So, if you are curious about the Boulder startup scene, looking to get more involved in the Boulder community, or want to show-off Boulder to guests then get started planning your week!

The Founder Institute and StartupDigest University have teamed up to give you “Startup and Go” – a crash course on the initial steps to creating a meaningful and enduring technology company.

“Startup and Go” is a collection of talks from the very beginning of the Founder Institute’s startup incubator program – which, in less than two years, has launched over 250 technology companies in over 15 cities worldwide. Taught by some of the program’s highest-rated Mentors, this course helps you create a strong foundation for a technology startup – from a properly vetted and researched idea, to a strong initial team. We’ve also included some follow-on assignments to help you turn these lessons into immediate action. The goal? To help you finally Startup and Go build your dream company.

This course includes three topics – Startup Ideation, Startup Research, and Startup Hiring, Firing & Co-Founders.

Tell me a little about SendGrid and how you are different than other email delivery companies.

SendGrid is an email delivery service that allows companies to use our email infrastructure to support their outbound email delivery efforts. Many companies start off with an home-made email system hosted in the cloud, but once that company begins to expand its customer base, then logically their email patterns increase and become more complicated to maintain. If you have a company with 10,000 users, consider the number of emails and other social communications they generate, the resulting email volume can quickly cause problems with delivery.

We also manage and monitor how ISPs, like Gmail, handle an email – like if they are accepting it or not. There are a number of ISP requirements email distributors must adhere to:  certain number of emails sent within a specific time frame, validation of sender information, confirmation that the recipient actually wants to receive the email, and confirmation that you, the sender, are who you say you are. We take all of those additional requirements out of a company’s hands, so a business can concentrate on their core competency and doesn’t need an entire team dedicated to email management.

ReturnPath, a local company in the email deliverability space and a company with whom we often work, did a study that revealed 20% of all legitimate email does not get delivered.  So, any company that relies on transactional emails, like shipping receipts and password reset notifications, or bulk email, like customer newsletters, can use our infrastructure to send out and manage their outbound email. We also extend our service to include metrics, so companies know if an email was opened, if links within the email were clicked, or if someone unsubscribed.

How long has SendGrid been around?

We launched in August 2009 at the end of TechStars, so it’s been about 18 months.  We currently have 20,000 customers, who have sent over 7 billion emails. We are averaging around 1billion emails sent per month. We are growing very quickly.

What’s been the biggest surprise during the initial startup phase of Send Grid?

I don’t know if this was so much a surprise as the timing was, but in January 2011 Amazon introduced a competing product. It was big news, especially from our startup perspective, to have Amazon come into this space and offer a competing product. Theirs is less expensive but lacks a lot of the metrics features our product offers.

So, we are basically maintaining our position as a premium service, serving the same customer segment and offering a much fuller service. We have advanced analytics that can provide insights into customer behavior once they receive an email, which can then be used to inform content changes. Amazon can confirm only that the email has been delivered, bounced, blocked or reported as spam.

We are really focused on the customer experience, which is why we offer dedicated IP addresses. Providing this type of service is more expensive, but it also ensures that we are able to more fully support our customer’s sending reputation. If you use a shared IP address and another company using that same IP address is not following best practices, such as maintaining list hygiene and sending quality content, then that also hurts your sending reputation, and thus, your delivery rates.

So, our focus is on helping our customers maintain a high sending reputation, improving their email deliverability and providing analytics on what’s working and what isn’t working in their email campaigns

How has the Boulder Community helped SendGrid? How important is the Boulder Community to the success of SendGrid?

Boulder was important enough for our original CEO and co-founder to relocate his whole family here. Our experience at TechStars was key to helping the team figure out the best way to attack the problem we wanted to fix. From that experience, we gained some amazing mentors, advisors and customers. Companies in the startup community, who wanted to help out, became customers and provided great feedback on the product plus spread the word about us.  Within the first 8 months, we had 6,000 customers from word-of-mouth marketing; we hadn’t yet done any formal marketing.

