Recap
“Silicon Flatirons Startup Summer 2022 cohort ranks among the most cohesive and collegial group in program history.”
—Brad Bernthal
This summer, Silicon Flatirons brought together students from across the nation to participate in the 11th iteration of Startup Summer. The program was offered in a hybrid format to accommodate students attending both in-person and virtually. We engaged people from across the emerging company community and brought in more than 25 guest speakers to work with our students. David Brown, formerly of Techstars, generously led three of our sessions. Over the course of the summer, seven companies were formed within the Startup Summer cohort, and student teams were guided through the startup ideation and creation process. In August, they wrapped up the program by competing for a total of $10,000 in prize money.
Startup Summer 2022 delivered a high-value experience across the board. Representative feedback from student participants included:
“[Startup Summer] really encouraged that spark of entrepreneurship within me, the wanting to be a part of starting something bigger than me. I’m very thankful and really love this whole community.”
“I knew virtually nothing about business coming into the program. Through these 10 weeks, I have accumulated so much helpful knowledge. I am able to hold my own in business discussions now. I’m more familiar with business vocabulary and feel comfortable adding suggestions to business plans and revenue model brainstorms. I’ve realized how powerful a network is and where my strengths lie.”
“When I first pitched my idea to some friends and family of mine, they told me, ‘You’ll come up with something better,’ but in my heart, I really knew I wanted to pursue the singular idea I had come up with. This was the first time in my life, I pushed myself to keep going. I had lacked a lot of confidence prior to Startup Summer, and I remember that I was so scared when I first pitched Jot, because so far, I hadn’t received a lot of positive momentum. However, as the summer progressed, I continually pushed through all the self-doubt and am really proud of myself. I have grown immensely in the last ten weeks as an individual.”
This year, 28 students participated, with students from the following schools: University of Colorado Boulder, St. Andrews University, Washington University (St. Louis), Front Range Community College, University of Washington, Oxford Brookes University, Colorado College, and the University of Utah.
The pandemic invited us to continue to expand the way we thought about the program. We opted to host the program in a hybrid model, which allowed students who were out-of-state or had other obligations to join us for our summer meetings, resulting in amazing attendance from our participants. One student even mentioned that this was one of the best hybrid models they had ever experienced!
And the Award Goes To
1st Place/2nd Place (Tie)
- Team Goodie Bag (Ethan Mills, Kevin Gonzalez, Greg Cusak, Luke Siegert, Eddy Connors)
- Team Jot. (Sonia Amin, Tia Noyes, Magill Stewart, Ben Hofstra)
3rd Place
- Team Tick-Click (Kyle Komarnitsky, Leo Nguyen, Kash Challapalli, Garrett Weber)
4th–7th Place
- Team ArtDato (Matthew McDaniel, Collin Dunn, Sam Ellsworth, Grady Forsythe)
- Team Boulder Kidz (Xinran Li, Kaden Sisk, Charles Msilanga)
- Team Norlin (Marcus Orlando, Michael Cossio, Alex Liston, Bianca Meurer-Zeman, Joey Nolan)
- Team Tamatar (Graham Blanco, Clara Black, Ben Furr-Johnson, Gabby Mejia)
2022 Sponsors
A very special thank you to our weekly speakers and mentors, supporters, community members, and of course, our generous sponsors: Anchor Point Foundation, The Caruso Foundation, Libby Cook, and Dale & Pat Hatfield for making this year’s program possible.
