Longmont getting monthly New Tech meetup to highlight entrepreneurial scene

LONGMONT — The push to nurture and highlight Longmont’s entrepreneurial community has been ramping up during the past year.

Adding a monthly New Tech meetup is simply a natural extension of that process, Roger Glovsky said Thursday.

New Tech is an idea that started in Boulder and has spread to Denver, Fort Collins and Colorado Springs to help create a forum and meeting place for entrepreneurs in the respective communities. In Boulder, for example, the sessions often include startup founders pitching their ideas and gaining feedback from the crowd, with networking and mingling afterwards.

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Glovsky, a Boulder attorney who lives in Niwot, is spearheading the Longmont New Tech meetup as part of a committee within Startup Longmont, a nonprofit organization focused on organizing entrepreneurial activities in Longmont, including the first Longmont Startup Week earlier this year.

The first Longmont New Tech meeting will be held at 6 p.m., Tuesday, Oct. 20, at the Longmont Museum and Cultural Center.

Glovsky, whose background is as an entrepreneur and engineer in addition to law, has been in Boulder County for six years, spending a good chunk of his time working with the entrepreneur community in Boulder. Despite Longmont’s long history as a home to tech-based businesses, he said it wasn’t until he attended Longmont Startup Week events earlier this year that the robustness of the entrepreneurial community in the city struck a chord with him.

“Longmont is a piece to the puzzle (in Colorado), but people haven’t been aware of it,” Glovsky said. “There are some real interesting things going on that aren’t happening elsewhere.”

Glovsky said Longmont New Tech organizers’ aim is to not only bring the city’s entrepreneurs together but also to create a spot where people from elsewhere in Colorado can visit and get a taste of what’s happening in the community.

Sponsorships and funding for the events will be run through Startup Longmont. The benefit of tying into New Tech, rather than trying to start something fresh, is the established name New Tech already has in the state, as well as the network of 10,000-plus members Longmont New Tech can immediately tap into.

Glovsky said Longmont New Tech will have its own flavor, with meetings — to be held the third Tuesday of each month — each built around a particular theme or technology. The format will include an opening speaker along with a panel discussion.

As of Thursday afternoon, 63 people had so far signed up for Longmont New Tech’s first event.

“The environment I get in Longmont is people are interested in building businesses without the expectations or the hype of being the next Facebook, even if they are,” Glovsky said. “It’s not just about raising cash, raising capital, building the team, seeing how fast you can go. Time to market is critical today, but so is building something you think will solve real problems and stand the test of time.”