What does the future hold for SendGrid?

We have new leadership to take us to the next level of company maturity. We’ll be digging into channel partnerships to speed up growth to establish ourselves as an industry leader in email delivery. We are also focused on having an international presence.

What’s the one piece of advice you would give to someone contemplating a startup idea?

Come up with an idea that solves a problem for enough people to make it a viable option. You want to have a solution to a serious business problem that people are willing to pay for. Of course, the hurdle to get over is identifying that idea that solves a particular problem. Make sure you have firm data and that you are talking to the right people about your solution.

There are a number of Web Design/Application Development companies in Boulder. What is different about Quick Left?

Ryan mentioned that the people at Quick Left loved to get involved in the early stages of a project, product or company and help people get to the next phase in their development. It’s the iterative process to development that appeals to this team of engineers, social media strategists, and web developers. Ryan emphasized that this process is an “agile style of development, meaning that they want as much feedback as possible to drive and inform their development. Our development methodology builds in rapid iterations based on feedback – it’s the way we are organized.”

How important is the Boulder Community?

For Quick Left the Boulder community means to be surrounded by individuals enthusiastically working on projects, plans and goals. This type of environment really  “helps you focus on what you should be doing.”  It’s the community aspect that has really influenced the growth of Quick Left; in fact, most of their new business comes from word-of-mouth recommendations. They are also helping to nurture new talent by taking on interns and teaching them the ropes of Ruby and project management. By mentoring CU students and offering agile development training, Quick Left hopes to better educate other companies and clients about the importance of feedback-driven development.

Quick Left believes it’s important to give back to the local and global community of developers. They’ve started hosting a monthly HackFest in which they open their shop doors, buy pizza and beer and let devs congregate around a shared love of hacking. This event allows developers to work on pet projects and learn from peers working in similar areas. Additionally, QL has contributed open-source code to the global Ruby on Rails community in an effort to share the knowledge they’ve gained and to highlight their expertise.

How did the company get started and how did the name Quick Left originate?

I asked Ryan about the name – Quick Left – and what it means and how it was chosen.  Ryan said one of the founders, Collin Schaafsma, was out riding his bike and took a “quick left” onto Left Hand Canyon.

Having worked in both the start-up realm and interactive agencies, Collin wanted to create a firm that focused on the craftsmanship of innovative software through Agile development practices. “We want to raise our industry to a higher standard,” says Collin. With a little money saved up, a home office and a few small clients, Collin started Quick Left as a bootstrapped venture. He soon partnered up with two other developers, Ingrid Alongi and Sam Breed, as co-founders and Quick Left was off to a running start.

Do I hear a virtual “whoa, where the hell have you been”??!! If you are meeting the announcement of our glorious return with a little skepticism, we understand. But like any software upgrade, enhancement or fine-tuning, you always encounter unexpected issues. And so it was with our new roll-out.  So, please give us a second chance and if you have ideas on topics, want to contribute a post or want to get more involved in your community, drop us a line at robertsjennifer at gmail dot com.

Just a few days away from Ignite Boulder 12, this Thursday at Chautauqua!

Here is a list of the speakers:

Amy C. Christensen @expandoutdoors Stripping down on  Kaua’i
Jeremy Tanner @penguin On Travel
Stephanie Lee Su-Ling @nuancechaser The Rationality of Fear
John Common @johncommon Beautiful Empty
Andrew Hyde @andrewhyde How To Build a Trail
Kendall Ruth @iamkendal Inconceivable or That Word Doesn’t Mean What You Think it Means
Jesse Weaver @jweav1 The Independence Day Theory: Why an Alien Visit may be Humanity’s Only Hope for Survival
Mary Kuehner @daisycakes Life Lessons of a Children’s Librarian
Rise Keller @vanillagrrl Baking at High Altitude: It’s All About Atmospheric Pressure
Sam Stauffer @redhead_wilma Take a Chill Pill: Dealing with Anxiety Disorders and other Mental Illnesses
Kate Brown @invinciblekate Lunch Lady Land – Food Activists on the Front Lines of the Childhood Obesity Battle
Danya Michael @theroseinbloom Fairy Tales as Education, or Why It’s OK to Read Harry Potter after High School
Emma Nicoletti @dollemma A Post Apocalyptic Experience without an Apocalypse: Working as a Waitress.
Joel Gratz @gratzo Hire a Meteorologist, Not a Stock Broker.

