At the end of January, I left San Francisco to open a branch of EchoUser in Colorado. After I left, there were many “feels” for the city that I had spent a formative-nearly-7-years-in-my-20s in, so I illustrated the experience of leaving. It appeared weeks later in The Bold Italic!

The front range!

So after 2 months of living out here, what’s it like? From a technology/business perspective – I don’t think there could be a better hub of tech outside of Silicon Valley. The startup scene is excited and the niches of big industry (aerospace, medical, software) are doing well. It’s a good time to be in the Front Range. From a work/life balance perspective, the mountains are literally in our backyard. We rock-climbed this weekend a mere 15 minutes from our house. We skied in what looked like the wilds of Alaska a few weeks ago. Boulderites/Denverites work hard, but they play hard as well.

Outdoor activities have also been an opportunity to connect with people too! Via rock-climbing and backcountry skiing, I met Ben – an engineer over at Sierra Nevada Corp.

Spaceships!

Sierra Nevada Corporation (no, not the beer) in short, is an aerospace company. They unsuccessfully tried to win the contract for the next space shuttle with DreamChaser.

Ben graciously invited me on tour of SNC’s facility a few weeks ago (no iPhone cameras unfortunately!). Needless to say the space-dork inside of me awakened. Between the dry-ice Friday ice cream party and the real! live! spaceships! being built in one of their large hangars, I was in NASA-nerd-vana. SNC luckily has other aerospace technologies as well aside from DreamChaser. They make components for satellites among other things.

Touring SNC was a highlight of many other networking opportunities I’ve had thus far, and it definitely gave me food-for-thought on how EchoUser could apply our “any experience” credo to realms like space exploration.

A tale of two cities.

Other than aerospace and mountains…what’s the scene like? There are events happening every week – definitely on a smaller scale than San Francisco – but still happenings and gatherings. New Tech Boulder, New Tech Denver, Founders Network, One Million Cups, Analyze Boulder, the list goes on. The chasm between Boulder and Denver is much different than the woven commutes, work relationships, client meetings etc. between San Francisco and the rest of the South Bay. There’s a perceptible “chillness” (not disdain) between folks from both cities in that neither really wants to drive to the other. If you live in Denver, why not conduct your business in or around Denver? EchoUser, based in Boulder for a number of reasons (burgeoning tech hub, near CU, quality of life, etc.) will hopefully be a resource for what LinkedIn refers to “The Greater Denver Area” – that is to say serving cities and towns like Longmont, Aurora, Colorado Springs, FoCo, and yes – even Denver.

Where are we now?

EchoUser Rockies is centrally located at Broadway/Arapahoe (right on the Creek!) in Downtown Boulder. We’re available for office hours (code for lets chat about anything and everything!) and we couldn’t be more excited to be here.