Last week was Denver Startup Week, a week full of events centered on Denver’s startup community. The Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship at the CU Denver Business School hosted several events and had over 2,000 attendees over the week.
Started in 2012, Denver Startup Week is a unique week-long experience bringing together the entrepreneurs in our community. According to the Denver Startup Week website it is a “week of events showcasing Denver’s entrepreneur community in tech, design, business, and manufacturing, to highlight Denver as an entrepreneurial center and continue to build the sense of community amongst entrepreneurs.”
The free sessions included workshops, keynotes, and panels, and took place in different venues all located downtown. The Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship was proud to host over twenty of the events here at the CU Denver Business School this year, and had over 2,000 people attend throughout the week. Several of the events at the CU Denver Business School were standing room only.
This is only the fourth year that Denver Startup Week has taken place, and it has grown into a huge event. According to an article on the Downtown Denver Partnership website Denver Startup Week started out with 70 events and 3,500 attendees. This year, they broke 10,000 attendees.
Organizers of the event hope that it will continue to grow not just in numbers, but also grow to become a more national event that attracts entrepreneurs from across the country. An article in the Denver Business Journal quoted Ben Deda, an organizer of the event as saying, “Denver has the capability to be the largest center of gravity between the coasts. We can be the place where they all come together as a nexus.”
With Denver’s entrepreneurial culture, it’s no surprise that Denver Startup Week has done so well. A CBS Denver article highlights some of the numbers around startups, saying that, “623 startups employ more than 4,350 people in downtown Denver. More than 150 new startups were founded last year alone and that trend it expected to continue.”
To learn more about the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship, visit their page.
The photos below are from events hosted by the Jake Jabs Center for Entrepreneurship here at the CU Denver Business School.
