Colorado Startup Ecosystem Report, with Craig Swiatek (Livestream Leader Q&A)

Welcome everyone to this Startup Ecosystem Report livestream. My name is Dustin Betz. I'm a community manager at the Founder Institute, and I'm joined today by the co-director of the FI Colorado Accelerator program, Craig Swiatek. Craig, thanks so much for joining us today.

Thanks, Justin. It's a pleasure to be here. I look forward to, you know, learning everything about here and telling you a little bit about what we're doing.

Perfect. Yeah, so we're going to talk today all about the Denver and then, well, the statewide Colorado startup ecosystem. But to kick off this conversation first, I'd like to ask you a little bit briefly about yourself by way of introduction for our audience. You are an investment advisor for venture capital and growth at Red Arrow Capital. You're also the principal at C Squared Solutions where you consult on topics including revenue, profitability, and enterprise value. And as I mentioned at the top, you're now leading the FI Colorado chapter. You're also an advisor on the due diligence team with the Rockies Venture Club, which folks in Colorado are probably familiar with. And yeah, prior to that, you've had a career with various roles across finance, commercial banking, in insurance industries. So yeah, with that sort of abbreviated bio by way of introduction, feel free to fill in anything I might have missed, but I want to ask you sort of, you know, what has your personal experience been like bringing that wealth of knowledge that you have to working with these pre-seed stage founders at the Founder Institute over the past year leading the program?

Yeah, sure. Thanks, Justin. Yeah, well, personally, I'm a numbers guy, finance guy, but I like talking to people. And I've had experience in working in all different parts of a company, in the finance and sales, marketing, pricing, product, all of that. And it lends itself that I just kind of can put things together and help founders kind of maybe see the forest through the trees. And I can tell you that the last, the last year, has been incredibly fun working with startups. I've actually was involved with a couple of startups and an incubator and everything else and grew that. And what I really like to do and my passion is, you know, coaching and mentoring and helping these amazing founders realize their success and bringing these great ideas that are solving a lot of problems in our world to light. So yeah, it's been incredible.

Well, I wanna give a shout out also to your co-director Diane Bailey, who as it turns out is joining us live. She's given a shout out in the comments. So thanks Diane for being here and joining us live. I guess by way of a follow-up to the previous question, maybe in turn you mentioned coaching. What has surprised you most, I guess, in working with these quite early-stage companies just over your first year with the Founder Institute? Anything that stands out as a surprise or perhaps an area where the founders, you know, made the most improvements in the program?

Yeah, I don't know if it's kind of a surprise, but you'll see the founders make incredible growth and progress in just a few weeks. So, you know, we meet every week and we have pitches and we go through things and they, We have mentors there and they meet with people. But it's just amazing to see how much progress a founder can make in just a week or 2 or 3. And so to see where they start in the program and where they are just even midway is really incredible. So I, the rate of the progress is probably the most surprising thing that I've seen.

Yeah, yeah, definitely a pleasant surprise or rewarding from an advisor mentor standpoint as well to like to see that progress get made. So yeah, that's really cool. Let's talk a little bit now about, I mentioned Denver, but really the Colorado statewide startup ecosystem. Denver and Boulder are sort of their own little clusters, but there's the Western Slope and the eastern half of it. It's a very big place with a lot of different things going on, but from your vantage, where you're sitting, you know, what are the latest things that you are seeing from early-stage founders there? Are there, you know, any particular trends that you are keeping your eye on right now?

Well, we're seeing more founders come from all across the state, and we used to see them mostly just in Denver, but we're seeing more in Colorado Springs, in the Western Slope, in the Durango area, from from all parts of Colorado. We're even seeing some from the, I'll say, the Rocky Mountain region, from some neighboring states. And the ecosystem in Colorado is very robust, and it's a very collaborative group. You, you'll find that investors or mentors or different programs, we tend to help each out. We don't see everyone else as competition. We'd like to just see everyone, you know, do well and grow.

Yeah, yeah, that's exciting, definitely. And I guess this is— you joined Founder Institute a year or so ago, so this is kind of post the transition to a virtual pandemic brave new world. But that's great that you say even outside of the state. I mentioned Colorado is big, but even in other Rocky Mountain Western, there's a lot of interconnectedness happening within the ecosystem. Yes. That's exciting to hear.

Yeah, it definitely is. I mean, and we may have some chapters pop up, Founder Institute chapters pop up there eventually, but yeah, it's fun to see people from all over.

Yeah, so I want to give some local Founder Institute grads a shout out, particularly for any prospective, you know, pre-seed stage founders in Colorado who might be watching, thinking about joining the upcoming fall program. Who are some of the FI alumni or portfolio companies that they could go check out.

Absolutely. Before I do that, I didn't get a chance to thank my co-director, Diane. She is amazing. She's been the backbone of the chapter for a year before I even got there, maybe more. And she's just fantastic to work with. So wanted to get that out of there.

But yeah, thank you, Diane.

We had a great cohort this last one, some really strong founders. One of them was Mayur Bisani. He founded Moan, which is a type 2 diabetes super app, for lack of a better term. He has his own personal achievement of working through type 2 diabetes. He figured some things out, and so he's been able to bring a lot of different things into this app. Also, OnePurse with Samuel Adewole. He is from Nigeria, and what he's trying to do with OnePurse is to get more US dollars available to businesses in Nigeria by bringing Nigerians abroad who have dollars and using that to help the local businesses there grow and prosper as well. We've got StructureBot with Jim, Jim Scott. He is a— it's a 3D printing home technology, and it's fantastic how you're seeing these homes can be built with little or no waste and in half the time or even a little bit shorter than that. So that's been fantastic to see him grow that as well. And then we've got another one that comes to mind is Sean Lane at NanoCrete. He's developing a concrete that has graphene and graphite in it. So it will also take carbon out and put that into concrete, but also make it stronger. So, and we've got some more as well, but.

