Not only is Colorado a great place to start a business, but it’s also generally a great place to work.

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This fact is thanks to the large number of startups we boast. New companies nowadays are all about company culture — something you won’t find often at some fancy corporate gig. Companies are beginning to take note of the fact that coming to work and enjoying it is equally as important as the money you’ll get from it. Employees are, of course, spending as much time at work as they are with their families.

Colorado startups are taking the lead in this regard. Rather than talking about it anymore, we crowd sourced some reasons why it’s great to work at Colorado companies from some of our entrepreneur friends in Denver and Boulder. Here’s what they had to say:

Sam of recruitment software startup JobAdder tells us: “We’re a close-knit team made up of the sort of people that support each other and are always looking to improve each others’ lives. I know it sounds corny but I genuinely love working with these people.”

At designer menswear label NINOX, the perks go beyond the bounds of the office.

“We are inspired by art and nature,” co-founder Allie Thielens tells us. “So we hike, fish, bike and attend art exhibits as a team. We work hard, laugh a lot, are challenged by new things almost daily and have incredible customers.”

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Labor Day weekend marks the end of another beautiful, sunny summer and one of the last three-day weekends for a while. So, it’s only appropriate that you go out with a bang – which you can do by checking out a Taste of Colorado 2015. It’s four days of stuffing your face with incredible food, listening to live music by award-winning musicians and being in the presence of half a million other people looking to close out the season right.

A Taste of Colorado kicks off on Friday, September 4, at 11:30 a.m. at the Civic Center Park in Downtown Denver. We’ll definitely be heading down, mostly because we don’t want to miss:

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During last week’s Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) summit, we had to opportunity to witness numerous sharp minds share their thoughts, ideas and visions for the future. One of those sharp minds was Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper, who sat down with us to discuss Colorado’s entrepreneurial spirit and its place as a leader among the nation in all things cutting edge.

In part two of our interview with Gov. Hickenlooper, we get conceptual, dissecting the very meaning of innovation, the future of COIN and Colorado—plus, the governor gives some very good advice to those looking to think differently.

Innovators Peak: Do you find that, when talking about things like COIN, that the word “innovation” is hard to define?

Governor Hickenlooper: Innovation is doing anything different. It’s the same way that people talk all the time about leadership. What is leadership? I think we just keep distilling it and leadership is any time you persuade someone to do something they weren’t originally planning to do; to believe something they didn’t believe before.

The beauty of that is everybody can be a leader because we all persuade people from time to time and we all are leaders from time to time. That’s one of the things we’re looking on how to infuse that into COIN, because COIN is basically leadership.

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The Colorado Innovation Network (COIN) summit featured a slew of successful, wise, encouraging leaders from all over Colorado and the country, including none other than John Hickenlooper, the Governor of Colorado.

Serving since 2011, this visionary Democrat wants nothing more than to see the people in his state innovate, succeed and excel. We had the chance to sit down with him at the Capitol and talk about the state of Colorado, its authenticity, clean ethics and how he plans on attracting and keeping America’s entrepreneurs.

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When I was a kid, the movie Apollo 13 scared the ever-loving bajeezus out of me.

The huge flames shooting out of the rockets. The weightlessness of space. And the thought that if something went wrong, there was nothing, no one there to help you.

Nowadays, those fears are still there, but they are immensely overcome by my wonder about space exploration and what humanity might look like 10, 100, even 1,000 years into the future.

So you can imagine my giddy, childish excitement as I sat down to hear Salvatore Bruno, president and CEO of United Launch Alliance talk about the future of spaceflight that’s emerging right from the heart of Colorado at COIN 2015. He kicked off his presentation quite humbly, I thought, considering the enormous responsibility he and his team are tackling.

“We are America’s ride to space. We are on the cusp of the true commercial potential of space,” Bruno said.

