It’s that time of the year again when Boulder startups open their doors to the community, recruit new talent, or just talk about tech and their products, all while having a bit of fun.
Boulder Startup Week begins Wednesday morning and runs through Saturday. The four-day long event features open houses, workshops, hackathons, and parties and is part showcase, part conference, part networking event, and part party.
Startup Week has been a very informal event that has showed the Boulder entrepreneurial scene’s “do-it-yourself” mindset in an effort to highlight all that’s going on. It’s been very successful bringing together entrepreneurs and the people behind some of Boulder’s top tech companies.
That remains the philosophy, but this year organizers want to broaden its scope, said Casey Hopkins, a member of the team of organizers.
“Startup Week isn’t just for startups anymore. It’s for anyone interested in tech and interested in Boulder,” Hopkins said. “This is an event for absolutely everybody.”
That means reaching out to partners and taking ideas from other successful events, such as the Boulder International Film Festival.
“This is the first time we’re trying to push beyond the startup ecosystem to the arts community and the downtown community,” Hopkins said. The hub of the event will be a tent on the Pearl Street pedestrian mall.
A schedule is on the website and almost all the events are free, but people do need to register for events in advance.
The week starts Wednesday morning bright and early, with breakfast-time events, including the Boulder Open Coffee Club, and morning yoga on the schedule. The big evening event is Ignite Boulder, a night of geek-centric presentations at the Boulder Theater. As usual, the event has sold out—for the 21st consecutive time.
On Thursday there will be a startup crawl through downtown with more than 20 startups opening their offices and offering beverages from some of Colorado’s best known craft breweries. It starts at 1:30 p.m. with free drinks and appetizers at Shine.
The crawl ends at 6 pm at the Absinthe House and will be followed immediately by the Boulder Beta gathering.
Events continue through Friday and wrap up Saturday night with a closing party at the Lazy Dog.
During work hours, there are dozens of events hosted by local startups that will offer tips about how to launch a startup and how newcomers can get integrated into Boulder’s startup world and discuss tech trends.
