Boulder Startup Week: Full Schedule

Can you believe that Boulder Startup Week is in our 8th year? We work hard to have this event free and open to the public to make Boulder even better. Sign up for one event or dedicate your week to learning, networking and giving back. All are welcome. Your first time? We would like to welcome you! Click here for more.

12:00pm MDT

Stop Looking like a Startup: A guide to communicating your startup’s brand more effectively

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

How to avoid the common pitfalls, cliches, and mistakes that many startups make when establishing their brand. We’ll discuss why it’s important to see your own brand with an outsider's perspective and how to better consider your audience/ideal customer. You’ll leave this session with a roadmap to better approach and setup your brand for the long haul.

Speakers

Sergey Grigoryan

Owner/Designer, TNKR Design

Sergey launched TNKR during startup week in 2015, with experience in branding, graphic design, strategy, and storing knowledge of random things. On weekends he enjoys building things and restoring old tools that should have been thrown away in the first place.

Sandi Grigoryan

Art Director/Partner, TNKR Design

Monday May 15, 2017 12:00pm - 12:50pm MDT
Riverside

Marketing/Branding

1:00pm MDT

Breaking Through Research Orthodoxy: How Startups Can Access Greater Insights

Limited Capacity filling up

The goal of this session is to make research accessible, impactful and useful — giving teams of any size, and at any phase, practical ways to employ consumer research to inform decisions big and small. Join experts across the research spectrum that have used both scrappy research “hacks” and Fortune 100 research budgets to reveal piercing insights across a range of industries and product areas. .

We’ll show how research can give way to better decisions at every level and positively impact the work at various points of development. Finally, the case will be made for research as a journey, not a final destination -- showing how to make research happen all the time, apply learnings and keep moving forward.

Moderators

Katie Johnson

Global Head of Consumer Insights, PanasonicWELL

Katie started her career in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering only to discover her true passion in studying and designing for humans. She's worked on everything from spacecraft to industrial products and from complex systems to single websites and now works at PanasonicWELL at... Read More →

Speakers

Matt Engel

Chief Evanglist, Relationship Enrichment Collaborative

Matt Engel, married to his bride of 13 years, and blessed with their two children; serves as the Executive Vice President of Operations and Data Intelligence at Relationship Enrichment Collaborative. Matt oversees operational and data understanding, application, integration, and... Read More →

Sarah Smith

User Experience Researcher, Google

Sarah is a researcher, strategist and designer, with a focus on understanding user needs to create intuitive, useful products. Trained as an architect, her client work spans apparel, personal care, and technology. Sarah is now a UX Researcher at Google, but her nontraditional career... Read More →

Christopher Wilshire

Founding Partner, Egg Strategy

Christopher is a Founding Partner at Egg Strategy, leading our work across strategic growth disciplines including consumer insight, brand strategy and innovation. A specialist in all forms of qualitative research, he directs a team of strategically minded facilitators, ethnographers... Read More →

Monday May 15, 2017 1:00pm - 1:50pm MDT
Galvanize

Marketing/Branding

5:00pm MDT

Unstuck & Inspired

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

We’ll be talking with leaders of some of the area’s most creative brands about their experiences creating under pressure and the tools they use to stay inspired and move through blocks. Founders from Topo, Base Coat / svperordinary, Miette et Chocolat, Angry Bovine and Dram Apothecary will present Pecha-Kucha style about how to stay Unstuck & Inspired, moving into a Q+A panel discussion on creating under pressure, maintaining the creative edge and reframing problems to get to innovation.

Moderators

Kecia Benvenuto

Madelife

Kecia Benvenuto is curator of contemporary art at Boulder's madelife gallery. Prior, she lead content curation and strategy in the arts, design, travel and lifestyle sectors for Facebook's award-winning mobile app Paper. She has an extensive background in artist-collaborations... Read More →

Speakers

Jay Ferracane

designer/founder, angrybovine

AngryBovine is a multi-disciplinary creative studio based in Colorado that makes businesses, better businesses through design thinking and doing.