“And Colorado is going to transform it in fundamental ways. We’re getting ready to unleash a new business model that will revolutionize how we transport cargo to space, and allow us to build infrastructure piece by piece in space like never before. In your lifetime, you’re going to see things you haven’t even dreamed of or imagined yet.”

Bruno discussed the tremendous challenges of spaceflight and how to properly motivate a team of engineers who were tasked with achieving this incredible feat.

“It’s all about people,” said Bruno, about how he manages his team at ULA.

“They have such a vast capacity for creativity. And when you want to transform and go after a bright future, you have to paint a picture for your team about what that picture might look like. Then you give them permission to get out of the box and be creative.”

But ultimately, the mission is what kept them together, and allowed them to collaborate even if they were in competing companies.

“I had one of those moments, you know, 5 a.m., in my office thinking about the degree of transformation, and the speed at which we need to accomplish it, was unimaginable,” said Bruno. “But I got to know my team and there was so much pent up energy that I knew they could pull it off.”

Being one year into CEO at ULA, Bruno is still pushing his programs forward, even if he doesn’t receive much help from Washington. But he’s found private partnerships that are helping him and his team to keep innovating. He has spoken with every person in America who’s even sketched a rocket engine on the back of a napkin, and they’re using all that collaborative energy to drive his mission forward.

“It’s all about the mission. That’s what gets me up in the morning. We’re saving lives every day. We’re exploring the universe. We’re pushing the bounds of the human presence.”

It’s a huge mission, and it’s clear that Bruno is the perfect man for the job.

“Coming up with the strategy isn’t the hard part — have a vision, understand the market, that’s easy. The hard part is how to bring your people with you and support the culture change to make that possible.”

“Here on earth today, we toil and struggle in conflict, due to a shortage of resources. Yet right now above our heads, just beyond our grasp, we have resources beyond human imagination,” Bruno said.“It’s all about the mission. That’s what gets me up in the morning. We’re saving lives every day. 

“We’re exploring the universe. We’re pushing the boundaries of the human presence.”

“01110011001011100101011 1001 1011101”

Translation: Robots are embedding themselves into our everyday lives. Better brush up on your binary.

Robotic technologies are going to enable us to do incredible things in the future. And one panel at COIN 2015 spent their time discussing the implications of robotics working their ways into our lives. Will they come in peace? Or do we have to start accepting our new robot overlords?

You’re probably thinking of the Google self-driving car, but we can also include most unmanned aerial vehicles into this category, even though we don’t like to categorize them that way because of their lack of mobility and robotic personalities.

One thing’s for sure, though: The robots are coming.

The bot talk kicked off today at the COIN Summit, led by Session Guide Leah Hunter, a technology writer for Fast Company. Joining her were a panel of experts: Alex Ferworn, Professor of Computer Science at Toronto, Canada’s Ryerson University; Tim Haynie, Founder of Spectrabotics; and Pramila Mullan, Senior Manager Infrastructure & Systems at Accenture Technology Labs.

Our tech experts began with a look into what fuels industrial robotics and glimpsed at the future of the robotics economy.

“The industrial Internet is about embedded sensors, cloud storage, and cloud computing coming together to fuel this industry,” said Pramila.

“What’s interesting in this industry is a lot of the emphasis is starting today with folks looking at operational efficiency: How do we take our existing assets and use them better? But that’s just the start of the journey. And it’s going to take us to our next destination, which is an outcome-based economy.”

“Outcome-based economy” simply means that instead of paying for services, we’re actually purchasing the outcome we desire. I.e., in healthcare, we pay physicians to keep us healthy instead of paying for a routine checkup. But that means we need to work smarter, using tools like wearables and other embedded sensors to gather and analyze data. That’s how we transform our workforce into the next generation, by empowering humans with robotic counterparts (wearables and UAVs).

But now we’re inching ever closer to a completely autonomous robotic workforce, where humans are the ones in control, or even simply monitoring the overall output, rather than micromanaging. It’s becoming more of a collaborative process, where humans are building machine-learning capabilities into robots so we can begin to step away and let them handle the menial and dirty tasks, while humans can focus on the high-level problem solving.

