Boulder has friends in high places these days.  Yesterday “Boulder Is for Startups” was posted on WhiteHouse.gov, shining yet another light on the entrepreneurial ecosystem here.  Boulder Startup Week, TechStars, and Silicon Flatirons all got some love.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Boulder was one of eight cities on the Startup American Roadshow.
• “Today, Boulder is home to one of the strongest entrepreneurial communities in the country, with close to 200 fledgling tech companies and a city campaign that proclaims ‘Boulder is for startups.’”  Note: boulder.me is not a city campaign – it’s a volunteer campaign.
• “The rabbi of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem…is my good friend Brad Feld.”
• “From May 18-22, the city’s startups will be rolling out the red carpet for talented developers, designers, marketers, and general startup enthusiasts.”  If you haven’t registered for Boulder Startup Week events yet, register now.
• “Many entrepreneurial communities ask how they can be the next Silicon Valley?  As Brad has often explained, that’s the wrong question.”

If you’re interested in reading the post in its entirety, check out “Boulder Is for Startups” on WhiteHouse.gov.

A recent Gallup poll revealed that Boulder is America’s happiest city, so it must be true.

Another Boulder Denver New Tech Meetup, another packed house.  All in all, the presentations were a mixed bag.  Until Mosoro anchored the event with a peek into their Willy Wonka world of possibilities.

Organizer Robert Reich started the evening with a couple of announcements:

1. All teams will be mentored to improve their pitches prior to presenting; mentoring is no longer optional.
2. Before each event, a variety of topics will be suggested as potential Birds of a Feather sessions.  Any topic receiving 5 or more votes will be assigned its own breakout room.

The presenters in order of appearance:

1. Partied, presented by Drew Stachnik.  The Partied app is designed to help bar-hoppers be “more productive” during a night out.  Based on the user’s location, the app compiles a Top 10 list of bars and nightclubs in the area as determined by how many other people “check-out” the scene  (Partied lingo for “check-in at”).  Drew expects the app to be complete by the end of summer.
2. HireFlo, presented by Rudy Lacavora.  Rudy made a fairly strong case that hiring well is critical to small business success, and that most small businesses suck at it.  HireFlo streamlines the hiring process by pushing job listings out to a variety of job boards, managing incoming resumes, and creating an applicant database.
3. Table’s Ready, presented by Bill D’Alessandro and Clay Iman.  Table’s Ready is a text message replacement for expensive pager systems at busy restaurants.  The live demo lost a bit of momentum because of poor cell phone reception in the room, but the system did ultimately work, and is already being used at Cheers Boston and a handful of other test locations.  Restaurants will have live access to customer wait times, no shows, and more.
4. Napkin Labs, presented by Riley Gibson.  Napkin Labs provides a platform for companies to collaborate with their communities to fuel innovation.  The web app allows users to contribute ideas in a series of stages, each designed to move the project forward to create actionable insights.  Customers can choose public labs for all comers or invitation only labs for specific collaborators.  On a side note, this was the first time I’m aware that somebody’s been booed at BDNT.  Riley let the audience know that co-founder Warren Ng, originally slated to co-present, had opted out at the last minute (300+ gave Warren a good-natured chorus of boos and hisses).
5. Clarity, presented by Adam Sullivan and Billy Davenport.  Clarity is slated to provide the medical marijuana industry an inventory management, POS, and compliance system.  The team presented some eye opening data on how large the MMJ industry is.  While it’s clear that Uncle Sam is interested in seeing this system adopted, it’s unclear as to whether dispensaries, who are the folks footing the bill, will opt to use the system while the MMJ industry still looks like the Wild West.
6. Street Fight, presented by Laura Rich.  Street Fight is a business to business resource focused on hyperlocal.  ”Think of it as Adweek or GigaOm for hyperlocal,” Laura said.  Street Fight provides news on hyperlocal topics with several posts a day, and plans to add events, research, and subscription based newsletters in the future.
7. Mosoro, presented by Mike Stemple.  Mike ended the evening with a bang, showcasing a wide variety of uses of Mosoro’s hardware widgets and software building blocks.  Examples included crowd sourced weather information from tiny temperature gathering widgets worn on a person, tiny speakers widgets attached to stuffed animals to read to children, and gyroscopic widgets to record skateboard, surfboard, and snowboard tricks.  Developers will have a field day creating novel uses of the technology, and consumers will snap them up.

