Sure, the latest initiatives from the Teslas, Apples and Googles of the industry tend to dominate the tech news space — and with good reason. Still, the tech titans aren’t the only ones bringing innovation to the sector.
In an effort to highlight up-and-coming startups, Built In has launched The Future 5 across 11 major U.S. tech hubs. Each quarter, we will feature five tech startups, nonprofits or entrepreneurs in each of these hubs who just might be working on the next big thing. Read our round-up of Colorado’s rising startups from last quarter here.
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David Lopez grew up in a low-income, single-parent household, and he was the first person in his family to go to college.
Although he was able to attend the University of Colorado Boulder on a full-ride scholarship, Lopez said he soon realized that a college education was not necessary to be successful. The college’s business program exposed him to the high-paying tech sales sector, where a bachelor’s degree is typically not required.
Inspired to pave a path for others in his community, Lopez asked hiring managers what qualities they were looking for in sales professionals. Time after time, they told him that grit was more important than a college degree.
“That brought me excitement because that’s the main thing that my community does have,” Lopez said. “We know how to get up, we know how to survive, and we know how to make things work.”
Lopez launched the first version of Gritly, a tech sales bootcamp, in September of 2020. Although the bootcamp was successful and helped students land high-paying jobs, Lopez decided to pivot to a different model that was easier to scale.
He transformed Gritly into a portal that hosted other bootcamps and edtech programs that provide role-specific training, including front-end development, back-end development, data management, user experience, recruiting and sales.
Over the past three months, the startup has partnered with five different bootcamps and edtech programs that will be hosted on the Gritly platform. Those bootcamps will start to be rolled out as early as September, and Lopez said he hopes to partner with more bootcamps and edtech programs as the platform picks up steam.
“By commercializing our software, we went from one player in the vocational training space to building infrastructure for the entire industry,” Lopez said.
The new platform provides Gritly’s network of 13 employers with a qualified talent pool to draw from. Gritly even provides employers with performance data about each student. Employers can use the Gritly platform to post jobs, create company profiles and recruit candidates.
“For bootcamps, our value proposition is helping to provide infrastructure for their programs and getting their candidates hired faster,” Lopez said. “For employers, rather than having one-off relationships with different bootcamps based on the roles they’re fulfilling, it’s one relationship with Gritly, which gives them access to all the talent from across the nation on one platform.”
Gritly was the only Colorado startup selected for the inaugural Google for Startups Latino Founders Fund, which provided the startup with $100,000 in non-dilutive funding. The startup has raised $250,000 to date.
Lopez also completed the Camelback Ventures Fellowship program earlier this year, and he is an advisory board member for Workforce Boulder County.
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