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Aaron Ginn Is Building the Refinery for AI’s Token Economy
Before AI became a race for models, Aaron Ginn went looking beneath the interface. His answer is Hydra Host: software, markets and a global data-center network designed to turn stranded megawatts into useful compute.
Viswa Colluru Is Building a Search Engine for Nature’s Unread Chemistry
The founder of Enveda turned an old question - what has nature already invented? - into a new kind of drug-discovery company, built across Boulder and Hyderabad and designed to keep learning around the clock.
Erik Swain Is Cleaning Up the Internet's Messiest Room
After helping build the machinery of digital advertising, Erik Swain found his next company in the place everyone warns you not to look: the comments.
Matthew Irvin Is Teaching the Grid to Use Time
The Maplewell Energy co-founder spent his career around power plants and utility constraints. Now he is betting that smarter timing - from refrigerated drinks to distributed batteries - can make the electric system more flexible.
Sandeep Nijhawan Is Teaching Iron to Take a Cold Bath
At Electra, a former semiconductor operator is replacing the blast furnace's inferno with a 60°C electrochemical process - and betting that cleaner iron must compete without a green premium.
Techstars
Techstars is a global pre-seed investor and startup accelerator founded in Boulder, Colorado in 2006. It runs three-month, mentorship-driven accelerator programs that give early-stage founders capital, a dense mentor network, and lifelong connections in exchange for equity. Since its first class in 2007, Techstars has backed more than 10,000 founders across programs in dozens of cities and 150+ countries, producing companies such as SendGrid, DigitalOcean, ClassPass, PillPack and Remitly.
David Cohen
David Cohen is the founder and CEO of Techstars, the startup accelerator he launched in Boulder, Colorado in 2006 alongside Brad Feld, Jared Polis, and David Brown. A self-described life-long entrepreneur and ex-hacker, he built and sold two companies before turning to investing, then reshaped early-stage funding around a philosophy he calls Give First. Under his leadership Techstars has backed thousands of startups across dozens of countries, seeding more than a dozen unicorns and helping founders raise billions in follow-on capital.
Shinesty
Shinesty is a Boulder-born, Denver-based direct-to-consumer apparel brand built around one idea: make the world take itself less seriously. Best known for its cheekily named Ball Hammock pouch underwear and Boob Hammock bralettes, the company pairs proprietary soft fabrics and a supportive pouch design with an irreverent brand voice and outrageous themed party clothing. Founded in 2014 by University of Colorado Boulder friends, Shinesty has sold more than 12 million pairs of underwear, runs a monthly underwear subscription, and landed on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing U.S. companies.
zavvie
zavvie is a Boulder, Colorado proptech and fintech company that gives real estate brokerages and mortgage lenders a white-labeled marketplace of modern buying and selling solutions - cash offers, buy-before-you-sell bridge products, and iBuyer options - all designed to keep the agent and loan officer at the center of the transaction. Founded in 2015 by Lane Hornung and Stefan Peterson, zavvie turns ordinary buyers into cash buyers and helps lenders capture more mortgage business through its AI-powered HomeFAI platform.
Lane Hornung
Lane Hornung is the CEO and Co-Founder of zavvie, a Boulder-based proptech platform that helps brokerages present every buying and selling option to their clients. A Stanford-trained industrial engineer, former Cobra attack helicopter pilot in the Marine Corps, and two-time Inman Innovator, he also founded 8z Real Estate and built it into one of Colorado's top brokerages.
Jesse Zhang
Jesse Zhang is the 28-year-old co-founder and CEO of Decagon, a San Francisco-based enterprise AI company valued at $4.5 billion that builds autonomous AI agents for customer service. A Harvard Computer Science graduate who sold his first startup Lowkey to Niantic, Zhang pivoted to enterprise AI in 2023 when GPT-4 arrived, spending months in customer discovery interviews before writing a single line of code. In under two years, he scaled Decagon from stealth to unicorn status, raised $481M total, landed clients like Duolingo, Notion, Hertz, and Deutsche Telekom, and made Forbes 30 Under 30. He is also a Grandmaster-ranked Teamfight Tactics player, a competition math problem author, and an angel investor in 20+ startups.