SoftTech VC, and Eric Marcoullier Founder, MyBlogLog. TechStars takes only ten companies each summer. If you have an amazing web-based or software idea, applications for the next round open on January 20th. Details here.

A few of my favorite tech start ups and tech companies I know of, or have run into here in Boulder/ Denver area include the following:

Brightkite – Location-based social networking (Folks ya gotta see this!) See where your friends are and what they’re up to, in real time.
Eventvue – The best conferences include great networking. EventVue helps your attendee’s network and find their next business partner, customer, or employee at your conference.
Filtrbox.com – Filtrbox is the media monitoring service of choice for savvy professionals.
foodzie.com – an online marketplace where consumers can buy food directly from small artisan producers.
GNIP (guh – nip)– in fact one block away from me, is this up and coming start up that will have you all banging on their doors – they make data portability suck less.
ignighter.com – Incredible idea! Group dating, safer, less awkward and more fun!
Lijit.com – Lijit allows you to easily create your own search engine. One that searches your blog, bookmarks, photos, blogroll, and more. By offering the Lijit Search Wijit on your blog.
Rally Software – From small pilot projects to distributed, multi-team programs, Rally’s family of Agile lifecycle management solutions give teams the visibility and collaboration needed to formalize and scale agile development practices that deliver high-value software in rapid iterations.
Socialthing.com – Socialthing was acquired by AOL in August, 2008.! Congrats! – Socialthing! Makes it easy to see all the things your friends are doing. It’s a news feed for every site that you use in one place.
SurveyGizmo – SurveyGizmo is a creative platform for your marketing, lead generation and research projects. Create surveys, landing pages, polls, quizzes, contact forms, ticketing queues and mobile marketing campaigns.
Syntryx.com – Often called “a deal flow engine,” Syntryx provides powerful research tools, internet asset valuations and publisher acquisition solutions for every major online market. Syntryx.com is the advanced competitive analysis tool extraordinaire.

“The Western frontier is open, and geeks are populating the range.” A quip from Ben Casnocha in his latest article “Start-Up Town” posted on Sept 10th on the Amercian.com. “Start – Up Town” is an infectiously exorbitant article written for The American with the candor and splendor of amazing author Ben Casnocha . Ben also authored the bestselling business book My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on His Journey Through Silicon Valley, which the New York Times called “precocious, informative, and entertaining. This amazing article highlighted my suspicions that I am not alone here (as far as geeks go) and tackles the fair rundown of the last 15 years of how Boulder managed to accomplish its place as a leading tech start up town.

A few great resources for technology companies in Colorado are as follows:

CSIA Colorados Technology Association

Next Event for CSIA – COLORADO SOFTWARE AND TECHNOLOGY SHOW – DEMOGala 2008, October 2nd The event runs all day long. More than 100 speakers from 100+ companies.

http://csiaonline.com/Events/DEMOgala/tabid/192/Default.aspx

Colorado Start Ups

W3W3 – Colorado’s Voice of the Technology Community

Blog Post Written by: Heather Paulson, President of www.PaulsonManagementGroup.com

About Heather Paulson

Heather Paulson is the President of PaulsonManagementGroup.com which provides Affiliate Management, Paid Search Management, Search Engine Optimization, Social Media Management and affiliate video production and affiliate recruiting services.

Heather was appointed to the Affiliate Summit advisory board in 2006. In 2007 Ms. Paulson was appointed to the advisory board for Affiliate Classroom. In 2007 Ms. Paulson was elected as PPCClassroom.com’s education manager. in 2008 Ms Paulson was nominated as a FAB member of the Performance Marketing Association and is an honorary recipient of the ACC Certified Affiliate Managers Course. in 2008 Heather Paulson was invited to become a member of The Internet Oldtimers Foundation. She has passed the Google professionals certification twice. Heather also blogs at Paulson Management Group Blog. You can follow Heather on Twitter: @Heatherpaulsons.

Website: http://www.PaulsonManagementGroup.com