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A little over a year ago, a group of Denver entrepreneurs got the chance to sit down with one of the most famous entrepreneurs of our time, Steve Blank.
If you don’t know Steve, you should. Do a quick Google search and then you’ll get the idea of why it was a pretty big deal to get an opportunity to sit in a small conference room to pick his brain on how we can build Denver in to a great startup hub.
When asked what problems the Denver Startup Community faced, we gave the standard answers: lack of early stage capital, no angel community… blah blah blah.
He stopped us cold, “What makes Denver special?”
Silence
“Uh telecom…”, someone murmured.
“A long history in the cable industry.” someone else asked.
‘Bullshit.” Steve responded, “Denver is an oil and gas town. Who do you know in oil and gas?”
The room was silent.
“Fix that and you’ll solve your capital problem.”
Message Received
Was it that simple?
We dug in and this is what we found out:
Oil and Gas has significant technology related problems including data, hardware and software.
They write checks. If you can solve a problem, they will buy your solution.
They are wary of fad technologies and would rather build simple systems that work opposed to flashy systems that are not stable or reliable.
Any way you slice it, these are big businesses with big problems to solve and most importantly, they are willing to spend money to solve them.
Solutions
A group of us, including 1 Million Cups Denver, Denver Founders Network, The Colorado Technology Association, The Governor’s Office, The Mayor’s Office, and many more are bringing together a top tier group of oil executives to discuss their problems and a top tier group of tech entrepreneurs to discuss how to solve them.
This is, we think, the first time in Colorado that anything of this sort has been attempted.
Show Up
If you are at all interested in the Colorado Startup Community you should attend this event. Even if you are not interested in the opportunities to solve big problems in a gigantic market, come to support the Colorado Startup Community and our efforts to to make Colorado a great place to start companies.
