Optiv's Dan Burns: From Bootstrapped Startup To Two Billion And Beyond

How do you take a bootstrapped company from just a few employees, to a two billion dollar cybersecurity powerhouse backed by private equity? Dan Burns, the CEO and co-founder of Denver's Optiv (www.optiv.com) sat down with us to talk about the company, its growth, and how he's working on taking the company to six billion.

Interview with Natty Zola, Techstars Boulder

It's now ten years since Boulder-based Techstars (www.techstars.org) launched what has become the most successful startup accelerator model in the world, and it's still going strong at its original Boulder location, in addition to Techstars locations around the U.S. and the world. We caught up with Techstars Boulder Managing Director Natty Zola to hear about the latest class for Techstars Boulder—it's 11th program—and what has changed in the last few years.

Interview with Todd Vernon, VictorOps

For today's startup interview, we spoke with Todd Vernon, the CEO and Founder of Boulder-base VictorOps, which is developing software for the DevOps and IT operations software. Vernon is a serial entrepreneur--who founded and was CEO of Lijit Networks, was co-founder and CTO at Raindance Communications, and has been a longtime mentor at Techstars. We caught up with Todd to learn more about his new company, VictorOps, as well as to glean some tips on successful technology startups.

Fluid: A Marketplace To Help You Borrow, Not Buy, Stuff You Need

Are you tired of owning a bunch of “stuff” that you just never use, and is just taking up room in your garage? Wish you could borrow, not buy, those tools you just need for a single project or weekend? Or maybe you already have a lot of stuff, but you aren't using it most of the time. Denver-based Fluid (www.fluidmarket.

How Silvernest Is Bringing The Sharing Economy To Seniors

Can the sharing economy--epitomized by services such as Airbnb--help revolutionize how people age? Boulder-based Silvernest (www.silvernest.com) tells us how the startup is helping to harness the power of the sharing economy. CEO Wendi Burkhardt tells us how seniors--who, suprisingly, are among the early adopters of the sharing economy--are the target of her startup, which helps those seniors find roommates, and hopes to offer new options to help address issues in aging.

Interview With Mark Turnage, OWL Cybersecurity

Have you ever wondered what kind of information hackers have on your company, and what kind of data might have been comprised from your systems, and are now floating out there on the Internet? For our company profile today, we have an interview with Mark Turnage, the CEO of Denver-based OWL Cybersecurity (www.owlcyber.com), who tells us how the company has created a product which lets companies figure out exactly what might be out there with criminals, to help them respond.

Interview with Matt Talbot, GoSpotCheck

Earlier this week, Denver's GoSpotCheck (www.gospotcheck.com) announced a big funding round from Insight Partners, for its enterprise, mobile software for managing field teams—to help fuel its already rapid growth. What not everyone knows, is the fascinating story behind how the company actually started as a maternity clothing rental business at Techstars—before the founding team figured out that wasn't the real business to pursue.

How Prescient Is Joining Software And Steel To Remake Multi Unit Housing

Traditionally, building a large multi-unit building--such as an apartment, dorm, or hotel--was a very time consuming, expensive process. However, Denver-based Prescient (www.prescientco.com) has figured out how to combine software, highly automated manufacturing, and other technology with steel, to create a rapid, low cost way to build those structures in far less time than possible before.

Interview with William Ahlering, Mimicare

It's one of those dreaded moments that happens all too often in families: grandma, or grandpa, or mom, or dad, just can't care for themselves anymore, and needs to go to assisted living. How do you figure out what to do, and how to you find help? Today's startup interview is with William Ahlering, co-founder of Mimicare, a Denver-based company which helps families connect with assisted living facilities.

SimpleCitizen: Streamlining The Immigration Process

If you are someone looking to become a citizen of the United States, there's lots of paper work involved--and not a lot of help--especially if you don't want to pay thousands to an attorney. That is, unless you turn to Provo, Utah-based SimpleCitizen (www.simplecitizen.com), a startup which has developed an online, easy-to-use process for helping people through the immigration process.

