“As of right now, the state of Colorado is officially accepting cryptocurrency as a payment option for all taxes,” Polis said. “We’ve been talking about this for a while. We said we would deliver by the end of summer and we have.”

Polis made the announcement Monday during a news conference that kicked off the 11th annual He said the payment program, which began Sept. 1, is an example of Colorado being “tech-forward.”

Coloradans can use digital currency to pay taxes of all kinds: personal and business income, withholding, sales and use, severance and excise fuel taxes.

“The state will operate our own ledgers in dollars. Taxpayers who pay with crypto will see their transactions converted to dollars,” Polis said.

The Polis administration has said Colorado is the first state in the country that has started accepting cryptocurrency to pay taxes. Department of Revenue spokesman Daniel Carr said the state of Ohio had a pilot program a few years ago, but didn’t proceed with accepting the digital currency.

to make payments to participating government agencies and political subdivisions, said Heather Morton, who works on cryptocurrency and digital assets issues for the National Conference of State Legislatures.

The Utah legislation directs the state Division of Finance to contract with a third party by Jan. 1, 2023, to set up the process, Morton said in an email. A 2019 Colorado law authorized the state to accept digital currency for taxes, she added.

The has been modified to add cryptocurrency as a payment option when paying taxes online. People will be directed to PayPal, where they can select which cryptocurrency they want to use.

The service fee is $1 plus 1.83% of the payment amount. Tax refunds won’t be issued in cryptocurrency.

Carr said the volatility in the values of cryptocurrency doesn’t raise concerns about going forward with the program.

“We are using PayPal Cryptocurrencies Hub to accept all payments via cryptocurrency and they adjust for whatever the accepted cryptocurrencies values are in real-time. There is no risk to the state,” Carr said in an email.

The Denver Downtown Partnership, a business organization, hosted a panel of startup CEOs and founders Monday to launch the programs that run through Friday. shows that much has changed since the first startup week in 2012.

“When we looked at 2012 and watched Denver Startup Week, we were not showing up on any lists. We were not attracting large amounts of capital to Denver. We were not considered the best place to start a new company,” said Tami Door, one of the event’s organizers and former president and CEO of the downtown partnership.

But businesses “knew more was happening than people could see” and believed that developing relationships and sharing resources would get Denver’s story out, Door added.

The numbers are a big part of the story. In 2012, 84 tech startups were founded in Denver, according to the partnership’s report. In 2021, the number of tech startups launched was 352, a 319% increase from 2012.

The total number of tech startups was 417 in 2012, compared to 1,304 in 2021.

Investment in Denver startups soared to $1.9 billion in the second quarter of this year, an all-time high. Funding totaled $6.7 billion in 2021, according to the Downtown Denver Partnership.

A startup is defined as a technology company that was founded in the past decade and has fewer than 100 employees.

“Denver and Colorado as a whole are really on the map of the startup ecosystem,” said Gov. Jared Polis, who was a tech entrepreneur.

Colorado’s recovery from the pandemic-induced recession is among the strongest in the nation, said Polis, speaking during the startup week news conference.

“There are more people employed in Colorado today than before the pandemic,” Polis added.

Denver is the seventh fastest-growing labor market in the U.S., according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Some of the business people said the coronavirus pandemic that broke out in 2020 might have contributed to the growth in Denver’s startup scene. They said the pandemic has led people to think more about quality-of-life issues and re-evaluate their work situations.

And the speakers said as more people move to Colorado for work, fueled in part by the expansion of such companies as Amazon and Google in the area, Denver is increasingly seen as a good place to start and grow companies.

Lee Mayer, CEO of Havenly, an interior design company, said just a few years ago entrepreneurs would find themselves explaining why they were trying to build a company in Denver. That’s no longer the case, she said. Her company has expanded thanks to the pool of talented individuals in Denver and the relationships in the business community, she added.

“I actually don’t know if we’d be where we are or if we’d be here at all if we weren’t based here in Denver,” Mayer said.

