This Is Speed Dating, But For Startup Founders And Venture Capitalists

It looked like a speed dating event where two people talk for 10 minutes, decide if they want to exchange numbers, and then move on to the next person at the sound of the buzzer.

Only the two people sitting at the small numbered tables Wednesday were startup founders or CEOs and venture capitalists. For 10 minutes they talked about themselves and their companies, got to see if they liked each other and then decided if they wanted to advance the relationship.

Thus is the setup at the third annual Colorado Venture Summit inside Mile High Stadium in Denver. It’s a small, intimate event capped at 140 attendees, said David Gold, managing director of Access Venture Partners and founder and chairman of the summit.

“If you want intimate networking, it’s got to be capped,” he said.

For one afternoon, 60 Colorado startup founders and CEOs had a chance to meet 60 venture capitalists, most from out of the state.

“It’s all about the quality of interaction here; its not the biggest event you can go to, but the quality of the attendees here, to get 600 venture funds and over 60 already venture-backed tech CEOs, that what makes the difference,” Gold said.

The event today kicked off with a motivational talk from Aron Ralston, the hiker who was pinned by a rock in 2003 in the Utah desert and cut part of his arm off to survive.

“We only find out what we are capable of when we are pushed,” Ralston told the group.

His was a real boulder, one that trapped him for six days. But he said, everyone has a boulder and they need to face it and get around it.

“Our boulders show us what we are capable of,” he said.

Colorado Venture Summit was started three years ago as a way to get Colorado startup founders and CEOs in front of venture capitalists.

“The initial motivation was pretty simple,” Gold said. “Colorado has a fantastic tech startup scene – there is a ton going on here on a per capita basis. Population adjusted, there are about as many tech startups here in the Denver Boulder MSA as in Silicon Valley.

The Denver and Boulder areas also have tons of startup events. And yet the companies were not attracting the venture fund money they should have been attracting, Gold said.

“When you look at those events, you say, ‘why is it that we haven’t attracted meaningful out of state VC?’ We get a few here and there. But, what does it take to actually motivate out-of-state VCs to hop on an airplane and come here?” he said.

It became obvious that out-of-state venture funds were not interested in doing the first round of venture capital. They seem to be more interested in doing the second, third and fourth rounds of funding, Gold said.

And that’s who gets invited and matched up for the speed meetings – startups that have already had one round of funding. Last year’s attendees, for example, had already collectively raised $1 billion in capital in previous venture rounds.

After three years, the get-to-know-you set-ups are proving to be million dollar relationships, said Michael Gellman, CEO of Spire Digital and one of the founding sponsors of the summit. Gellman ticks off all the matches that came about from the summit, including one that grabbed headlines. At the 2014 summit, Digabit Inc., a Denver-based company that specializes in technology for equipment manufacturers, met venture capitalists from QuestMark Partners. A year later, Digabit announced that it raised $9 million Series B preferred equity financing, lead by Baltimore-based QuestMark.

Data on just how many deals are made is tough to calculate, Gold said.

“I can tell you there were 100 unique new connections made between tech companies and VC (last year) where there is ongoing potential in future investment,” Gold said. “I can tell you there has been millions of dollars invested as a result of the relationships that happened at the Colorado Venture Summit.”

The event ends with an after-party this evening for all of the startups who are not yet venture-backed. About 400 people signed up.

“It turns out that works out really fantastically,” Gold said. “They get to network with this group and for the VCs who are from out state and not familiar with the ecosystem here it is impressing them with the quality of the company during the day, and at tonight they are like wow.”

Source: Denver Business Journal, Monica Mendoza
Photo: Colorado Venture Summit is designed for startup founders and CEOs to meet one-on-one with venture capitalists. The hope is that there will be some relationship matches. (Monica Mendoza, Denver Business Journal)