On Wednesday, the University of Colorado Leeds School of Business hosted an event that they dubbed the Sustainable Shark Tank. The Sustainable Shark Tank provided an opportunity for MBA students to present sustainable business plans to a panel of expert judges. Unlike the real Shark Tank (the one on television, not the one at The Aquarium) the judges weren’t deciding whether or not to write a check at the end of the program. However, the judges were providing honest and valuable feedback so that the MBA students could decide whether or not it would be worth it for them to take a chance and pursue... Read More

When it comes to marketing to women, outdoor gear companies have traditionally taken the ‘pinking and shrinking’ approach: offering smaller and rosier versions of men’s products with little regard for what women actually need when they’re in the outdoors. A new, and decidedly ballsy, wave of female entrepreneurs is pushing back, though, and fighting the good fight to connect adventurous women with the gear and the products that they want. Niki Kourboulis is one of those entrepreneurs and her Boulder-based company, Bold Betties, curates outdoor experiences specifically for... Read More

This week I want to touch on an important topic that was brought to my attention by a colleague of mine, Xavier Lemon. Xavier insists, as I agree, that a big aspect of being an entrepreneur is being able to walk away from failures with a lesson learned. This has been a major driving force in my success and in the success of many others around me. In order to appropriately touch on the topic I thought it would be wise to garnish lessons from those who have truly achieved success. Steve Jobs  Steve Jobs, as many of you know, created Apple. Apple is currently worth more, in liquid cash value,... Read More

“When I was a kid, there was no collaboration; it’s you with a camera bossing your friends around. But as an adult, filmmaking is all about appreciating the talents of the people you surround yourself with and knowing you could never have made any of these films by yourself.” – Steven Spielberg. For this week’s blog, I want to take a step back from the general scope of the Boulder Startup Boom and write about an extremely influential part in becoming a successful entrepreneur – networking. While the quote above pertains to the film industry, we must not look... Read More

It’s that time of the week again, and to kick things off I’m implementing a new topic. Once a month I will be blogging about an up and coming startup in Boulder. For the first “Startup of the Month”, I will be focusing on a recent tea startup called Wu Mountain Tea. Wu Mountain was co-founded by University of Colorado Student, Dylan Rothenberg. Dylan, President of Wu Mountain Tea, originally went to China as a Boren Scholar to study Chinese, and ended-up living and working in the famous Tea Markets of Gungzhou where he learned to source tea for a European premium tea distributor.... Read More

Call me a trouble-maker. Call me a non-conformist. Call me an entrepreneur. Call me right, or call me wrong. Just don’t call me accepting of the arbitrary definition and schedule of “work”. I think many people misinterpret the difference between “work” and “adding value”. The definition of work should be “Creating and adding value to somebody, somewhere”. Why does this have to be confined to such a rigid and miserable 9-5 schedule? Why does it have to be the bane of most people’s existence? Why can’t work become more a fluid concept integrating all of our passions – personal... Read More

Imagine looking across the ring to the opposite corner. You are seconds away from the opening bell. You are trembling. You are nervous. Your opponent is Mike Tyson – “Iron Mike”. Probably the most ferocious heavyweight fighter to ever set foot in the ring. He is a predator. He attacks people in the ring. His eyes are penetrating the depths of your soul. You have a distinct feeling that he wants to severely injure you. He does. Tyson has not fought in years, but he is still a fighter. The aggressiveness that took him to the top of the boxing world is still very apparent – even in interviews,... Read More