Interview with Patrick Quinlan, Convercent

Our interview today is with Patrick Quinlan, the CEO of Denver-based Convercent (www.convercent.com), a fast growing, enterprise software company. Quinlan—a veteran of the industry, who previously co-founded Rivet Software—tells us about his new company, and why it is growing (and hiring) so fast.

How Rise Broadband Is Creating A Wireless Broadband Giant

In a world of increasing importance of Internet connectivity, there's an insatiable appetite for faster, broadband Internet access. However, that high speed access is often hard to get--particularly in more rural and suburban areas. Englewood, Colorado-based Rise Broadband (www.risebroadband.com) is capitalizing on that hunger for high speed, Internet access, via what is a fast growing, fixed wireless broadband Internet network.

Interview with Bart Lorang, FullContact

For our interview today, we sat down to catch up with Bart Lorang, the CEO of Denver-based FullContact (www.fullcontact.com), which develops contact management software. FullContact recently acquired Brewster, and in December also acquired another company, nGame, in the social analytics and data area.

For those not familiar with the company, tell us about what you do?

Bart Lorang: Our mission is to help people stay fully connected, which let people master their contact with people.

Why Skillful Wants To Make Skills, Not A College Degree, The Ticket To A Career

In a world defined by difficulty recruiting the right employees, and an ever-escalating list of positions which require a college degree, is there a better way to find workers to fill jobs—which doesn't rely on college degrees as a qualifier for jobs, but instead uses the actual, practical skills needed for those positions? Skillful (www.skillful.

Rachio: Bringing Smart Watering To Your Lawn

The last few years here along the Front Range have been a tough one, with the entire region suffering from drought for the last five years. Despite what had been a hopeful wet spring in 2015, the Front Range dropped back to drought status in September. Although things are looking up now, that drought situation helped spawn the birth of Denver-based Rachio (www.rachio.com), a startup that is hoping to eliminate wasted water in irrigation not only in Colorado but across the country.

Interview with Rajat Bhargava, JumpCloud

If you're an enterprise company, eager to jump into the cloud, it's tough to fully move your applications, systems, and other infrastructure into the cloud due to many legacy components—including such things as Microsoft's Active Directory. To solve that problem, Boulder-based JumpCloud (www.jumpcloud.com) has created a cloud-based product which replaces Active Directory, a key component of many enterprises for managing user logins and passwords, application and computer access, and more.

Why Silicon Valley Runs On EventBoard, with Shaun Ritchie

If you ever visit companies across Silicon Valley for a meeting, you'd be surprised at the number of high profile companies—Airbnb, Yelp, Zynga, Tesla, Dropbox, and many, many others—who are using the conference and lobby management products of Utah's EventBoard (www.eventboard.io).

Interview with Devon Tivona of Pana, The AI Driven Travel Concierge

Can artificial intelligence software be the answer to better travel arrangements for you on your next trip? Denver-based Pana (www.pana.com) thinks so, and is developing AI software which works interfaces with human agents, to provide what it hopes is a much better--and more efficient--way to book travel for users. We spoke with co-founder and CEO Devon Tivona this week, to hear about the startup, which just raised $1.35M in a funding round.

Helping SMBs Move To A Paperless Office, with Matt Peterson, eFileCabinet

What's the best way for a small or medium sized business to move towards a paperless office? Utah's eFileCabinet (www.efilecabinet.com), which is led by Matt Peterson, think it has the right way to help those companies go paperless, through its software, which allows for document management either through cloud- and on-premise installs. We caught up with Matt to learn more about its recent, $14.

How Swiftpage Is Giving New Life To Act!

Anyone who worked with customer relationship management (CRM) software back in the PC era knew that once upon a time, there were really only two CRM software packages out there: Act! and Goldmine. Recently, Denver-based Swiftpage (www.swiftpage.com) acquired Act!, and is updating that software for the Internet age. We spoke with John Oechsle, President and CEO of Swiftpage, on how the company is bringing Act! into the cloud, and how the company ended up owning the Act! software and brand.

