Thank you Boulder and Denver! We are extremely pleased to announce today the launch of Xconomy Boulder/Denver, the seventh bureau in our growing network of news sites covering the business of technology in key innovation clusters around the United States. We couldn’t have done it without the incredible support of the entrepreneurial and innovation communities in these two cities (read on for more on this special story).
I am also extremely pleased to introduce the editor of Xconomy Boulder/Denver, Michael Davidson. Mike is already well known to the region’s innovation community: he comes to us from the Boulder County Business Report, where he has carved out a name for himself as a leading voice covering innovation and technology. We think he is a rising star and we are extremely happy to have him head up our coverage from Day One. He will have help from some local freelancers and, of course, other editors around the Xconomy network.
You will find Mike’s own welcome story immediately following this—as well as his first news analysis post—about how the rapidly growing Denver startup scene is seizing on the template created in Boulder to create a startup- and collaboration-rich enviornment.
A lot about Xconomy Boulder/Denver is unique. For one thing, it is the first of our cluster sites not in the Eastern or Pacific time zone. Innovation, after all, doesn’t happen only on the coasts. Therefore, we think it is important to build a network that reflects the pervasiveness of the innovation and entrepreneurial movement sweeping the country. (Stay tuned in the next few weeks for another announcement along these lines.) By including new regions like Boulder/Denver in that network—and by being on the ground with thoughtful, in-depth daily reporting on startups, venture capital, and innovation at larger companies in tech, life sciences, energy, and more—we seek to bring what is happening in those communities into a broader national conversation. That, we think, is especially important, because all too often national press tend to focus on what is happening on the coasts, especially in Silicon Valley—thereby missing great work being done in other parts of the country.
Xconomy Boulder/Denver is also special because it was brought about in a very different way—thanks primarily to the crowdfunding support of the local venture and entrepreneurial community in the region.
First and foremost, we want to thank David Cohen of TechStars and Brad Feld of the Foundry Group (neither is an investor in Xconomy), who led the effort to recruit us to the area. David first floated the idea to us, and he and Brad then kicked it off with tremendous outreach to local companies. With their help, in just a few months, mostly behind pledges of $1,000 or $2,500 from startups and other members of the tech scenes in Boulder and Denver, we stitched together enough in pledges to make our launch possible. You can find all our initial Startup Members here—and if your company would care to join them, we’d be extremely happy to add you to the list, as each pledge of additional support puts us in a better position to expand our coverage. The benefits of being a Startup Member are listed here.
To this strong base of support, Feld and his Startup Revolution initiative helped us even more by signing up for a national advertising campaign. And we also are extremely pleased to announce our first Boulder/Denver underwriter, AVL Growth Partners. (For more on our annual underwriting programs and the benefits that come with them, contact associate publisher Jim Edwards, who heads our Boulder/Denver business development. He can be reached at [email protected]).
One more key point before I turn over the pages to Mike and the rest of our team. We also broke the mold with the name Xconomy Boulder/Denver. All our other news sites bear the name of just one city. This doesn’t mean our stories are confined to those cities. From our headquarters city of Boston (our actual offices are in Cambridge, MA), for example, we cover innovation all over New England. The same is true in all our other bureaus: Detroit, New York, San Diego, San Francisco, and Seattle. All feature coverage from around those regions. We chose the city name to symbolize the nucleus of that coverage.
Coverage in Colorado will be no different. While Boulder and Denver, the cradles of the state’s startup and high-tech scene, will be the focus of our coverage, we will follow stories all over the state. But rather than choose to name the bureau either Boulder or Denver, we included them both. Of course, even when it comes to the startup scene, these are two very different communities in a lot of ways (see BlogMutt founder and CEO Scott Yates’s guest post for a fun riff on this!). But while there are plenty of rivalries between them, Xconomy got support from people and companies in both cities. And we heard loud and clear from a lot of those we met in advance of our launch that there is a need to strengthen existing ties and build new ones. So Xconomy Boulder/Denver it is.
Mike himself exemplifies this trend, as he lives in Denver and has worked for years in Boulder. We know there are a ton of great stories to tell. Mike already has a long list. But we’d love to hear from you if you have a great lead or tip. Just write to [email protected] or to Mike directly at [email protected].
I can’t wait to start reading. Thank you again to one and all!
