Boulder Denver New Tech (BDNT) is where it all started for Technical Integrity
Around 2007 I walked into the Wolf Law building at University of Colorado Boulder for something called BDNT, the Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup. I had never been in this room on the CU Campus before and I certainly didn't know anyone there…but I had heard rumors about something special happening in the community and I wanted to learn more. The room was filled to capacity, brimming with enthusiasm and energy. I had never seen anything like it before.
At the time, I was working for a small firm whose focus was hiring engineering consultants for enterprise organizations. It's fair to say that those organizations were not brimming with energy, nor enthusiasm, so this was quite a shift for me. I had stumbled into the belly of the startup-beast that was BDNT. From the early 2000's through around 2018, Boulder held the honor of 'densest startup city per capita' in the country. I was standing in the middle of that beautiful, infectious energy… and that was just the beginning for me.
My now good friend, Robert Reich, was hosting, herding cats and generally managing the chaos quite well at each event. As were other hosts in other parts of Colorado, including Andrei Christine, Susan (and many more), and now our close friends Julie Penner and Ryan St-Pierre- are hosting the rebranded BNT… but more on that in a minute.
About 300-400 of your closest friends (key photo above), including in the overflow room, were there each month to see the five of the hottest/coolest startups at the moment give their timed five-minute pitch followed by three minutes of Q/A while the next presenter got ready. We were fortunate enough to see the VERY early iteration of current reigning Denver-Unicorn-Juggernaut and National-Champion-Denver-Nuggets-Sponsors Bryan Leach and iBotta present at an event at Mapquest Offices in Denver.
There was always so much to learn and copious delicious food, drink and good vibes. One of the things that stood out for me, aside from the palpable enthusiasm in my new found tribe, was seeing David Cohen and Brad Feld speaking on the #GiveFirst ethos and what that meant to building sustainable, resilient and thriving entrepreneurial ecosystems. That’s when the light went on for me about how I might make a dent in the proverbial startup universe: build that Give First ethos into our DNA as a yet to be born (Sept 2010) organization that I was still dreaming about creating.
Fast forward to 2010 when I started Technical Integrity, and I knew we needed to support this important community event. It was an honor to be a part of. And we made SO MANY friends…@pug, @dannynewman, @Natty and so many more that are still close friends today. And so, that brings us to the present day, and the NEWEST version of BNT. Currently hosted at Founder Central on the second Thursday of each month (will shift for Boulder Startup Week 25 briefly).
It’s our pleasure and our honor after all these years to now support the 2025 version of Boulder New Tech. We hope you will join us each month alongside other great community sponsors like Sweater Ventures, Frazier VC, Drive Capital, Access Venture Partners and more, to continue the GiveFirst goodness in this ongoing, important event series for our community.
See you next month?