New Zealand has about 900,000 fewer residents than Colorado, leaving it with a limited domestic market even when adding in customers from nearby Australia. Though small, the country is a hotbed for innovations with a global reach. Increasingly, those startups are choosing Denver over Silicon Valley and other rivals when it comes to setting up U.S. operations.

“The mindset in Colorado suits New Zealanders very well,” said Andy Burner, vice president of operations at Xero, a provider of cloud-based business accounting software. “I was blown away by how welcoming and open the city is.”

Xero, a rapidly growing competitor to QuickBooks, relocated its Americas headquarters from San Francisco to metro Denver in 2017. From about 80 local employees before the move, Denver is now home to more than 200 of the company’s 300 U.S. workers.

The company is a leader in New Zealand’s tech community, and its decision to leave northern California, the typical landing spot for tech transplants, helped put Colorado on the map. Burner and other Xero executives actively promote Denver, making their compatriots more comfortable with landing here.

Most of the New Zealand companies coming to Colorado are tech-focused, and some focus on aerospace, an industry where Colorado is a leader. Agriculture and energy are other areas of overlap. Among the Kiwi companies setting up operations in Colorado are AD Instruments, Adeption, Auror, Cin7, FileInvite, Fingermark, Holmes Solutions, Medtech Global, TracPlus and Vend.

Burner and other New Zealand executives listed similar reasons for why they chose Denver over northern California, and why Denver beat out rivals like Salt Lake City, Austin and Chicago.

Access to capital, clients and talent are the fundamental reasons why Denver won out over the alternatives, said Ky Hacker, vice president of revenue and operations at FileInvite, a document sharing platform that chose Denver for its North American base in June, a decision that should eventually bring about 140 jobs to Denver.

Denver and Boulder have a strong base of tech expertise, and skilled workers are willing to move here, which is helpful to foreign companies trying to figure out U.S. labor markets. Denver’s interior location and the variety of domestic flights make it easy to reach other markets.

When it comes to connecting with the home office in New Zealand, the Mountain time zone also works. And entry costs are lower than in more expensive coastal markets.

“What really sealed the deal for Denver for us was a quality of life and a culture that meshes well with our business and with New Zealand culture,” Hacker said. “We both want to work hard and grow things fast, but do it in a human way.”

A concerted effort

Although recruitment efforts have now gained a momentum of their own, a key accelerator was an active outreach by  Denver Economic Development and Opportunity and the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, which led a trade mission to New Zealand and Australia two years ago.

Stephanie Garnica, global business development director at DEDO, said Denver recruited foreign companies via trade offices until the Great Recession forced it to scale back. In 2018, the city relaunched its international outreach with Garnica and two other employees, reaping a big payback in interest and relocations.

“New Zealand and Australia are big standouts. They are two of our target markets because of the success we have had and because of the existing community here,” she said.

Programs like and help both established and startup companies from other countries get connected to the local business community. New Zealand and Australia have become so important as sending countries that DEDO dedicated an entire Global Landing Pad program to them in the spring.

“We also know that a positive experience with Colorado, starting with a company’s early investigation and continuing through groundbreaking and hiring here in the state will lead to introductions to other companies. We’ve seen a good deal of that recently with companies from New Zealand and Australia referring companies in their networks to us to explore how they too can successfully grow their business in the state,” said Michelle Hadwiger, the state’s deputy director of global business development, in an email.

Hadwiger said Australia ranks as the third-largest source of foreign direct investment in Colorado, tied with Germany. Despite its small size, New Zealand is the sixth-largest provider of foreign direct investment, alongside France and Switzerland.

A cultural fit

Although the Bay Area represents a mecca for technology startups, doing business there is expensive and the competition for talent is fierce, Garnica said. And with so many options available, employees tend to be less loyal.

