Recent Articles from David Lewis
Entrepreneur of the Year 2015 – Jim Deters
Some entrepreneurs succeed through a shotgun approach, firing ideas into the sky and seeing what comes down. Some are serial business builders, taking a shot at one enterprise after the other. Jim Deters is strictly a sniper, obsessively seeking his target.
Success from a shoestring
In 1997, a Steamboat Springs-based snowboarder named Gary Hammerslag had one of those insights that makes consumers lives’ easier and entrepreneurs wealthy. Hammerslag saw something that wasn’t there, a niche nobody had noticed.
The revolution at Evolution
Studies have shown that 70 percent of family businesses fail to survive to the second generation. Centennial-based Evolution Digital LLC is a different kind of family business that not only survived, but is due to bump revenues from $14 million in 2010 to $109 million in 2014 to $200 million this year. Sounds pretty good, […]
Tier ratings: Part of a much larger puzzle
A critical debate over the Uptime Institute's Tier Classification System has long been simmering in the data center industry. It is now time to bring this discussion back to a boil. The tier rating system is often referred to as the industry benchmark for setting design standards and predicting si...
Anxiety & optimism
The Colorado mergers and acquisitions market was mocked, rocked, socked and shocked right out of its jockstrap in 2007-2008. If financial markets had a heart it would have stopped then. But by 2009, M&As were turning back up again. Not up to the deal numbers of the bubbly mid-2000s, but nationwide steadily turning out about […]
Filtering out hype to arrive at true value
The Gartner Hype Cycle has been around since 1995, when it helped make sense of what became the Internet bubble. You know the Hype Cycle, it’s the pattern of events that follows the invention of a new technology, such as clean technology. The Gartner Hype Cycle “was originally adopted for technology innovations and companies, but […]
Top Company winner: Geotech Environmental Equipment
MANUFACTURING Geotech Environmental Equipment Inc. Geotech Environmental Equipment Inc. won its Top Company 2012 recognition in the manufacturing category, and as we all know any business that manufactures in the United States deserves an award of some kind. “We’re excited there’s still a manufacturing category,” jokes CEO Jeff Popiel, who might not be joking. “So […]
Top Company winner: Sage Hospitality
TOURISM/HOSPITALITY Sage Hospitality Resources Sage Hospitality Resources co-founder, President and CEO Walter Isenberg started with the company back in 1984 as COO. This is apropos for a hospitality company, which succeeds when it makes operations as complex as a nuclear submarine’s seem as simple as picking a mint off a pillow. Denver-based Sage Hospitality, with […]
CREED: Key player in cleantech
CREED, the Colorado Center for Renewable Energy Economic Development, celebrates its first anniversary this year, but forget any talk about baby steps. CREED already has taken giant steps. One reason for CREED’s rapid progress is its long gestation period. So while the center opened officially a year ago, it was in the works since at […]
Top Company winner: Zayo Group
TELECOM Zayo Group Zayo Group may be the most precocious 5-year-old you will ever know. Founded in 2005, Zayo Group already has annual revenue approaching $1 billion. Zayo revenue is growing at an annual rate of 12 percent, while EBITDA is growing 20 percent annually. Just as important, Zayo Group owns 68,500 route miles of […]
Top Company winner: IMA Financial
FINANCIAL SERVICES IMA Financial Group Denver-based IMA Financial Group won Top Company 2012 honors by scoring the business equivalent of a triple crown. Rivals for Colorado’s most competitive business honor, Top Company 2012 must evince their best-in-class supremacy in three critical categories: financial performance, wholehearted community involvement, and outstanding achievement in innovation[...]
Last year’s winners: Where are they now?
Time marches on, and last year we marked it by recognizing a handful of companies, institutions and individuals as contributors of the year in Cleantech. So one year after last year’s winners won their moment in the sun, we decided to catch up with what a few of them have been doing the past year. […]