1/3 organizer picks, 2/3 community picks.  You can follow them all on twitter with this handy link.

Tickets are on sale now!  http://bit.ly/igniteboulder12

• Pivotal Labs
• Viget
• Slice of Lime
• Imulus
• GB Studios

The general theme is test driven development (TDD). For a full list of potential topics and all other details, see the announcement. Come hungry!

The address:
1919 14th Street
Suite 714
Boulder, CO 80302

[Disclosure: I work at Quickleft.]

Fortunately, after the hangover wore off they decided upon dojo4. But they kept the swords and a bit of the theme – 4 is the Japanese symbol for death. Then something strange happened. David said once they named their space, the work began pouring in. Now, they are helping start-ups and other more established companies with their branding, video production, development, packaging, photography – essentially any creative development concept. The folks at dojo4 aim to use art and technology to help companies with their development projects. As important as the creative and technical development of a project is the relationship doJo4 establishes with a client. Jeff stressed how important this component of their business is and in many ways builds on their ideas around community space. They want to get to know their clients, understand their needs and figure out how dojo4 can help – they want their clients to be as proud of the end-result as Dojo4 will be to include it in their portfolio!

The dojo4 group is comprised of Corey Kohn, Dave Clements, Jeff Larrimore, Justin Crawford and Ara Howard.

Sustainability and performance are key elements to the clothing they produce. The shirts are stamped instead of labeled on the back, and the tags that are safety-pinned to each shirt are wild flower seed tags – soak them overnight and plant. The shirts are printed locally and are produced using phthalate-free and pvc-free water-based inks. Jeff and Claire have really thought through the production of their designs, the choice of fabric and how they market their products to ensure they have the smallest footprint.

Alchemist provides casual, earth-friendly clothing for athletes who live and play in the outdoors. They fuse premium, sustainable materials with smart, original graphics for the active outdoor community. Organic and recycled materials come together to create threads that are buttery soft and comfortable. Green never felt so good.

I’m getting this one for my husband.

The goal of the offering is to make usability best practices and user interface design techniques based on 20 years of web usability experience accessible to even the smallest of companies at an affordable price. The Web site review works in the following way:

1. Sign up.
2. Provide some typical customer information.
3. Define a scenario. A scenario is what you want a customer to do when they get to your site
   • For example, a customer visiting a jewelry store’s Web site may search on necklaces and compare prices on two of them in a similar price range.
4. Review the video. After a two to three day turn around, Lyn and her team will provide you with a video, including recommendations.

The charge for this service is $139 and is really tailored-made for small businesses, small design shops or web design groups wanting a second set of eyes to review their work.

According to Lyn, there has been some push back from the usability community regarding the low cost of the offering and assertions that real recommendations can’t be provided without substantial audience analysis. It’s a point Lyn concedes but she asserts that her and her team have over 20 years of experience in the usability and UI field and are applying industry best practices and methodologies to each review. Further, it’s a chance for businesses unfamiliar with usability testing to learn of the real value of testing and user interface design. Unlike the many online “remote usability” sites that are available, usablefeedback.com’s site does not require companies to know how to design research studies, write research questions, or interpret data from the feedback.  But the service can help companies understand why something is happening on their site and how to fix it, which is the key to effectively redesigning a site.