“You want to do interesting work and you want to work hard, but you want to enjoy the outdoors too,” said Tom Batterbury, co-founder and co-CEO of Auror, pronounced “ora,” of the shared ethic that aligns New Zealand more closely with Colorado than the hard-driving Silicon Valley culture.

Oceans aside, New Zealand and Colorado both share majestic landscapes and plenty of opportunities for recreation.

“There is the cliché location, San Francisco, and we quickly ruled that out. We had looked at Portland, (Ore.) but it didn’t feel right for us,” he added. Chicago, another city on the shortlist, lacked the outdoor vibe, leaving Denver and Austin.

Auror provides crime intelligence software that helps retailers track and report cases of theft to authorities, leaving them better equipped to capture repeat offenders and bust up crime rings. Early on the company realized it needed to work with retailers globally to succeed. Although the Denver operations consist of six people right now, including Batterbury, the expectation is for rapid growth as the North American market opens up.

“Realistically, 90% of our business is likely to be out of North America over the new few years, and we will expect we will have over 100 people on that team,” he said.

One thing that helped sway Batterbury was a conversation he had with Burner about the merits of Denver over other cities. Now Batterbury recruits other executives from New Zealand. And there are small changes he is noticing that have made life more comfortable here.

“There are a few places that serve New Zealand and Aussie style meat pies and there are now two New Zealand-style ice cream shops, including one next to Sloans Lake,” he said, noting that English meat pies are no substitute. “It makes you feel close to home.”

Another confirmation he made the right choice came when he and his wife had their second child and neighbors came out to support them, acting as surrogates for the family and friends they had left behind.

For Hacker, the presence of other New Zealand companies wasn’t as big a factor as the welcome he found from the Denver business community.

“We could tell when we were having conversations we could tell there as a sense of welcoming and a tight-knit community. People were comfortable making referrals,” he said, adding one hope FileInvite has is to access local venture capital sources to help fund its growth.

The New Zealand Office of Trade and Enterprise, the country’s economic development agency, has a representative in Denver, marking the importance of the connection. And in another sign, New Zealand named Burner as honorary consul for Colorado this summer.

“Colorado is an increasingly important market and growing U.S. hub for New Zealand businesses, especially those in the information technology and aerospace sectors,” said New Zealand’s Consul-General to the U.S., Jeremy Clarke-Watson, in announcing Burner’s appointment.

More so than restaurants serving their favorite cuisine, one thing New Zealanders who have relocated to the state said could cement the relationship would be a nonstop air link between Denver and Auckland. The route of more than 7,200 miles could shave two or three hours off current connections through Los Angeles and align better with sleep schedules, Batterbury said.

For him, confirmation that Denver could support a nonstop flight came when he saw many of the people flying with him between Auckland and Los Angeles jump onto the flight he was taking to Denver.

Laura Jackson, the airport’s vice president of air service development, said Auckland is a target market for future nonstop service.

“The fundamentals of our business case are strong, supported by continued corporate investment between Colorado and New Zealand, and we expect efforts will regain momentum as travel restrictions ease,” she said.

On Wednesday morning, as she was preparing to inform the partnership’s staff of her decision, Door reflected on everything that has changed downtown during her tenure.

“We as a city have built something extraordinary,” Door said. “I think it is an incredible opportunity to step back and look at it more holistically.”

Door, a native of Flint, Mich., was named president and CEO in February 2005. Before that, she had been an executive vice president of the Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce, the nation’s largest regional chamber at the time, and led a five-state division of the First Chicago NDA bank. That business experience was integral to her successes in Denver, she said.

One of Door’s first major undertakings was working on the 2007 Downtown Area Plan that guides development in the city core.

“In 2005, we deeply considered that we needed to attract the future workforce and we spent an extraordinary amount of time thinking about what it would take to get talented individuals to move to Denver,” she said.

Thanks to a boom in new residential development in the city’s core and the arrival of new employers, large and small, the population in the city’s core neighborhoods has exploded over the last decade, from roughly 63,000 in 2010 to more than 95,000 as of last year, according to the partnership’s most recent State of Downtown Denver report.

