Tag: colorado

Presenting Denver NWSL!

Nicole Glaros2 Comments

I can’t believe it. We did it, we really did it.

A little less than 2 years ago, I joined Ben Hubbard, Tom Dunmore, and Jordan Angeli at ForDenverFC, an effort to bring women’s professional soccer to Colorado. And today, that dream is realized! 

My story began with the nudging of a friend Jaclyn Hester, who suggested I watch the Angel City documentary. In that video, there’s a scene where Abby Wambach is interviewed about receiving the ESPY Icon Award, next to Kobe Bryant and Peyton Manning. She laments that instead of feeling pride in what her accomplishments have brought her, she felt rage at not entering into retirement with a similar financial situation as Kobe and Peyton. While she didn’t begrudge them their success, she couldn’t understand why she didn’t have similar opportunities as those two, in spite of similar career accomplishments. And honestly, I got angry. Angry for Abby, angry for female athletes, and just angry for women in general. Any woman who sees that video should be angry. So I started digging. 

At that time, there was not one women’s professional anything in Colorado, despite Denver boasting 6 men’s professional teams. How can that be in such an athletic, pro sports state? If I was going to start a women’s professional sport team here, it just had to be soccer. While other sports could make sense, soccer has a much more global presence, and the US Women’s National Team has been ranked #1 for most of the last 10 years. So our ladies win on the global scale, where men’s soccer is ‘meh’ globally. Even more impressive, Colorado is well represented in the starting lineup for the USWNT, which means we’re producing the best talent globally right here in CO, but they can’t play here because we don’t have a team? Insane! So let’s start a women’s soccer team! 

I got connected to Ben Hubbard, Tom Dunmore, & Jordan Angeli who had been working towards this goal for a little under a year and we started ForDenverFC – a grassroots effort to pull together Colorado’s first women’s pro soccer team. We recruited a contingent of almost 150 ForDenverFC Ambassadors who organized community events around Colorado to help spread the word. Together, we made huge strides on the marketing and community front, the facilities front, and the financing front. Together we identified Rob Cohen as an ideal anchor owner for this effort, and were delighted (if not surprised!) by how quickly and eagerly he said yes. Rob stepped in and brought the dedication, heft, resources, and influence to get the effort over the line. We couldn’t have done this without Rob!

So Colorado – I am so excited to share with you that ForDenverFC has realized it’s dream. Presenting – Denver NWSL! 

Secure your season tickets by placing a deposit here (Kickoff in 2026 or 2027). LFG!!

Exciting News for the Colorado Startup Ecosystem

Nicole Glaros9 Comments

Back in March, I wrote about the departure of Techstars Boulder, and on the back of the Foundry announcement, it became clear that we, as the Colorado startup community, needed to evolve and step up. For those of us who have been around a while, we remember what it was like in the early days – we knew how magical it was. People, whether representing themselves or representing different entities, got together to help the founders succeed. From mentors to law firms to CU to individuals to investors, we all participated.  We were small then and could fit into one room (hello Wolf Law!), everyone knew everyone else, and we often hung out socially and had a ton of fun together. But we all had one thing in common, we wanted to help startups succeed and believed that a rising tide raises all ships. 

But today isn’t like it was back then. Colorado is different. We are different. Those of us OGs are older now, there are awesome new people here, the startup ecosystem is bigger, and it needs to change and evolve. We, as a startup community, need to keep what made it magical but evolve to accommodate different times, markets, and talents.

Well, we’ve been working on just that. In part of a broader plan, I’m pleased to share that I, along with Natty Zola, David Cohen, and support from others along the way (you know who you are) have worked to launch a Techstars accelerator program experiment here in Colorado, leveraging what we know works, and trying to evolve some things that didn’t work.  For example, this instance of Techstars will be locally owned, governed, and operated while still having access to the global Techstars resources.  While Techstars will be an anchor investor, and David will sit on the board alongside me and Natty, the vast majority of the capital will be from the local ecosystem, governed by a local board of directors that Techstars influences but doesn’t control, with a staff that reports to this local entity. This allows the economic incentives to be fully aligned, to keep the returns and control here in Colorado, for Techstars to support the success of the local activity, and for the local program to take advantage of all that Techstars has built over the years. The accelerator has and can generate phenomenal outcomes when incentives are aligned, because when the returns are kept locally, it spins the flywheel of growing future companies here.  Techstars got a lot right in the early days, and we plan to capitalize on that here, as the first community with this arrangement called Techstars Colorado, a startup community partnership.

