The Clicker Sticker, Hungrybuffs.com, RTD Mobile Bus Times and the Unreasonable Institute are just a handful of the many businesses started by CU students.
The entrepreneurial spirit is alive not only at CU but also in the city of Boulder. Bloomberg Businessweek on Thursday dubbed Boulder “America’s Best Town for Startups.”
The article cites the fact that Boulder has the highest number of software engineers per capita in the nation and Boulder is only second to Silicon Valley in percentage of workers employed in tech.
Nikhil Dandavati is a 22-year-old senior finance major and part of the Unreasonable Institute, a venture co-founded by CU students the goal of which is, to give “high-impact social entrepreneurs wings,” according to their mission statement.
Dandavati said he believes there are numerous factors which contribute to Boulder being a hot spot for startups.
“Forbes has ranked Boulder as the smartest city a couple of times,” Dandavati said. “It’s kind of the chicken or the egg; there are smart, innovative people here and that draws more people like that and there are a lot of organizations that help people get off the ground like Techstars.”
Holly McCoy, a 20-year-old sophomore integrative physiology and psychology major, said she thinks it’s more basic than that.
“I think it’s because there’s a lot of college kids and it’s a wealthy school,” McCoy said. “They know people around here are consumers.”
Other students said they agree with McCoy that it’s really the ability to get consumers that makes Boulder a good location for startups. Using a local virtual office service like https://bristolvirtualoffice.com/ is also a great way to hide your postal address if you work from home, so have a look into those.
“I think because the community is so diverse, you have students, families, thirty-somethings, all kinds of people living in boulder,” said Missy Coyne, a 20-year-old sophomore speech languages and hearing sciences major. “So it’s easy to target just about anyone. You get this great mix of big chains and mom-and-pop stores, you have 29th Street and then you also have Pearl.”
For Dandavati it was the “entrepreneurial environment that nurtures innovative people,” that helped him choose to stay in Colorado and go to CU.
“Boulder has lots of capital funds that can help people who have an innovative business idea,” Dandavati said. “People in Boulder help nurture new ideas and get connected to the resources they need to be successful.”
Contact CU Independent Breaking News Editor Ellie Bean at Beanee@colorado.edu.