The city’s knack for attracting highly educated millennials is among the things Doors counts as her greatest successes. She also celebrated the creation of the Commons on Champa and the partnership’s role in the launch of Denver Startup Week as things that will keep the city strong going forward even in the wake of a pandemic that has decimated downtown retailers and emptied out chunks of office space over the last 18 months.

“We are not dealing with a market-driven challenge, we are coming out of the pandemic challenge,” Door said of downtown Denver today. “We built this city to be resilient. We built this city to be able to stand the test of time.”

Door said the timing of her departure has nothing to do with COVID-19 and said she does not plan to run for office. She is the second economic development leader to announce her resignation recently. Kelly Brough plans to step down from the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce on Sept. 1,

With the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District, the commercial property tax-funded entity that maintains 120 blocks of downtown, approved for another 10 years and major projects like the reconstruction of the 16th Street Mall on deck, Door said now is a good time to step away.

“This is a really strong transition point,” she said.

She plans to stay on with the partnership through mid-November to ensure a “strong and healthy” transfer to new leadership. After that she intends to remain available to the organization and others in the community.

Denver Mayor Michael Hancock first met Door when he was on the City Council and was immediately struck by her energy.

“More than what she brought in terms of her energy, Tami brought tremendous vision for downtown and I think it was exactly what downtown and the city of Denver needed at the time she arrived,” Hancock said. “Her legacy will be felt for generations to come.”

When it comes to who will succeed Door, Hancock said his office plans to consult with the Downtown Denver Partnership but the decision will ultimately be up to the organization’s board. Someone who can support big projects like the 16th Street Mall update and the expansion of the Colorado Convention Center will be key, but so will finding someone with an understanding of the needs of commercial developers, Hancock said.

“In the midst of this transition, due to the new culture around working for home and hybrid work arrangements, it would be someone who understands that and can usher in a 21st century, post-COVID mentality,” Hancock said of the ideal candidate.

Smith, an alumnus of Denver’s East High School, has been under federal investigation since 2016 for dodging taxes on $200 million in assets moved through financial entities based in the Caribbean, according to a Bloomberg News .

That criminal probe is coming to an end after Smith reached a deal with the Department of Justice, . In addition to the settlement, Smith is working with prosecutors in a case against Houston businessman Robert Brockman.

Brockman was indicted Thursday on 39 charges related to an alleged $2 billion tax fraud scheme, according to the AP, the largest-ever tax evasion case against an American.

Brockman, a part-time resident of Pitkin County, gave Smith $1 billion in 2000 to help launch his highly successful tech investment firm, Vista Equity Partners.

On Thursday, David L. Anderson, U.S. attorney for the Northern District of California, commended Smith for working with prosecutors.

“Smith’s agreement to cooperate has put him on a path away from indictment,” the AP quoted Anderson as saying.

Smith, 57, started his professional life as a chemical engineer before going into finance. He’s now worth more than $5 billion, making him the richest Black person in America and the , according to Forbes 2020 listing of billionaires.

Smith is well known for his philanthropy. His pledge to pay off all the student loan debt for 400 students graduating from Morehouse College made international news in the spring of 2019.

Smith and Vista are based in Austin, Texas but are deeply invested in tech companies and other ventures in Denver.

He used $13 million of the untaxed money at the heart of the investigation to buy a property in Colorado and fund charitable events there, according to the AP.

When Denver Startup Week 2020 was held virtually last month, participating in a video question and answer session with Denver Mayor Michael Hancock. During that event, Smith talked about the “tens of millions of dollars” he has invested in the Welton Street corridor, the portion of Denver once known as the Harlem of the West for its importance to Black culture.

“Why?” Smith said of his investments in Denver’s most storied Black community. “Because you have to invest into that talent pool there to get more STEM-educated people from all walks of life in America actually now participating in what in the next generation of opportunity which is going to be STEM-oriented or tech-oriented.”

