If you want me to identify the coolest little city in the United States, it would be Boulder, CO. Boulder is filled with young, hip, energetic, and healthy people filled with ideas and a desire to make things happen. Boulder is a University town, but is also a vibrant startup hub and IT mini-hub in the United States. Venture capitalists have their eye on Boulder for opportunities, but I have my eye on Boulder because I think it’s a cool place. I actually spent a night in Boulder on two occasions. It is so healthy there and I slept like a baby and enjoyed coffee in a jam jar the next day!
Boulder is a small and vibrant community that’s enthusiastic about technology. It combines small town warmth with fast paced industries normally found in the Silicon Valley or Boston. You’re right there forty-five minutes from Denver which is one of the biggest cities in the Western half of the U.S. But, you’re also only minute from hiking trails in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. In Boulder, you can enjoy the hip University town culture of eclectic restaurants from around the globe, but then enter the culture of skiing and hippy culture up in the mountains while having lunch at a Nepali restaurant.
It is always interesting to me how Swiss and Nepali immigrants to the United States often prefer Colorado. I guess the air is too thick for them down at sea level.
Boulder also has a much lower cost of living than other IT hubs. However, since more people want to live in Boulder than there are jobs, costs are not cheap by any measure in this city of 100,000 residents.
TechStars co-founder Brad Feld feels that Boulder has an incredibly open collaborative startup community. It makes me want to hop on over there and get to know these folks if they’re not too busy working. It’s fun when you can feel excitement in the air. Others have noted that Boulder has the “give before you get” mentality where the locals are very willing to help anyone without expectation of getting anything back. That is exactly the type of attitude you need to succeed, because success is all about being the best giver!
Some of the interesting startups of the area include:
Epic Playground which tracks video stats across different websites
FlixMaster which makes entreprise-focused videos and editing easier.
Gnip focuses on social analytics
Mocavo tracks your ancestors and genealogy in a similar way to Ancestry.com
Precog lets people ask very sophisticated questions from their data
There are many other startup enterprises in Boulder. I hope I have given you a taste of what Boulder is like. If I were you, I would just drive on over. It would take me two and a half days of driving to get there, but it is worth it just to soak in the energy that the locals have about entrepreneurship. I am an entrepreneur and feel lonely in Los Angeles. I won’t be lonely in Boulder though.
On a final note. What did they call Boulder before it grew up… Pebble?