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Coming off a year that saw $758 million in funding pumped into local tech companies, the Colorado tech scene is thriving. In fact, 2014 was the best year on record for digital tech companies, and industries that saw success ranged from cloud computing and digital security to ad tech and human resources.
To get a sense of the future, we spoke with three c-level "celebrities" attending the Colorado Technology Association's "C-Level @ A Mile High" event. Read on to learn their thoughts about the event, their interests in tech, and the Colorado tech scene today.
[ibimage==32866==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-left]Pete Koliopoulos, vice president of North American marketing, Arrow Electronics
How will you attract bidders?
Try to find the match — the people that are looking for or would be applicable to your business. There’s people that want to come to us and try to contract with us to do business. There’s always this two-way street. So, if you have product sets, potential solutions, or you want to get access to Arrow's ECS division and the kinds of things that we do, generally we would tweet things out to folks that we zero in on.
What technologies are you interested in?
I’m open to all things new, things like software-defined networking or storage, and cloud providers. At Arrow, we deal with virtually every kind of technology out there, so if you’re not sort of curious about technology, you might have a limited view.
What developments are happening in your industry?
The IoT — wearables, machine to machine communication. That’s right in the sweet spot for our entire company. That’s an area of interest just to see — certainly in the Colorado area — who is doing what.
Gavin Drake, vice president of marketing, Quark
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Why should bidders be interested in your company?
I’d say we’re in a very hot place as a company. Although we’ve been around for 30 years and have a business that has been going strong for that time, we’ve been growing in new parts of the business — in the enterprise software space. We think that area is extremely hot and probably has multi-billion dollar potential. So, I think the opportunity to work with a company like Quark as we are embarking in a pretty significant growth space is a good opportunity for any bidder.
What does your industry look like today and five years from now?
The advent of tablets and smartphones and all the different operating systems, device specifications, sizes — plus the demands of customers that want to be able to consume content and interact with businesses wherever they are in a relevant and engaging way — has put a huge strain on companies. In five years, I would like to think that more and more of those companies are using enterprise publishing technologies to automate that process.
This is your first time as a celebrity. What are you looking forward to?
The opportunity to interact with a lot of other local companies. Denver is on something of a growth spurt when it comes to high tech. I know it’s been a changing landscape of industry, but the tech sector and the tech startup sector has been doing very well in recent years in Denver, so it will be a good chance to network with others in that industry.
[ibimage==32863==Original==none==self==ibimage_align-left]John Oechsle, president and CEO, Swiftpage
Why should people want to work for Swiftpage?
There’s a couple of reasons. Two years ago, Swiftpage was a very small company, with just about $5 million in revenue and 20 employees — or who we call Swifties. Over the last two years, we’ve had two acquisitions. We’ve grown to nearly $70 million in revenue and 350 Swifties in four locations around the world. So, we have lots of growth, and people get really excited about wanting to be associated with that.
What technologies interest Swiftpage?
We’re interested in all different kinds. We’re completely revamping our business model, going from a pure license and maintenance business to a subscription business. We're revamping the entire Act! portfolio to be more SaaS and cloud based. We have an enormous amount of digital marketing leads that are in place, and we’re implementing a new billing system and automated marketing system.
How would you describe the state of tech in Colorado?
It’s on fire. It’s the result of the hard work of lots of different associations and people during the last decade. What you're really seeing here is a sustainable ecosystem being built. We have large companies and small companies that both need each other. We have the public sector now getting highly engaged. We have academia that’s coming in. And then the last piece, which we're starting to see more and more of, is the capital is coming back into Colorado. There’s tens of thousands of jobs just in the state of Colorado alone. We all have open positions, and the universities can’t keep up with that. That’s what TechHire is all about. That’s what the CTA is all about.
The Colorado Technology Association (CTA) is putting on its 9th annual C-Level @ A Mile High event Thursday, March 19. The fundraiser connects more than 1,200 technology innovators with more than 65 executives — called "celebrities" — from local tech companies. Attendees bid for celebrities' time, in hopes of developing a lasting business relationship.
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