For Brooks, the venture was “an idea that had been sitting on the shelf” for a while. For Hirt, organizing a women’s business event was something she agreed to help her friend with.

“I said, ‘I’ll give you 20% of my time. That����ap all I got.’ It wasn’t a passion for me at the time,” Hirt said.

And then it was.

Co-founders Brooks and Hirt officially started SecondAct in July 2018 to provide women 40 years and older with support, resources and programs to help them to switch careers, start their own businesses or make the changes they want to make in their jobs and lives. Their first big event, “BizLifeCon,” drew 125 women in Denver Nov. 1.

Brooks, who had worked on her own and with Hirt in marketing, pursued her idea for a woman-focused business conference after getting turned down for corporate jobs. She chalked up her situation to ageism; she was 51.

“It’s not anything you can put your finger on. It’s the actions. It’s the tone of the voice on the phone,” said Brooks, now 53. “You’re either too experienced or you don’t have enough experience when you know that you have the experience.”

It’s not getting called back for the second or third interview when you always used to get those calls. Brooks grew determined to overcome the “isms,” including sexism and ageism, by building a network of women.

Hirt, who is 46, was running into the same walls when she wanted to re-enter the corporate world. She had worked by herself and with Brooks in marketing and public relations. She then shifted to her “passion project”: a short-subject documentary on being a child of immigrants and a workbook based on the documentary to use in the classroom.

“I started to second guess myself and I was like, ‘Wow.’ I’m actually experiencing what (Brooks) is trying to address with the community she’s trying to build, to help these women recognize that it’s not them. They’re not broken,” Hirt said.

Hirt jumped on board and became a co-founder of . The organization had a showcase session during Denver Startup Week in September. Among the women speaking at the standing-room-only gathering were Audrey Walters, 44, and Jenny Gilbert, 48. The friends combined their experience in public speaking, communications and education to start a business that organizes movie-making and video classes for after-school activities and summer camps for children. Talk to the Camera, which the two have started to franchise, is aimed at boosting children’s communication skills and confidence.

Gilbert and Walters, who’ve known each other since their children were in grade school, joke about how they’re beyond their second acts.

“It����ap actually like our third or fourth act, but this is the one that����ap for keeps,” said Walters, an actor who has worked as a media coach and kids’ talent agent.

Gilbert has been an educator and public speaking coach for professionals and executives. She and Walter explored starting a business after talking about how kids are buried in their phones and other devices so much of the time.

“We both had  taken  time off and really wanted to be home with our kids. I  think we each had many different hats,” Gilbert said. “All of those different pieces together helped us realize we have passion and wanted to give passion back. And everything kept leading us back to kids.”

Walters and Gilbert have contracts with public school districts, private schools and community centers. They have piloted the program in Albuquerque, N.M., San Antonio and Orlando, Fla. They teamed up with SecondAct at the recent conference to work with women on videos.

“A lot of women our age are a little lost, having to do conference calls on Zoom, interviewing for jobs on camera,” Walters said.

Caroline Lofts , a London native, met Brooks and Hirt at one of the brainstorming sessions before SecondAct was launched.

“I’m not big on events at all. In fact, I hate them,” said Lofts, who remembers attendees exclaiming things like “Yay, ageless!”

“I’m British, so anything that’s kind of beyond just, ‘Yes, I exist,’ ” is uncomfortable, Lofts said.

However, she ended up inviting Brooks and Hirt to locate SecondAct/Women in one of the WorkAbility co-working sites she and her family owns and runs. She said she could see the startup wasn’t just about “We are women, hear us roar!”

“It’s about we are a really great resource for women. We come with years and years of experience from all walks of life, from all different industries, from all different aspects of business and we’re not going to tear you down. We’re not in a situation where there’s room for just one success and therefore everyone else must be stepped on to get there,” added Lofts, CEO of WorkAbility.