Mosoro is showing what happens when vision, creativity and cool technology intersect. Completely mind blowing. #bdnt

May 3, 2011 7:46 pm via TweetDeckReplyRetweetFavorite

@Bill_Green

Bill Green

Turning a hobby into a business is hard work. Just ask Rachel Ryle, co-founder of Tweety Got Back. I did exactly that a couple of weeks ago and learned that she and co-founder Heather Capri aren’t afraid of hard work, as long as they can make some time for fun (and plenty of puns) along the way.

Calling Tweety Got Back a hobby may be a bit of sandbagging on Rachel’s part. After all, she and Heather had some success creating its predecessor My Space or Yours to offer free layouts and themes for MySpace users a few years ago.  They rode a whirlwind of referral marketing and started generating real ad revenue before MySpace faded away.

With the idea of what could have been fresh in their minds and Sir Mix-a-Lot on the brain, they launched Tweety Got Back to offer a similar product for Twitter users.  It’s dead simple to use: 1) sign in with your Twitter credentials, 2) choose a theme, and 3) click “apply”.

I fly the Red Sox colors with a Tweety Got Back theme.

In some ways, trying to turn Tweety Got Back into a full time business for Rachel and Heather is like trying to get lightning to strike twice, but they’re okay with that.  Rather than stand around with their fingers crossed, the two are using what they’ve learned from My Space or Yours to get to high ground, prop up their lightning rods, and get their rain dance on.  It seems to be working.

Tweety Got Back has gotten love from TechCrunch, PCWorld, Sir Mix-a-Lot himself (@therealmix), and a recent blog post from the Twitter mothership.  Not too shabby, but there’s still work to be done to get to the level they had with My Space or Yours.

Sitting with Rachel in Atlas Purveyors, I asked what replicating their past success would look like in the context of Tweety Got Back.  I got a tongue-in-cheek but telling answer: “I’d be buying Atlas and turning it into a dance club.”  A promising future awaits if they can build up their user base a bit.

Other examples of Tweety Got Back’s tongue-in-cheek awesomeness:

• Tweety Gives Back: every now and again Rachel and Heather will bake a few snacks and drop them off at other local startups.
• Tweety Got Backup Dancers: Rachel and Heather helped raise a bunch of money for local charities during Cause To Rock by joining the bands as backup dancers for extra donations.  Rachel: “I dance for money.”

Yes, they love a pun (Rachel has no shortage of these things), but are serious about giving back to the Boulder community, where they both grew up in the same neighborhood.  ”So many people in the community influence what we do and why we do it,” Rachel says.

It only seems fair that we give back too, so lets help Rachel and Heather build up their user base.  If you’re not a Tweety Got Back user already, go find a theme you like and apply it now: rep your favorite sports team, check out backgrounds from their 12 Featured Artists (6 of whom are Boulder’s own), or pick from 900+ other themes.  You might even have some fun while you’re doing it.

As far as hobbies go, Tweety Got Back is a pretty good one.  I, for one, would like to see it grow blossom into a full time business.  Maybe someday I’ll even hear “I like big butts and I cannot lie…” echoing late at night on Pearl after Rachel’s had a chance to open her dance club.

Last week TechStars co-founder David Cohen made an appearance on This Week in Venture Capital.  In doing so, he showed tons of love for the Boulder entrepreneurial community by talking about TechStars generally and slipping a slew of Boulder startups into the conversation.

Here’s my BlipSnips breakdown of the episode for your viewing pleasure: