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Why I Love Boulder
Boulder, Colorado is a startup kind of town. Home to a couple lists such as ‘Top Towns to Live Well’, ‘Most Educated City in America’ and ‘Best Places for Business and Careers’ (all by Forbes Magazine) Boulder has a reputation for being laid back.
My friend Jeremy Tanner summarizes it pretty well: “I can have a better lunch break than I could in an entire weekend before I moved here.”
Venture Capital firms in town included Foundry Group, Vista Ventures, Boulder Ventures, and Sequel Venture Partners. Startups that I regularly see in town include TechStars, OneRiot, Lijit, Trada, SocialThing!, Crash Corp, Everlater, FiltrBox, Iggli, Public Earth, Occipital, Quickleft, Slice of Lime and SurveyGizmo. Larger companies include IBM, CP+B, Google and Sun.
Local tech blogs include Rocky Radar and Colorado Startups.
Here’s a walk through of an average first Tuesday of the month:
7am: Get up, bike path commute to downtown takes less than ten minutes. Light bike traffic.
8am: Open Coffee Boulder features 20-30 local entrepreneurs talking about what they like in tech, what they are working on and what they can use help with.
9am: Breakfast at one of the top 20 locally owned breakfast spots in town.
10-noon: Meetings with local startups.
1pm: Lunch Meeting with one of 180 startups in town. Lunch within biking distance and then errands around town. Most restaurants are very sustainable with some even going as far as being zero waste (The Kitchen for instance).
Work out of the office. We have several buildings that are targeted at office space for two or three person companies with pretty cheap rent. The downtown area feels like coworking evolved. Our local coworking shop is the Candy Shop.
6pm: The Boulder New Tech Meetup is one of the largest in the nation (with New York being the only bigger event), where six local startups demo what they are up to.
9pm: dinner and drinks downtown with the local entrepreneurs. The downtown area is thriving, and home to Hosea Rosenberg this years Top Chef.
Rent is cheap by most cities standards, with a two bedroom running around $1000 a month. The food is outstanding with a focus on organic and local products. Summers are hot (100’s highs) but without humidity. Winters are bright with over 300 days of sun. Snow followed by big sun days. Your door to the local ski area lift is 30 minutes. The outdoor community is amazing with a strong running, cycling, kayaking, and triathlete community.
Ignite Boulder is one of the largest in the nation.
If anyone is interested in checking out town, our local ambassadors page is full of friendly folks to show you around town.
Andrew Hyde is a startup enthusiast. He works with TechStars, a mentorship driven seed stage funding accelerator and calls Boulder home. A designer by trade, he now focuses on startups and the community around them. He is the founder of Startup Weekend.
are you thinking about moving there ????
I thin it was on Allen’s short list of places to move to, along with Portland, Seattle, Philly and (I believe) Austin Texas.
i am pretty open to moving anywhere at this point.
Allen, if you decide to move to Boulder, we would be more than happy to have you.
Of course, if you are in town and want to check it out, drop me a line, would be a pleasure to show you around. – micah [at] lijit [dot] com. – @micah
I would love to move there, maybe one day.
Come for a visit, see how you like it (most love it).
Maybe Allen will be there soon and then you’ll have your major blog – CenterNetworks living right there. I will have to agree – Boulder is quite the startup city when I was there last year for the Lookery off site at TechStars HQ. Nice place.
you are way too kind Rex.
I’m one of the lucky folks that was born and raised in Boulder, but eventually moved away. The local start up scene that has developed here in the last few years is amazing and was one of the reasons I was able to move back. I’m at another Boulder start up Gnip, cofounded by Eric Marcoullier who relocated to Boulder with his family from the Bay Area.
I like Boulder but besides a bunch of developers, is it really a good place to live?
Jennifer,
Nope. It’s all developers. There’s no one else. No one else enjoys a vibrant, healthy, smart, progressive community with beautiful scenery, tons of outdoor recreation, and 300 days of sunshine with low humidity, 30 minutes from skiing, 30 minutes from Denver, 45 minutes from Rocky Mountain National Park, and 5 minutes in every direction from the nearest micro brewery.
Thank God I’m a developer.
Not only developers, but we all eat dirt. Lots of dirt. :)
As large as the startup / developer community is, there are larger academic, athletic, foodie and conscious living communities.
A great place to live.
Yes, lots of organic food/health product companies. And one of the top training locations in the world for runners, cyclists, triathletes, climbers, etc. And a strong Buddhist and Nepal/Tibet community.
Boulder is very much a lifestyle town. People spend a lot of time outdoors. They support local music (the Fox Theater is one of the top venues in the country and Red Rocks, one of the most popular outdoor venues in the world, is about 40 minutes away. We’ve got some top restaurants here, too.
I moved here in 1992 (actually December 1991) to go to grad school and stayed. Boulder is a wonderful place to live. Size-wise it is a small town. You can get everywhere on a bike or via public transportation if you want. Parking downtown is inexpensive compared to Denver and is free after 7 PM.
There’s a creek running through town, with a path alongside, so you can connect to nature immediately. People fish, float down the creek on inner tubes, and kayak. The mountains are within 10 minutes to 1 1/2 hours depending on where you want to go.
But at the same time, Boulder has global resources — a university, a number of government research agencies, lots of cultural activities, plus access to what Denver has. There are world-class people both living here and visiting, so there are lots of potential stimulating interactions.
Housing costs are affordable compared to SF and NYC. They are a bit more than some other Colorado cities, but not necessarily more than other places in Colorado with similar lifestyles.
Andrew talks about all the tech interaction and it’s pretty much non-stop. There are multiple opportunities to see people working at local coffee spots; there are networking groups morning, noon, and evening; and there are many impromptu get-togethers and Tweetups.
I totally forgot to mention the university, which has some great people / activities / facilities.
Andrew,
we’re actually looking at potentially moving our company there. It’s between Boulder and Portland. Would love to chat about it sometime.
Sean
ps. congrats on the 1/2 Iron Man- saw your brother’s tweets over the weekend
Any help you need just let me know, would love to have you.
The 70.3 went really well, posting a race review in a few minutes. So much fun.
My son starts school at CU next week. All of this is so encouraging
Good summary of all the great things about Boulder, Andrew. It makes a nice reference for some of the many reasons to open our next Viget office out there …
I’d love to move to Boulder, anyone need a crazy KIWI to join their team?