Gonzo Jimenez

Co-Owner, Miette Chocolat

Chef Gonzo Jimenez was born in Northern Argentina, raised in a Spanish household surrounded by good food and long family meals. At the age of 17, he started working in restaurants and fell in love with the culinary world. He enrolled in pastry and culinary school in Buenos Aires... Read More →

Jedd Rose

Founder/President, Topo Designs

Topo Designs is an apparel and accessories brand based in Colorado focused on making products that are rooted in mountain culture, have a timeless look and have modern style and function. Before founding Topo Designs, Jedd spent over a decade in the the graphic design and branding... Read More →

Shae Whitney

Founder/Owner, DRAM Apothecary

DRAM Apothecary is a food/ beverage and lifestyle company nationally renowned for their award winning herbal cocktail bitters, syrups, switchels and teas crafted using plants foraged from the Colorado wilds. This dynamic and eclectic company also offers unique hospitality experiences... Read More →

Tran Wills

Serial Entrepreneur and Founder, Base Coat

Tran is the personification of the term “self-made.” Shortly after graduating from high school, she pursued the path of entrepreneurship by opening The Fabric Lab, a clothing boutique doubling as an art gallery and event space in Denver, which started her venture and would turn... Read More →

Monday May 15, 2017 5:00pm - 6:30pm MDT
Madelife

Marketing/Branding

3:00pm MDT

Matter Meetup: Cut Through the Buzzword Bull$h!t

Limited Capacity filling up

To pre-game the Startup Crawl, lets dig into best practices for telling your startup’s story while avoiding jargony marketing buzzwords – think innovative, bleeding-edge, disruptive. C’mon people – marketers are wordsmiths. We can do better!

During this networking event, meet and mingle with fellow marketers who face the same challenges and are tired of the same old buzzword bull$h!t.

Speakers

Maria Brown

Vice President, Matter Communications

As Vice President at Matter Communications, Maria Brown heads up Matter’s Boulder office. With more than 15 years of experience within the high tech and professional services industries, Maria provides strategic advice and counsel to clients on all matters related to public relations... Read More →

Tuesday May 16, 2017 3:00pm - 4:00pm MDT
Matter Communications

Marketing/Branding

5:00pm MDT

The Future of Marketing: How AI will affect the industry

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

Modern day marketers are the Mozart's of a myriad of tools and platforms...deftly orchestrating a marketing stack that aligns with business and market strategies. Yet, the game is rapidly changing as AI-powered tech becomes more prevalent and effective. Touching on applications such as image and video recognition for user-generated content... algorithmic real-time personalization...AI-driven product recommendation engines and everything in between—our expert panelists will bat around insightful questions that will elucidate the how A.I. will affect marketing in the years to come. Questions will be asked in a round robin style, and after the panel questions, we will open up to questions from the audience.

Moderators

Paul Foley

Co-Founder & CEO, SmartCapital

Paul is the Co-Founder & CEO of SmartCapital, which for the first time ever allows anyone to invest in VC funds.Paul's also a Colorado native, born in Boulder, and is enthusiastic about building startup communities.

Speakers

Kaylin Linke

Product Management, Socialgist

Tom Markiewicz

Developer Relations, IBM Watson

Tom Markiewicz currently works in developer relations for IBM Watson where he helps companies implement machine learning solutions. Prior to IBM Tom was the co-founder of several companies including StatsMix, a Techstars Boulder alumni. His background includes over 20 years of technology... Read More →

Jeff Rose

CEO, ThinkTopic

Jeff is a Co-founder and CEO of ThinkTopic, a Boulder based AI company. Over the last 3 years ThinkTopic has worked with a wide range of organizations, from the Asian Development Bank to Conde Nast and Digital Globe. They have created image analysis pipelines using deep learning... Read More →

Raviv Turner

Co-Founder & CEO, CaliberMind

Raviv Turner is the Co-Founder & CEO of CaliberMind, the first CustomerOps platform to integrate, measure and optimize B2B marketing, sales and customer success throughout the entire customer journey. Raviv has more than 10 years of experience leading product design and development... Read More →

Tuesday May 16, 2017 5:00pm - 6:15pm MDT
Boulder Library Canyon Theater

Marketing/Branding

10:00am MDT

How To Win Fans And Influence People: The Simple Power Of Influencers For Your Brand

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

Join three experienced marketing leads as they quickly outline the pathway they’ve taken to creating successful influencer/content marketing programs. This will be a raw, real, tell-all truth session on what worked, what bombed, what went haywire, and of course the happy accidents and the carefully strategized wins. Each panelist will speak for 3 min each at the first of the session, conveying one specific instance where they employed influencers to build the brand and drive content marketing efforts. The panelists will discuss and debate the merits of their campaigns with audience questions mixed in throughout.