Think about the agriculture industry, where automation replaced a lot of the handwork that was taking place on farms. And those workers, once they were freed from the farm, were able to kick off the Industrial Revolution.

The Industrial Revolution of our time is going to come down to data. Because the more we measure and show people and organizations we can capture data, the more they want. And faster!

“The biggest impact that drones have made in our society is in the incredible amount of data we can retrieve from them,” said Haynie about UAVs.

“They also have the added benefit of being able to fly at different altitudes, and fly whenever, and almost wherever, they want. But it’s all about the sensors. Better data leads to expanding public safety, increasing operating efficiencies, and enhancing situational awareness.”

In the past, it was governments that empowered the university system to make breakthroughs in these types of areas. But now, organizations like DARPA host competitions where they offer large cash prizes to the team with the best prototype. And, not surprisingly, their most recent competition focused on Robotics and their ability to help humans in dangerous situations, like being trapped in a collapsed building.

Ferworn discussed the DARPA challenge, and some of the challenges they face.

“I don’t care if a robot can turn a valve, or open a door, we want them to recognize us buried under the rubble and come save us,” said Ferworn about rescue ‘bots. “We’re still using the same technology that we’ve used to save people who are trapped since World War I: dogs. Because they have an incredibly refined sense of smell, they’re fast, and work for play.”

But Ferworn says there’s a lot we can learn from our canine companions, and how they save people trapped in rubble, that we can apply to future robotics. He even performed a live demonstration with a canine member of the Colorado rescue squad. The furry savior rushed under the stage to save the “trapped” human.

So how can we make humans want to use robotics, if there’s no stopping them?

Firstly, they’ll have to show us their advantages. People are only going to appreciate how robots are going to save them time or make their life easier. The right situation for robotics is in the dirty, dangerous jobs that humans should no longer be doing. Then, if we add in the computing technologies, artificial intelligence, and real-time streaming of data from UAVs, you’re met with an incredibly powerful robotic companion who can tackle almost any task his (Or her? Its?) human handler wants to assign.

Each and every one of these incredible technologies exist in one form or another today. Now we need each sector to come together, collaborate, and help shape the robotic workforce of the future.

Let’s be honest, women have made some serious strides in the workplace. As a matter of fact, women are running nearly 50% of all businesses in the United States. But even with that statistic, businesses with all male teams are four times more likely to receive funding from venture capital investors. There is a serious problem with our investment engine if it continues to keep half of their bench on the sidelines.

If Chip Kelly or whoever runs the Denver Broncos decided to only play half their team, how long do you think they’d stay as head coach?

This topic was the feature of one of the most riveting talks of the first day of COIN 2015 Summit – Invest in Women, Everybody Wins, given by Loretta McCarthy, Managing Partner of Golden Seeds, an early-stage venture capital fund that invests in women-owned businesses, as well as champions women’s place in the investment community.

“In 2004, women made up about 5% of the angel investors in the United States,” said McCarthy. “Today they make up approximately 26%. Meaning there’s 80,000 women who are angel investors.”

Don’t say we didn’t tell you, this is starting to become a movement.

There’s even been an increase in the amount of men who will fund women-led startups, being fondly referred to as Golden Dudes. And there need to be more of them. The more men can take a stand and show that not investing women isn’t just simple minded, but bad business sense, the faster this movement will grow.

And women have had a lot of help over the past 4-5 years due to the tremendous growth of seed accelerators that have sprung up across the country. Now there are well over 100 across the US, and they do an incredible job of keeping their workforce local, and keeping capital and job security nearby.

Yet, women continue to face funding challenges and myriad other obstacles when it comes to scaling their business. And then, having run out of options, they’re forced to turn to overseas funding pools or family offices that to often do not invest the proper time, energy, or money, into their seed companies.

