By Addie Levinsky
Follow your dreams — this is the advice every driven individual craves, even with the apprehension that comes with building a career from the ground up.
Endeavors of this magnitude take time, and people who enter the world of startups tend to fail more often than not (no matter the demographic). This is just the reality of starting your own business. The majority of success stories are from those who succumbed to the 9-5 grind, working under someone else, before embarking on a journey to start their own business. Experience, capital, and maturity — do the success of startups depend on age?
The entrepreneurial scene in Denver has been, and continues to challenge this notion. Millennials are running the show. Not only are small businesses and startups succeeding, even at the impressive rate they are popping up, but those at the helm are young, driven, and making changes in the city noticed by all.
From tech startups, to coffee and specialty bike shops, even mobile fashion buses, the success of Denver’s millennial entrepreneurs is impressive, diverse, and the collaborative spirit of the city furthers the ability for other’s to hop into the mix.
It’s not just Denverites who are consciousness of these fiery millennials, either. The Wall Street Journal picked up on this story back in July, noting that the typical factors enticing moves to Colorado, such as microbreweries and skiing, were no longer the main driving forces. It’s the jobs.
While the article notes the inevitable tension among locals and transplants, Paul Washington, the head of Denver’s Office of Economic Development, stated “the influx of millennials is extremely important. They bring energy and enthusiasm and optimism.” Of course, as more people move here, the demand for infrastructure increases, but what about those entrepreneurs born and raised in Denver? Is it competition, or collaboration?
Carley Inman, Denver native owner and operator of Blue Spruce Vintage (a mobile vintage shop) offered Innovators Peak some sincere perspective. “With the influx of millennials in Denver, there’s an opportunity to see it as opening up possibilities. The more people who build and give to the community, the greater chance the rest of us have to successfully contribute. Hopefully this continues to inspire others to give their ideas.”
Inman’s shop on wheels can be found every Friday or Saturday night at the Night Bazaar in RiNo — completely surrounded by tech startups and small businesses, as she noted. “There are also people taking larger spaces and giving smaller businesses the opportunity to be part of something big; truly enabling someone who may not be able to afford their own storefront or what have you, such as The Source, Avianti, etc.”
Just across the alley from Inman’s bus is a specialty bike shop, Define Cycling. You don’t have to be a bike geek to appreciate the beauty and refinement of Define. The shop aptly shares a space with the premier high-end, contemporary furniture showroom Studio Como, and is just another example of Denver’s small business growth. One of the shop’s owners, Steve Vanica, is just 30 years old but is a visionary in the Denver entrepreneurial scene “For me, investing in a business and being relatively young means taking control of the direction my life is going by using my skills and passions as motivation. It means looking at the state of cycling currently, and finding my place within it,” he says.
“Denver’s small business owners are all super supportive of each other and genuinely want everyone to succeed. You can’t get that encouragement anywhere else.”
Conversely, locals who are critical of the millennial influx in Denver tend to be focused on what the vibrant startup culture means for cost of living, and how it ends up affecting the entire population (rather than just the small business owners).
In 2015, Denver rent saw the largest increase in the United States this year. Are these young entrepreneurs the ones to blame? Not exactly. According to the same Wall Street Journal article, over 100,000 transplants landed in Denver between 2010-2014. Of course, only a small percentage of these individuals are those going on to create startups, and from a quick survey, a lot of businesses concentrated in Denver proper are run by locals themselves.
With 165,000 new jobs emerging in the past four years, unemployment has been driven to around four percent — one of the lowest in the nation, especially among large metropolitan areas. So, it’s hard to knock the ambitious young people gracing Denver with so much to do and see.
Hearing from Denver locals who own small businesses, it’s clear there is a lot of embrace for the community, whether considered a local or not. There will always be two sides of every coin, multiple opinions, but there’s no denying that the millennials in Denver are a force, and the force is being channeled in some really exciting ways.