But it doesn’t stop there, because Techstars was never the community, it was just a part of the community.  In response to a ton of feedback that we need a place to gather, we are working to secure a building to be a nexus for this next generation of startups. Assuming we are successful (and are getting closer by the day!), it will house not only Techstars Colorado, but other venture funds, startups, founders, mentors, and organizations committed to helping startups succeed. We have big plans for support and resources for startups, not just at the pre-seed and seed stage, but well into the growth stages. Our goal isn’t to be the community here either, but rather to be an anchor in it, designed to live well beyond us and our influence, and to reunite the ecosystem so that we can raise the tide again here in Colorado.

It’s still early days, these things don’t happen overnight, and we will need the community (that’s you!) to step up to make this happen – which in today’s market isn’t an easy undertaking. But we have most of the key stakeholders committed and we anticipate launching sometime in 2025.

If you’re interested in getting involved, here’s what we are looking for!

  • Hire a Managing Partner to run Techstars Colorado (correct, I’m not running it). If you or someone you know has been a founder CEO or CTO of at least 1, ideally 2 venture-backed startups and are interested in investing, please click here for more information and to apply.
  • If you’d like to learn more about the following items, please fill out this form:
    • Becoming a Techstars mentor
    • Sponsorship
    • Office space or membership for a dedicated space for startups (likely in Boulder)
    • Investing in startups
    • Just would like to stay ‘in the know’

I’m excited to play a key part in uniting the startup community and helping Colorado take a key step forward in our own evolution. I’d love it if you joined us!

A reinvention of Techstars

Nicole Glaros2 Comments

For the past 48 hours, I’ve been fielding texts, calls, emails, and mentions, non-stop, due to the post from Techstars about Techstars 2.0, the closing of the Boulder accelerator program and others in key cities, and the shifting of the HQ to NYC from Boulder.

Techstars has been slowly changing and adapting over the years, and yes of course some of that makes me sad. Many of the best moments of my career and life were in the magical early years there. Techstars has been such a gift, not just to me, but to all the early communities.  

We all bonded not just over the mission of the company, but over its values.  We lived, ate, and breathed the values of the company – and what made Techstars so remarkable was we believed we could not only create shareholder value, but instill VALUES alongside it.  Everyone close to the company, alumni and employees alike, they still carry those values and work to uphold them personally. And it’s why I believe the reaction to the news has been so strong!

But Techstars needs to evolve, it needs to iterate, it needs to reinvent itself because what works on a local community level is very difficult, dare I say impossible, to pull off on a global scale.  The values haven’t changed, but how they execute them has to.

I say this as I think about my daughter who is turning 14 shortly, and is one of the reasons I left Techstars back in 2022; I wanted to spend more time with her before she leaves for college. When she leaves, I will be indescribably sad, unbelievably nostalgic, but also incredibly proud of her as I watch her reinvent herself, as I watch her evolve and grow. She’s going to leave ‘home’ in search of her next chapter, but her roots will always remain here in Boulder, here with me.  And when she leaves, it’s then time for me and my husband to reinvent ourselves too.  For everything, there is a season.

So go Techstars, go reinvent yourself, go create the 2.0 version that kicks the 1.0 version’s ass.  Thank you for all you’ve given us, for showing us what’s possible, and for paving the way.  Please keep spreading those values far and wide, and remember always where you came from.

And for all the communities that feel vacant now – it’s a chance for us to reinvent ourselves too. We can reignite that entrepreneurial spirit that’s true to our communities and not in service of anything else.  We’re already working on it in Boulder.