One of our favorite events of the year, Fort Collins Startup Week is right around the corner!
Beyond being excited to attend, connect with leaders of companies on the cutting edge and learn from the some of the smartest people in the region, we are also thrilled to be sharing our tips, tricks, strategies and ideas on an amazing panel.
Fort Collins Startup Week
Created in partnership with Techstars, Startup Week Fort Collins highlights entrepreneurship as a primary driver for social, cultural and economic equity, serves as a platform for local entrepreneurs to share what they know with the city they love and empowers entrepreneurs of all stripes, backgrounds and passions to build better businesses. The free, five-day celebration kicks off Monday, Feb. 24 and features hundreds of sessions, each packed full of actionable information on the topic at hand.
“…this panel discussion will empower you with the practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business.”
Scaling Up
This year, Wednesday of Startup Week is dedicated to helping businesses scale. Globally, 90% of startups will fail. In the U.S., only 4% of all startups reach $1 million in revenue. And of those, only 10% scale to $10 million. That means your startup has just a 0.4% chance of growing to $10 million and above.
Startups fail for any number of reasons, from an insufficient cash flow and a lack of research to lack of expertise, poor partnerships and poor marketing efforts. Fortunately, research proves that establishing specific conditions in your business can help ensure that it will grow and achieve both scale and long-term sustainability.
To aid in that effort, Fort Collins Startup Week is hosting a series of fireside chats featuring 13 entrepreneurs who have crossed that $1 million revenue threshold in different industries. Additionally, Wednesday’s schedule spotlights seven sessions focused on scaling your startup, including a panel we helped organize: Scaling Up NoCO: Executing Strategies to Avoid the 70% Failure Deathtrap.
Scale-Up Strategies to Avoid Failure
When it comes to scaling up, four key areas define your company’s successful efforts:
- People
- Strategy
- Execution
- Cash Flow
Complicating the issue, moving from one step to the next comes with its own unique set of challenges. During our Comprise-sponsored panel discussion, some of Colorado’s top business leaders will focus their conversation toward strategies and execution techniques for growing your reach, garnering investor attention and building a synergistic team that will take your enterprise to the next level.
Scheduled just prior to the week’s grand finale keynote speech, pitch finals and end-of-week celebration, the panel event takes place on Friday, Feb. 28, 4:00 p.m. – 4:50 p.m. at Block One Events (428 Linden St.).
Moderated by Jana Sanchez, Launch No.CO’s executive director, the panel features:
- Doyle Albee, president, Compriseagency
- Brian Clark, CEO, Unemployable
- Chuck McCoy, senior partner, Creative Alignments
- Amanda Moriuchi, CEO, AppIt Ventures
- Kyle Sickman, sr. vice president, Business Lending, FirstBank – Northern Colorado
A marketing and public relations professional for more than 30 years, Albee’s experience includes packaged goods, tech, health care, clean energy, real estate, cybersecurity and nonprofits. His background includes 10 years with Coors Brewing Company (now MillerCoors), work with Sterling-Rice Group, the direction of global communications for hard disk drive manufacturer Maxtor and founding and managing his own public relations firm.
A writer, traveler and entrepreneur who founded the pioneering content marketing website Copyblogger, the personal growth newsletter Further and Unemployable, a resource that provides smart strategies for freelancers and entrepreneurs, Clark has started 10 businesses in the last 20 years, either solo or as a co-founder. By creating software-as-a-service, web hosting, WordPress themes and plugins, courses and conferences, Copyblogger made it to eight figures in annual revenue and high profit margins without advertising.
After starting her career in sales, and having spent the past 15 years focused on driving revenue for the companies she’s been a part of, Moriuchi now serves as the CEO of AppIt Ventures, a custom software development company headquartered in Denver. Moriuchi is also the founder of Denver Women in Tech, a 1,200-member meetup focused on furthering women in the local tech industry.
With deep expertise in the technology, natural food and beverage, biotech, agtech and cleantech sectors, McCoy and the Creative Alignments team’s unique Time-Based Recruiting™ model helped companies like SolidFire, VictorOps, HaloTop and RXBAR grow to successful exits valued at more than $2 billion.
Leveraging a decade of experience in retail branch management, residential mortgage and construction lending, commercial real estate lending and business lending, Sickman currently leads FirstBank’s Business Lending department. His department focuses on non-real estate financing for operating businesses located in Colorado, Arizona and California.
Scaling your business is far from simple but with the right focus on your people, strategy, execution and cash flow, this panel discussion will empower you with the practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business.
Are you scaling your company or simply striving to avoid the failure deathtrap? Come check our panel out and say hello! We can’t wait to connect and help tell the story that will bring your company to the next level.
