Fort Collins Startup Week plows ahead with new date

FORT COLLINS — It was already November when the new organizers of Fort Collins Startup Week decided to move the event from its late May slot to early February. So it made sense that there was discussion of skipping the festivities for 2016 to provide ample time to plan a first-class event for 2017.

But it wasn’t long before the entrepreneurial mindset around the table set in: Get it done.

Thus, the third edition of Fort Collins Startup Week — a movement by cities worldwide to show off their entrepreneurial scenes and provide useful programming for entrepreneurs — is a go for Feb. 1-5.

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“We didn’t want to lose the momentum (of the first two years) and felt it was worth going forward even if the planning was going to be strained,” Charisse Bowen, campus director for Galvanize Fort Collins, said in a recent interview. “We all agreed that it needed to happen. In true startup fashion, it’s fast and furious.”

Bowen and Christine Hudson — a Fort Collins resident who works at CA Technologies in Boulder — are spearheading the organizing efforts this year.

Fort Collins Startup Week was started in 2014 by entrepreneur Chris Snook, and drew futurist Gerd Leonhard and Inc. magazine editor Eric Schurenberg as keynote speakers the first two years. But Snook moved to Arizona last fall to work for fast-growing digital marketing startup Ethology.

“We greatly enjoyed giving birth to Fort Collins Startup Week the first two years with the intention to tell the story of the NoCo ecosystem’s brand of innovation and entrepreneurs to the local, national and international audience,” Snook said in an email. “We love the community and hope the future efforts continue in that spirit to advance the efforts of NoCo’s amazing entrepreneurial spirit.”

A year of Startup Weeks

Dates of various Startup Weeks along the Front Range this year include:

• Fort Collins, Feb. 1-5

• Boulder, May 16-20

• Longmont, June 6-12

• Denver, Sept. 28-Oct. 2

• Colorado Springs, Oct. 5-9

FCSW’s new organizers, which Bowen said include a broad group of local stakeholders,  felt the date change was necessary to spread Fort Collins Startup Week out from Boulder Startup Week. FCSW has followed just after Boulder Startup Week the last two years, and last year was sandwiched between startup weeks in Boulder and Longmont.

Bowen said organizers felt that coming right after Boulder might have limited the number of people from the Boulder and Denver startup ecosystems willing to take a day off of work to attend the Fort Collins events.

“Coming right on the heels of Boulder Startup Week was challenging,” Bowen said. “All of the local stakeholders came together and decided collectively that moving it to winter was worth a try.”

Bowen said she’s expecting a scaled-down version of FCSW this year, given the tight timeline. She said she’d be happy with about 50 events this year, about half of last year’s schedule. Attendance in 2014 totaled about 3,200 for the week, a figure Snook said climbed to just shy of 3,500 last year. Registration for this year’s events, all of which are free and open to the public, opened Jan. 11 at http://fortcollins.startupweek.co/.

While Snook had largely run FCSW independently of the Techstars-owned Startup Week umbrella of which the Boulder and Denver startup weeks are a part, the new FCSW organizers have aligned with the broader Techstars organization. Doing so doesn’t come with financial support, but it does come with in-kind support in getting organized, using Startup Week’s Web platform, and leveraging its network to market the events.

Galvanize will serve as base camp for FCSW, and tech incubator Innosphere also will host much of the programming and is playing a key role in putting on the event this year.

The lineup of individual events is still being hashed out. But Bowen said one highlight event this year will occur the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 3. FCSW organizers will stream the kickoff event for the GoCode Colorado app challenge that will take place that evening in Denver to help rally Fort Collins entrepreneurs who might want to take part in the contest that has seen Fort Collins teams win each of the last two years.

Longmont Startup Week adds 2 days

Coming on the heels of their inaugural startup week last year, Startup Longmont, the organizers of Longmont Startup Week, have extended their June 6-12 event to encompass a full week rather than just a Monday-through-Friday slate.

LSW executive director Jennifer Ferguson said the shift was made to add in more networking events and provide opportunities for people to take part who might not be able to get away from their jobs during the week. Like Fort Collins, LSW also is aligning with the Techstars Startup Week organization to help spread the word.

Ferguson said she anticipates the number of events for LSW growing this year from 45 to 70, including expanding programming for high-school kids as well as working with the Latino Chamber of Commerce to grow a track geared toward Spanish-speaking entrepreneurs.

Joshua Lindenstein can be reached at 303-630-1943, 970-416-7343 or jlindenstein@bizwestmedia.com. Follow him on Twitter at @joshlindenstein