Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City

YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS ORGANIZATION

When I first moved to Boulder in 1995, the only person I knew was Verne Harnish. Verne was the founder of the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO) (http://startuprev.com/d0), which he’d started in the late 1980s. YEO was a membership-based organization for entrepreneurs of companies under the age of 40 (now 50) who had founded companies with over $1 million in annual revenue.

I joined YEO in 1990 after attending the first Birthing of Giants event, which was sponsored by YEO, Inc. magazine, and MIT Enterprise Forum. That first class included a number of amazing people, including Ted Leonsis, whose company was acquired by AOL after which Ted went on to become the vice chairman of AOL, and Alan Trefler, whose company Pegasystems (NASDAQ: PEGA) went public a few years later. I was one of the youngest participants, and my company, Feld Technologies, barely crested the $1 million mark.

Shortly after this first Birthing of Giants event, I started the Boston YEO chapter. I’m still friendly with many of the entrepreneurs who formed the initial core group of YEO Boston, along with many of the entrepreneurs I met at YEO International conferences. Through YEO, I had found my peer group and realized how critically important it was, at an early point in my career, to spend time with one’s peers.

Shortly after I moved to Boulder, I started looking for other entrepreneurs like me. Boulder didn’t have a YEO chapter, so I asked a lawyer and an accountant who I ...