Lofts is in her own second act. The 42-year-old was in the music and entertainment business before, as she described it, becoming “irrelevant and unseen and invisible” as she got older and became a mother. Brooks, Hirt and others involved in SecondAct have constantly pushed her out of her shell, Lofts said.

Hirt said she and Brooks acknowledge that men face some of the same challenges and that ageism is a societal problem.

“We don’t know when it became a social norm for age to define a person’s abilities,” Hirt said. “We don’t know when the period of time came when all of a sudden you hit a certain age and you’re no longer valuable.”

However, as challenging as it can be for men, Hirt believes it is “two to three times more intense for women.”

“You just look at pay equity, look at the number of women that sit on the boards. You look at the women who lead Fortune 500 companies and we pale in comparison to our male counterparts,” Hirt said.

Katica Roy, founder and CEO of Denver-based Pipeline Equity, wrote in a March 17 article in the magazine that the number of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has dropped by 14% since 2017.

“In the last year, we’ve also added 47 years to the time to gender equality (globally) and seven years to the time to gender equity in North America,” wrote Roy, an economist whose technology company works with businesses on closing the gender gap.

Closing the pay gap between men and women could add $2 trillion to the U.S. Domestic Gross Product, according to Roy’s article.

Brooks and Hirt want to take the Denver-based SecondAct/Women national in 2020. They want to tackle ageism as well as the lack of funding for startup companies.

“The company is all about events and education, providing workshops, masterminding sessions, consulting, providing experts to help women stay relevant, become relevant, get hired, get promoted, pivot careers, if they’re looking to do that, and start or grow their business,” Brooks said.

In the end, Hirt said the goal is for SecondAct to do its own kind of pivot. “We hope to one day have our mission change because ageism is no longer an issue.”

The company started with two friends working in the basement of a house on a recipe for a healthy energy bar and is now catching the attention of investors and stores, which are starting to stock Co-founders Tom Miner, Reed McIntyre and Maria Capecelatro won a recent business pitch competition, netting them a $1,000 check and a lot of exposure for the product.

The event, “Trout Tank Food Frenzy,” a gentler spin on TV’s “Shark Tank” about aspiring entrepreneurs, was sponsored by the Denver Metro Small Business Development Center. It included a five-week accelerator program that gave participants a chance to meet with business people, get coached on their pitches and talk to potential mentors.

“One of the biggest chords I think they hit was their sustainability and their packaging methods,” Abram Sloss, the center’s executive director, said.

The round energy snacks, with a diameter a little bigger than a quarter, come in plastic, recyclable jars. Although the jars can be recycled, Unwrapp’d really wants people to leave the empty containers in bins where they bought them so the company can sanitize and reuse them.

“When we started this, we had a couple of guiding principles. We knew we wanted to make something with no added sugar, no sweeteners,” Miner said.

The other goal was to cut the packaging waste.

“We did a lot of research into market and there just isn’t a recyclable wrapper option out there,” Miner said. “That kind of led to this format. We thought, ‘Hey, let����ap do something different.’ It might cost a little more to make something fully recyclable, fully reusable.”

After getting the taste and the soft and chewy texture they wanted, Miner, who had worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, and McIntyre, a school-based therapist, began selling the energy snacks at a local farmers’ market. Capecelatro, a nutritionist, joined the venture.

Unwrapp’d, which officially started in 2017, is now selling its Energy Bites in more than 200 stores, including Alfalfa’s Market, Lucky’s Market and coffee shops in Colorado and in Hy-Vee grocery stores in the Midwest. The company expects to start selling to a few independent stores in January in California, making that the 10th state where its product will be available.

The first store to sell Energy Bites was NOOCH Vegan Market in south Denver. Vanessa Gochnour, the owner, said she was glad to add the product because the focus on was good-tasting energy bites in recyclable containers.