Moderators

Keely Nolan

Co-Founder, Influence Inspired

Keely is a thought leader in influencer marketing and has helped brands and agencies develop and implement influencer marketing strategies over the last five years. She has recently launched Influence Inspired, a company that provides influencer marketing strategy and management aimed... Read More →

Speakers

Jeff Donaldson

VP Marketing, Skratch Labs

Jeff Donaldson is an alum of The University of Denver and has been in Colorado for more than 20 years. He has a background in consumer marketing, working with prominent brands like Coors Brewing Company, WhiteWave Foods and Toys R Us. He launched a full service marketing agency called... Read More →

Matt Jenkins

Chief Operating Officer, The18.com

Co-founder and manager of day-to-day operations at The18.com, a Boulder-based sports media company. In 2014, The18 set out to build the world's most engaging soccer company, creating entertaining soccer content and delivering it how and where young consumers want it – on our... Read More →

Brennah Rosenthal

Founder, Great Escape Media

Brennah has been working in the outdoor industry for over 10 years and has worked with companies like Mountain Standard, The North Face, Backpacker Magazine and Climbing Magazine. She comes from a background in Advertising Photography and marketing and has spent the majority of her... Read More →

Wednesday May 17, 2017 10:00am - 10:45am MDT
Boulder Library Canyon Theater

Marketing/Branding

10:00am MDT

Pitch, Please: Tools to slay your next presentation

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

The idea is killer, the business plan is on point, you spent hours putting together the best deck the world has ever seen... but now you have to stand up and present the damn thing.
Rarely do folks spend the time to focus on how the words they've prepared actually come out of their mouths during presentations. In this smaller-sized interactive workshop, Justin and Lindsay will share tips and tricks from the world of stage acting and improv comedy to give you some easily applied presentation tools to help turn that stutter into stellar.

Speakers

Justin Badger

Lindsay Nelson

Wednesday May 17, 2017 10:00am - 10:50am MDT
Victors & Spoils

Marketing/Branding

1:00pm MDT

The Digital Marketing Playbook: Establishing Your Digital Path to Predictable Revenue

Limited Capacity full
Adding this to your schedule will put you on the waitlist.

Establishing Your Digital Path to Predictable Revenue:

Beau frequently reiterates to clients that marketing is a blend of art and science. In this session, he will guide you along his process pairing marketing philosophy with marketing practice vetted by $35M of ad spend over the last year. He will then walk you through his digital marketing playbook that brought 20:1 ROI results with real world examples. The intent of this session is for each attendee to walk away with an actionable and practical path to success in their digital marketing efforts.

Speakers

Beau Haralson

Co-Founder, CXO, Clymb Marketing

Beau Haralson is based in Boulder, Colorado, where he enjoys being outside with his family and time on his mountain bike when he’s not working with clients of his digital marketing agency. Clymb Marketing specializes in guiding businesses of all sizes through the process of scaling... Read More →

Wednesday May 17, 2017 1:00pm - 1:50pm MDT
Riverside

Marketing/Branding

9:00am MDT

What’s My “Why”?: Find the Answer, Build a More Resonant Brand

Often, startups get off the ground with technology or a product that solves a problem, which answers the "HOW" portion of why they exist.

But for a startup brand, that answer is just a piece of the puzzle.

Are you a startup with a “HOW,” but not yet a “WHY”? Why exactly are you the right business to solve this problem? Why should investors and employees and customers choose you? Are you building an actionable brand story or simply hanging out a shingle with your logo attached?

Join some of best brand-builders in Boulder as they:

Define what we mean by “finding your WHY”
Diagnose what’s missing in your current brand of “how” and the critical elements to watch out for
Demonstrate the business impact of finding your WHY with real world case studies
Deliver actionable takeaways and processes to uncover your “WHY” as soon as you leave

Moderators

Angela Fulcher

Founder, The Growth CMO

CMO for hire for startup and growth companies. Ask me about the next big thing. Or tennis.

Speakers

Kyle Bardouche

Fellow Gent, Founder

Kelly Stone Geer

CMO, Sphero

Mike Sitrin

Serial Entrepreneur

Mike Sitrin is an entrepreneur and start-up veteran with over 25 years of experience building and launching leading consumer-facing brands including Crackle (sold to Sony), Spinner (sold to AOL) and Velo Press (sold to Competitor Group.)Having started out in Boulder, Mike spent... Read More →

Chad Walker

Director of Growth and Innovation, Victors & Spoils

Thursday May 18, 2017 9:00am - 10:00am MDT
Riverside

Marketing/Branding