Estes Park works to form business incubator

ESTES PARK — The tourist town at the gateway to Rocky Mountain National Park soon could have a business incubator that’s specially designed for a mountain resort community instead of the familiar models that are geared toward an urban technology corridor.

The Estes Park Economic Development Corp. this week announced the launch of its “Leveraging Human Capital for a Sustainable Business Incubator” initiative, tasked with developing a business plan for the program.

The project is being funded with the third and final portion of a $300,000 grant the town and the Estes Park EDC received in September 2014 from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration.

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“In the wake of the 2013 floods, we were looking at what can we do not just to recover but to come back strong,” said Jon Nicholas, the EDC’s president and chief executive. “When we got this grant, we used part of it for initial planning for competitive broadband, and the second part to develop a regional economic strategy.”

After fielding competitive bids from nine consultants, the EDC hired Austin, Texas-based seed-stage venture-capital firm ATP Management LLC to help it lay the groundwork for the incubator.

“They’ve played such a big role throughout Texas, and they’ve also involved Mike Freeman at Innosphere,” Nicholas said. “All of these people have worked together in different contexts.”

Freeman, chief executive of the Fort Collins-based Innosphere business incubator, is part of the project team, along with Kyle Cox, manager of the ATP Fund; Isaac Barchas, head of the Austin Technology Incubator, the longest-established venture incubator; Ryan Field, research manager at ATI and lead researcher at LiveOak Venture Partners; and Jamie Rhodes, who founded the Central Texas Angel Network and the Association of Texas Angel Networks.

“We believe that Estes Park has unique, untapped assets and capabilities on which to build an incubator program with the potential for national draw,” said Cox, who is leading the project, in a prepared statement issued by the Estes Park EDC. “Our collaborative approach will design an incubator program that will complement and reinforce the unique assets and capabilities, support the businesses that grow from it, and market the resulting Estes Park ecosystem nationally and internationally.”

That ecosystem is profoundly different from others in the region, Nicholas said, and it thus requires different approaches and goals.

“Because we are a resort community, we will not look like an incubator in Fort Collins or Denver,” Nicholas said. “We’ve looked around at what other resort communities are doing, such as the Telluride Venture Accelerator, to narrow down who our target market is: local businesses that want to expand, and then outdoor gear, apparel, wellness-oriented businesses, breweries, and arts-and-crafts-related businesses that are very suitable for our community. How can Estes Park become a destination for them?”

Nicholas and the project managers also will tap local talent, both to get the incubator going and to sustain it.

“A lot of second-home owners here have a lot of expertise and knowledge that could prove valuable to startups,” Nicholas said. “The first step is in creating an entrepreneur- and startup-friendly community. Between Denver, Boulder and Fort Collins, there’s a great deal of entrepreneurship and support networks for that.”

The Estes Park EDC also is forming a local committee including Estes Valley business owners, entrepreneurs and angel investors to help complete the project.

The team from Texas will visit Estes Park March 8-10 for a series of what Nicholas said would be both private meetings and opportunities for public discussion and involvement.

“It’ll be a chance for us to determine what kind of services we can offer that will create a sustainable business model for the incubator itself,” Nicholas said. “Is it a traditional incubator versus an accelerator? What role would a co-working space play? Will it be for-profit or nonprofit?

“A lot of this is about creating the community,” he said. “Investors want to know they can identify good opportunities, and startups want to know they’re getting access to the programs and resources that will help them.”

More information will be available on the EDC’s website, estesparkedc.com.