“But we were even more stoked when they came in recently with the container return and reuse idea,” Gochnour said in an email. “We’ve already had several containers returned in the short time since the program launched at the shop.”

Although the company’s reach might expand, Miner said he doesn’t expect some things to change. He said Unwrapp’d wants to keep the food production in-house. They rent a shared commercial kitchen and could be adding granola and trail mix to their product line.

Unwrapp’d continues to use a manual, crank-powered cookie-dough extruder machine to make the Energy Bites. “It’s a little unconventional. It keeps us in really good shape,” Miner said.

The managers looked at an electric version, but figured out they could produce the snacks faster on their machine. And Miner said while rushing out a big order is tiring, it’s also something they all enjoy.

“It����ap fun, that camaraderie of being in there, being hands on, actually being an artisan. It’s pretty rare these days,”  Miner said.

The largest free entrepreneurship event in the world, according to organizers, the eighth annual Startup Week brought together speakers from backgrounds ranging from an NFL executive to director of diversity and inclusion for a Fortune 100 electronics company.

Whether they were speaking as part of a panel or sharing some thoughts between sessions, here are five pieces of advice for aspiring entrepreneurs from some of the pros:

John Elway, general manager of the Denver Broncos, Hall of Fame NFL quarterback, restaurant and car dealership owner

“Here is the one thing that I think really gives you an opportunity to be successful and that is don’t be afraid to fail. I’m just telling you, I’ve failed many, many times, but you’ve got to wipe yourself off and get back up. I think if you’re afraid to fail, then you never really find out how far you can go.”

Nolan Bushnell, founder of Atari Corp. and Chuck E. Cheese Pizza Time Theater, father of the modern video game industry

“Start by creating yourself a job. And try to do your first company as something that you can fund out of your back pocket. Atari started with $500 and in some ways that scarcity of capital gives your company really good discipline.”

Yolánda Chase, director of Work(place) Forward — global inclusion and diversity at Centennial-based Arrow Electronics

“To me, the most important things is, as you’re building and starting your business and crafting your internal framework … that you’re really intertwining this thought process and this mindfulness around culture. You want that culture, that inclusivity, that diversity mindset, that parity piece to exude through every single one of the individuals who works for you and right through the delivery process.”

Alicia Jessip, founder of the Women in Tech Denver Meetup group, inclusion and diversity manager at full-stack technology services company TEKsystems

“I think the big thing I would recommend is thinking about what it is that I am trying to launch and the market that I am trying to reach, and understanding the demographics of that market and having someone sit down with me and help me understand and articulate, ‘How do I best reach out to that market accordingly?’ Having a team that����ap going to help impact that is a really great way to embark on making sure that you’re being as accessible and as dynamic as possible with your product.”

Paul Szurek, president and CEO of Denver-based CoreSite, a real estate investment trust that owns data centers

“The primary requirement is to make sure you are solving an important customer need or problem. The startups that tend to fail have, they kind of have shortsightedness. They fall in love with their own idea because they think it����ap something that they individually would really grow to like and want. Sometimes they think they are saving the world with it. But they haven’t really done the work and research to understand if they are solving a meaningful problem or meeting a meaningful need for a very broad number of people.”

Brooks and Hirt, co-founders of an organization aimed at women over 40, told a standing-room-only session Wednesday at  that women who’ve embarked on new careers in their 40s, 50s and 60s are among some of the most successful entrepreneurs.

“Eighteen-hundred and 21 of you a day in the United Sates are building companies,” said Brooks, referring to a 2018 study of business women commissioned by

That’s up from a daily average of 952 between 2012-17, according to the report “The State of Women-Owned Businesses.” The report said that in 2018, women owned 12.3 million businesses, or 40 percent overall.

Brooks, who gave her age as 52.9 years old, told the crowd at the “Women Starting Up After 40” event that she and Hirt are among those who decided that ageism and the desire to follow their true passions led them to pursue second careers. They co-founded to provide resources, events and programs to help other women traveling the same path.

