Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

THE BEGINNING OF THE NEXT WAVE (2003–2011)

By 2003, the seeds of new companies were starting to be planted in Boulder. Experienced entrepreneurs who had made some money pre-Internet bubble weren’t done with startups, so many of them started, or started talking about, new businesses. New first-time entrepreneurs started emerging. These entrepreneurs searched out many of the experienced entrepreneurs from the 1990s.

The revolution known as Web 2.0 and the resurgence of the commercial Internet didn’t really become visible until 2005, but there were a healthy set of companies being created in Boulder during this time. Although I was still traveling a lot, I’d made a conscious effort to be in Boulder more so I was spending time with Boulder-based companies, such as Rally Software and Return Path. There were plenty of others in which I wasn’t invested, like @Last (which was acquired by Google), Tendril, and Webroot that were all growing quickly. The energy in Boulder picked up where it left off, but with a real appreciation for the value of creating substantive companies this time around.

In 2006, David Cohen approached me. He was a successful entrepreneur who had bootstrapped a company called PinPoint Technologies with his partner, David Brown. They sold it to a public company called Zoll Medical. Like many entrepreneurs in Boulder, David had made some money, but he wasn’t flashy, was still hungry to do more, and very determined to do it in Boulder. He presented me with an idea he called ...