Yeah, no, that's a great sampling. I feel like, 'cause you kind of had some community building, some health tech, some FinTech in there. Yeah, the 3D printing I'm particularly interested in, you know, young millennials who want own homes, like things that might make housing cheaper is always of interest, and certainly carbon-negative technology gets me excited. So yeah, really, really interesting sampling of alumni that have come through the program recently.

And of course, you know, we're in Colorado, so we'd have to have a cannabis one as well, which we do. Benjamin at Underdog Farms, he is basically kind of I would say it's like an accelerator for growers that don't have the resources to get into it because it takes a lot of money to get into it. So he's providing a way for kind of an accelerator for growers to grow their product and their brand. So that's very cool.

Nice, nice. Yeah, very cool, uh, uh, stories. Um, we would be remiss too to, to not give, um, I think a, a quick shout out to at least one or two of the terrific program partners who I know you have down there at FI Colorado for the upcoming 2022 cohort. So are there any of your, you know, partners who you want to give a shout out to? I can tag them in the comments after.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Um, so as you can imagine, um, when you're incorporating and you need to go have all these documents and everything, you need a good legal team to help you with that. But startups don't have a whole lot of money, right? So we partnered with Bold Legal and they've just been fantastic. They understand what founders need for their startup company. So they keep, and they, you know, keep it lower price, a lot lower than if you went out to, to, and get it from a regular lawyer or whatever. And they understand the process, they can make it better. So they're, they're fantastic. We've also Dell is a partner with us, and so they have supported us, and we have different book meetings with them every week going over different things. So that's, that's pretty exciting. And also Rockies Venture Club, because we can work our founders that can go once they graduate, they can, they can go pitch in front of Rockies Venture Club. It's a, it's an angel investing club, been around. I think it's the oldest one in the US since 1985. And so we really, they're a great organization as well. A lot of education in addition to just being an angel investing club. And so we try to really work with them as well. And also some of the local universities have programs that we've worked with, like University of Colorado Boulder. University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, and other organizations and universities around. So there's a, we get a lot of help, a lot of partners.

Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I mean, as we say at FI, it takes an ecosystem to raise a startup. And so all of these partners play really critical roles, as you mentioned. Yeah, so shout out to Dell for Startups, Bold Legal, and the Rockies Venture Club. I know you have some other amazing partners too with the Denver Angels and Range Ventures and others. So if folks can go over to, fi.co/colorado and check out all of the amazing partners that you're working with. But yeah, it's really important to have that network of support for early-stage founders and great to see you building it. So we're getting closer to the end here now, I guess, but before we get to the end, I wanted to ask kind of if you have other sort of parting thoughts here or advice for perspective, pre-seed stage founders who may be watching and thinking about joining the program?

Yeah, absolutely. What I guess, if you would, could benefit, which I think most everyone could in the early stages, from mentors that have been there and done that, been successful, raised funds and grown their company and had a successful exit, then our program is for you. And even if you have— what I've seen is we'll have founders come to us that have had their company's been running for a while, they have revenue, but they just can't get over the hump. And so what we do is we find the best mentors around and they really help the founders look at things a little different, maybe go in a little different direction. And we've seen them then have their revenue start to grow. And that all this all allows them to then be better prepared to pitch to investors, because really pitching to investors is its own thing you have to learn as well. And so that's why we, over the 14 weeks of our program, you almost every week you're going to give your pitch, you're going to get feedback. And this really helps prepare you for when you do get in front of an investor, because sometimes you only have one chance. And you got to have your best foot forward. And so it's nice that you've got a lot of support behind that as well.

Yeah, definitely learning pitching, one of the core competencies of the FI Core Program in Colorado and everywhere. And like you said, kind of getting through those earlier iterations of your pitch deck by getting feedback from really experienced mentors can save you, I guess, a lot of investor meetings that you might have burned in the early days if you didn't get that kind of feedback throughout the 14 weeks of the program. So Yeah, yeah, that's awesome. I guess, and we mentioned this URL before, but, you know, for any Colorado-based founders who are watching or elsewhere in the Mountain West, as Craig mentioned, you can see the program schedule and learn more about the upcoming accelerator cohort at fi.co/colorado, and you can also apply there or go to fi.co/join. Yeah, we're really looking forward to helping more local founders launching and building their businesses. So If that's you, you're a founder listening, come on out, join the FI community. You can also— we have a lot of upcoming public events happening, which you can also see at fi.co/colorado. But yeah, Craig, Craig Switek, you're the co-director of the FI Colorado 2022 program. Thanks so much again for joining us today and giving us a rundown on everything that's happening in the ecosystem.

Absolutely, Dustin. It's my pleasure. I did see a note out there that we need we need more female founders. You're absolutely right. So we had a few that had dropped out on the last cohort. So we want more founders of everything. So welcome, welcome.

Yeah, absolutely. And other comments, yeah, here in the LinkedIn chat, at least from Greg, he's asking, you can't stay on, can you watch a rebroadcast? Yes, you can find this live stream here on LinkedIn. The video will stay up as well as on our Twitter and YouTube and Facebook channels. So you can find this video around to catch up, Greg. But Craig Swiatek, thank you so much again for joining, and Colorado Founders, we hope to see you all soon.

All right, thanks, Justin.