“Last year I was subjected to ageism and it wasn’t fun. I was trying to go back to corporate, and I couldn’t,” Brooks said. “In listening to your stories, we discovered there are lots of you out there.”

A response is to “dispel and rescript the narrative” that women over 40 are past their prime, Brooks said.

“Age is important for us and to show that this is what it looks like these days. We know they like to market to us about the Depends and the walk-in tubs and the pharmaceuticals,” Brooks said. “Well, I don’t need a walk-in tub.”

Audrey Walters, an actor who co-founded , which organizes movie-making classes and camps for children, said women in their 40s and older have experience that they can build on when launching new careers and businesses.

“We have lived a life and we have perspective that we might not have had in our 20s,” said Walters, a member of a panel at the startup session. “That doesn’t take the validity away from someone who starts something truly amazing in their 20s. It just means that our life experiences have given us more depth, so not only can we be more successful at this age but we can also share with those who need to hear more perspective.”

Some of the research appears to bear out the importance of experience when it comes to success in business. by researchers at Northwestern University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the U.S. Census Bureau said experience in a specific industry “predicts much greater rates of entrepreneurial success.”

Some of the numbers:

• A 40-year-old is 2.1 times more likely to found a successful startup as a 25-year-old.
• A 50-year-old is 2.2 times more likely to found a successful startup as a 30-year-old.
• 40-year-olds make up 3% of startup founders while 25-year-olds make up 1.7%.

The speakers at the event conceded it can be scary venturing out on your own after years working for someone else or returning to the working world after staying home to take care of children. However, they said, the payoffs can be huge.

Gina Schley was in sales and then stayed home with her children while pursuing her passion for gardening. She started a community garden and helped with school farms.

“I just started doing it because I loved it, and then I became really good at it,” Schley said. “And I’m like ‘Man, I need to turn this into a profession. I need to grow professionally and sell it.'”

She and her husband bought a three-acre piece of land in Arvada to start a flower farm. Their goal is to revive the floral industry in Colorado.

A piece of advice the business women had for other entrepreneurs: you don’t have to be able to do everything before launching a startup. They said they try to figure out what they can and hire help or seek mentors when they can’t.

“Google is your friend. There is an instructional video on 100% percent of things right now. If you don’t know how to do it, somebody does,” said Mary Smith, president of a hemp and CBD business.

The Hall of Fame quarterback appeared Thursday as part of a Denver Startup Week session dubbed “.” After a wide-ranging conversation that covered Elway’s football and baseball playing days, his experience as an owner of restaurants, car dealerships and an Arena Football League franchise, he was asked about the Broncos.

“I feel better at 0-2 this year than I did at 2-0 last year,” Elway said.

Why is that? In simple terms, new head coach and new quarterback .

“We have to be able to overcome bad plays, bad refereeing and mistakes on our part. Great teams are able to overcome these things,” Elway said. “I think Vic’s got us going in that direction and I think Joe Flacco has been a good pillar for us. He has experience. He’s won a world championship. He knows what it takes.”

Elway said he spoke to NFL officials this week after Sunday’s loss to the Bears at Empower Field at Mile High. In particular, Elway said he had questions about Chubb being called for roughing quarterback Mitch Trubisky on the game’s final drive.

The call, made after Chubb hit the quarterback as he released a 5-yard pass on first down with 31 seconds left in the game, resulted in a 15-yard penalty and helped set up Bears’ kicker Eddy Pineiro’s 53-yard field goal as time expired.

League officials, Elway said, admitted they were “dead wrong” on that call.

“So, that didn’t help,” Elway said to laughs and applause.

Officials also admitted to missing a hands-to-the-face penalty that should have been called against a Bears lineman blocking linebacker later in the series, Elway said.

But, as the two-time champion said, great teams overcome such things.

The Broncos will have plenty of overcome Sunday when they play the at Lambeau Field. They are 7.5-point underdogs against and Co., according to ESPN.