“From 2011 to 2013, less than 3% of venture capital funded companies had female CEOs. And 85% of the companies that were funded had no women executives on their teams,” said McCarthy.

So maybe it’s more than gender diversity in the startup company. We need more diversity in the venture capital firms funding startups. In fact, VC firms with women partners are 2.5 times more likely to invest in a women-owned company.

Investment is all ones and zeros. Black and red. Balance sheets and EBITA. Yet for some reason investment leaders are ignoring the obvious truth that the numbers are clearly pointing towards: spending money on women in the investment community will not only pay dividends, but almost double the investment landscape.

If you handed me that term sheet, I’d sign it every day and twice on Sunday’s. The simple truth is, if you invest in women, everybody wins.

Governor John W. Hickenlooper welcomed a packed house of innovators, leaders and change agents at the 4th gathering of the Colorado Innovation Network Summit, held in Denver, CO. He challenged the group to be present over the next two days, to think outside the box and to foster collaboration to reduce friction and accelerate opportunities for Colorado.  Most importantly, he echoed the summits mantra of curiosity: “Start asking questions!”

But what is “innovation?” Mark Sirangelo, Chief Innovation Officer for the State of Colorado and Vice President of Sierra Nevada Space Systems, defines it as “being able to look at a situation or challenge and realize that it can be done differently.” Innovation doesn’t apply only to technology and startup entrepreneurs, it transcends arts, culture, business, education, healthcare, community organizing and government.

This year’s summit will focus panels and discussions around four key session questions all through the lens of the theme “curiosity:”

     1. How do our digital selves define us?

     2. How are the ways we connect changing?

     3. What do the communities of the future look like?

     4. Who will advance global progress?

Panelists and attendees come from across the city, state and nation. COIN 2015 will address issues around healthcare information from experts such as Dhruv Jaggia from the IBM Watson team, gender-diverse business best practices from Loretta McCarthy of Golden Seeds, the technologies of tomorrow by Tony Werner of Comcast and innovation within local Colorado companies like Wild Goose Canning.

Comcast VP of Competitive Planning and Mobility Michael Soileau took the stage before the Governor to highlight the curious areas of innovation that the COIN 2015 presenting sponsor is participating in. He highlighted how the company’s Comcast Labs division employs 40 PhD’s and 10 distinguished fellows to push the envelope of innovation everyday, developing products like the X1 voice remote and the media solutions of tomorrow for customers and communities across the country.

The next few days are on track to be a curious confluence of communities and ideas. Let’s take the State of Colorado on a journey that the rest of the world can learn from.

COIN Summit 2015 is coming up incredibly fast and we’re getting more excited for it than ever as we continue to plan our coverage of the big event. We’re not alone.

Earlier this year, Anna Ewing took on the role executive director of the Colorado Innovation Network. Today, her excitement for experiencing her first ever COIN Summit is through the roof.

As executive director, Ewing has been leading the effort over the past several months—working tirelessly in in the planning of the event, overseeing the day-to-day, and working with stakeholders in the community to ensure that the COIN mission is carried out and really assist in making Colorado the innovative place to be.

We spoke with her recently to find out how that’s been going, what will be different, the same, and what we should be looking forward to:

Innovators Peak: What will be different about this year’s event as opposed to the prior years?

Anna Ewing: The format will be much of the same. It’s two days here in Denver with roughly 300 innovators from across the ecosystem. Our theme this year is CURIOSITY because any innovation really starts with someone posing a question or having some sort of inquisitive thought about how things are done or how things could be done better. So we developed an entire program steeped in the theme of curiosity in four tracks—each a half-day session looking at innovation from different lenses and how it ultimately effects the business community and the broader world in which we live. There certainly is more Colorado focus this year. We have a number of innovators and thought leaders from this state that will be on stage. One of the ultimate aims is to make known what is happening in out state—celebrating innovation in Colorado.

Anna Ewing.

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