Treehouse Interactive: Creating A New Enterprise Software Giant In Utah

Utah has both a long history and a recent successful track record of creating growing, enterprise software companies, including many in the software-as-a-service and cloud market. This week, Treehouse Interactive, based in Draper, received $17M in a combined acquisition/funding for a majority stake in the company, from investor Joe Wang and Kennett Partners.

Kindara's Will Sacks On Crowdfunding, Business, and Women's Fertility

Boulder-based Kindara (www.kindara.com) has a hit mobile app, a growing crowdfunding/pre-sale campaign for its new device, and counts over 35,000 users who have gotten pregnant using the company's software. We spoke with William Sacks, co-founder and CEO of Kindara, to hear more about the company, the company's success and experience with crowdfunding, and also hear about the perils of starting a company with your spouse.

How Lagrange Systems Is Speeding The World of Web Apps

In today's always-on, instant world, having a slow web site or web application means you lose customers, and money. Boulder-based Lagrange Systems (www.lagrangesystems.com) believes it has the solution to that probelm, with CloudMaestro, its product for delivering applications to users, increasing site speed, and eliminating downtime. We spoke with CEO Ed Roberto, who is an active angel investor here and a TechStars mentor, both about the company and his experience with startups.

How SpotterRF's Mini Radars Are Revolutionizing Wide Area Security

If you are a company with a lot of acres to watch--say, a utility with electrical substations, or an oil and gas company with remote installations--how do you make sure you can protect that infrastructure? That's a question which has been increasingly pertinent, after the widely publicized attack on California's Metcalf substation last year -- which highlighted the risk of the nation's grid to terrorism.

Interview with Lisa Reeves, GridCraft

Boulder-based GridCraft (www.gridcraft.com) recently announced a $2.2M seed round for its data analysis software for business users. We spoke with Lisa Reeves, the CEO and co-founder of the company, to learn a little more about what the company is working on and it's products--plus why Boulder is such a great town for startups and startup founders.

Explain what GridCraft is all about?

Lisa Reeves: We are in the data analytics space.

How Cloud Elements Connects Developers To The Cloud

It's a world of proliferating cloud services and applications out there right now, with dozens and dozens of useful cloud applications available to companies. However, with that proliferation, it's getting harder and harder to connect enterprise applications and other cloud apps with everything else. That's where Denver's Cloud Elements (www.cloud-elements.com) comes into the picture. The company recently raised $3.

BodeTree: Bringing Strategy And Analytics To Main Street Business

As a high priced consultant, Chris Myers, founder of Denver-based BodeTree (www.bodetree.com), got to see how he could optimize multimillion dollar, Fortune 500 businesses, and saw the kind of firepower and resources they were able to command from consulting and strategy firms. However, as he began working with small and medium sized businesses, he realized that those businesses just didn't have access to those same resources.

How Sun Number Is Simplifying and Automating Solar Energy Quotes

In recent years, the cost of solar power technology has plummeted dramatically, helping to make renewable energy far more accessible to consumers. However, the process of qualifying consumers and figuring out if solar makes sense for them still involves a lot of manual processes, a look by solar installers, often a site visit, and more--even if a homeowner's house doesn't make sense for a solar install. Denver-based Sun Number (www.sunnumber.

How Grotech Ventures Is Finding Success--and Exits--On The Front Range

It's been a difficult few years for non, Silicon Valley venture capital firms, particularly in the area of raising new funds. However, one of the most active investors along the Front Range, Grotech Ventures (www.grotech.com), has bucked that trend, by raising a big, $225M fund, its eighth--of which a big chunk is dedicated to local investments here in the region.

April 29, 2013 Christensen, Gavin (Kickstart Seed Fund)

December 4, 2012 Grolnick, Andy (LogRhythm)

November 29, 2011 Bradford, David (HireVue)

December 16, 2010 Bloom, Jeremy (Integrate)

December 10, 2009 Greenholtz, David and Aimee (KeyVive)

November 25, 2008 Beutler, Brian (Alianza)

December 5, 2007 Caruso, Dan (Zayo Bandwidth)

December 18, 2006 Cohen, David (earFeeder)