Entrepreneurs, students, leaders across campus, and legal and business professionals look to Silicon Flatirons as a space to convene with meaningful purpose.
Our hometown, Boulder, was ranked by Forbes in 2015 as the #1 best city to start a business. Described as a rapidly advancing Western hub, and boasting the highest density of tech startups in the nation, Boulder has been dubbed by Richard Florida as “America’s Most Creative City.” Silicon Flatirons’ role as a nerve center for Boulder and the entire Colorado Front Range entrepreneurship scene was featured prominently in Brad Feld’s book, Startup Communities, which praised Silicon Flatirons for turning the university “inside out” and highlighted its role as an important feeder and convener for the Boulder startup community. Silicon Flatirons’ entrepreneurship work has been highlighted in the New York Times and is mentioned in David Cohen’s Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Boulder Startup Community.
To support networking and an exchange of ideas, the Center sponsors and supports a wide-range of events, programs, and competitions.
Core Programming
Entrepreneurs Unplugged
Entrepreneurs Unplugged attracts star entrepreneurs who candidly share their stories and insights in an engaging and informal setting. The event series also serves as a meeting place for faculty, students, and community members to gather and learn about entrepreneurship through the experiences of a successful local entrepreneur.
Past guests have included James Dimon, Heidi Ganahl, Sam Zell, Charlie Ergen, Kim Jordan and many other serial entrepreneurs.
Each Entrepreneurs Unplugged meeting features food, drink and, most importantly, an experienced entrepreneur who shares his or her start-up experiences. The program offers students and faculty an opportunity to learn how a successful startup is created, as well as the chance to ask direct questions to the guest entrepreneur and network with members of the local entrepreneurial community.
Crash Course Series
The Crash Course series features legal and business topics that entrepreneurs confront when launching new ventures. As its name implies, workshop attendees gain a working knowledge of specific topics, all of which pertain to navigating the startup world.
Past topics have included pitching to angel investors, planning for M&A, creating boards, and managing intellectual property. Local legal professionals and business leaders teach these courses, which are open to all who are interested.
Entrepreneurship Conference
The annual Entrepreneurship Conference brings members of the Front Range’s regional entrepreneurial ecosystem together with academia and other thought leaders to explore the latest trends, policy, and other factors impacting the startup community.
Community-reaching Programs
Blackstone Entrepreneurs Network Colorado (BEN)
The BEN identifies promising Colorado companies and provides meaningful connections to help those companies scale. BEN is funded by a $3 million gift from the Blackstone Charitable Foundation, which selected Silicon Flatirons to steward the grant.
Governmental Entrepreneurial Leadership Accelerator
The Governmental Entrepreneurial Leadership Accelerator (GELA) supports governments to encourage innovative problem solving to pressing public policy challenges with a 12-week Accelerator. GELA launched in 2016 in partnership with the City and County of Denver and is believed to be the first of its kind in the country.
Startup Summer
Startup Summer is a 10-week program that combines a summer internship at a Front Range startup company along with a series of evening events, all focused on teaching undergraduate participants the fundamentals of creating and running a successful startup.
Entrepreneurial Law Clinic
The Entrepreneurial Law Clinic (ELC or the Clinic) provides law students with practical experience in transactional law while offering valuable legal services without charge to local startup businesses lacking access to legal resources.
Tech Lawyer Accelerator
The Tech Lawyer Accelerator connects law students interested in business law with technology companies for a hands-on learning experience. The TLA begins with an initial, multi-week intensive bootcamp followed by a lengthier stint of in-house placement. The training topics cover finance, accounting, technology, project management, and tech industry business models. The paid internships range from 10 weeks to seven months and are currently offered in Colorado and Silicon Valley, with companies including Adobe, Cisco, CoreSite, NBC Universal, Twitter, Vodafone, and Webroot.
Campus-related Programs and Activities
CU Boulder Entrepreneurship Initiative
CU Boulder fosters the growth of startups and the entrepreneurial mindset and skillset needed for innovation, and is ranked by Forbes as one of the nation’s leading entrepreneurial public universities. Through the cross-campus Innovation and Entrepreneurship Initiative, students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to develop their entrepreneurial talents and innovative thinking. As one of the campus leaders of this effort, Silicon Flatirons seeks out new ways of enhancing the entrepreneurial culture on campus, which spans across departments and classifications.
CU New Venture Challenge
The CU New Venture Challenge is CU Boulder’s entrepreneurial flight-simulator for students, staff, and faculty to try out entrepreneurship. Spanning September through April, the NVC blends a network of nearly 100 mentors, a series of workshops, and real-world feedback from judges during pitch night and the competition phase. Cash prizes total $20,000 and past CU NVC participants have used the program to spring-board into programs such as TechStars and the NSF I-Corps program, and compete on the popular TV show Shark Tank.