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Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Sasquatch Cookies Deliver Homemade Treats With BigFoot

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Sasquatch Cookies

Food & Beverage

Colorado Springs, Colorado

Website: www.sasquatchcookies.com

Brooke Orist started Sasquatch Cookies in 2017 with eight recipes and a simple premise: freshly baked cookies delivered to your door by someone in a Bigfoot costume.

Making a hard pivot from her previous career in the nonprofit world, she baked cookies in a commissary kitchen before opening her first location in downtown Colorado Springs in 2020, followed by two more in 2022, including the walk-up “Baby Sasquatch” at Red Leg Brewing Company.

Orist was drawn to Sasquatch as a brand as she sought a nomadic theme and says the company leaves “good footprints” by donating 10 percent of profits to the Springs Rescue Mission. A local seamstress makes the costume bodies.

The company took off in a big way in 2020. “We went from very small, like doing 20 orders a night, to doing like 500 orders a day,” Orist says. “I still see it growing, which is really encouraging.”

The menu has included more than 100 varieties over the years, with a core catalog of 11 cookies and a pair of rotating recipes every week. “Our most popular is the s’mores one,” Orist says of the latter. “Everybody loves the s’mores.”

Orders range from a half-dozen to 10,000 cookies for Amazon, as the employee count ranges from 30 to 70, depending on the season. Delivery by Sasquatch, which was initially the only way to get the cookies, is now a $25 upcharge and about 30 percent of the business.

Looking back, Orist says the operation is surpassing her expectations. “I am astounded,” she says. “I knew I didn’t want this to be like a hobby business, I didn’t want it to be a side hustle. I knew I wanted it to become my career, to make it into something.

“It’s amazing how it all worked out,” she adds. “We have three stores now. When I originally made a plan for what I hoped to see, I said I hoped to have six stores eventually.”

And while she might look to Castle Rock or Fountain for the next location, Colorado Springs has proven to be a fertile market. “Down here, everyone has an ‘I believe in Sasquatch’ sticker on their car,” she laughs.

 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Capella Space’s High-Resolution Satellites

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Capella Space

Aerospace & Aircraft

Louisville, Colorado

Website: www.capellaspace.com

While Capella Space is headquartered in San Francisco, the company planted its manufacturing flag in Boulder County within a year of its founding in 2016.

The first company in the U.S. to commercialize synthetic aperture radar (SAR), Capella launched its first prototype in 2018. That was followed in 2020 by Capella-2, a satellite capable of producing the world’s highest-resolution commercial SAR imagery, primarily for applications in defense and disaster response.

It’s all about seeing the 75 percent of the planet that’s under the dark of night or cover of clouds or smoke at any given time. “We design, build and operate our own satellites, and those satellites can image the Earth through rain, smoke, clouds, daytime, nighttime,” says Mack Koepke, Capella’s VP of global sales and marketing. “Our satellite systems send a radio signal to Earth, and that radio signal bounces back from Earth to our satellite system. Depending on how that radio signal interacts with what it touches on Earth, you start to gain a picture of what is going on, on Earth.”

There’s a reason the startup immediately looked to establish manufacturing in Colorado. “It was such a rich pool of talent that we frankly just couldn’t pass up,” Koepke says. “We really wanted to ensure that we had a footprint here in Colorado to leverage the excellent workforce that comes out of places like the University of Colorado, as well as some of the legacy aerospace companies that we have, like Ball Aerospace, Lockheed and others.”

The company, which has raised more than $200 million in venture capital to date, has expanded its Colorado facility twice and now occupies a 32,000-square-foot space in Louisville with about 50 employees.

“This larger facility allows us to actually increase the throughput and volume of satellites that we manufacture,” Koepke says. “With this newer facility, we’re actually going to be able to build at least one a month.” With a dozen satellites in orbit as of late 2023, Capella could double its constellation in a year at that rate.

Koepke says Capella eschews slow and methodical protocol in favor of a nimbler design and manufacturing model. “That allows us to take a clean sheet of paper, design a satellite system, and go all the way to production and actually build one of those systems in a really short amount of time,” he explains. “For us, a clean sheet to an operational satellite system can be 12 to 18 months, whereas on a legacy system, that might be on a timeline of seven to 10 years.”

 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Made in Colorado (Winter 2023): Autonomous Tent’s Movable Five-Star Hotels

There’s a common misconception that the United States doesn’t manufacture much anymore. In reality, the country continues to out-manufacture China on a per capita basis, and domestic growth outpaced the global average for the first time in years in late 2022.

Colorado is a case in point. Data from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis shows that employment in Colorado’s manufacturing sector peaked in 1998 at 192,200 workers. That plummeted to 122,200 employees in 2010, but the state’s manufacturing workforce has steadily grown to surpass 150,000 as of late 2023.

With these dynamics front and center, this year’s “Made in Colorado” profiles illuminate 10 of the state’s pioneering manufacturers, makers of whiskey, satellites and just about everything in between. Today, we’re highlighting Autonomous Tent Co, the world’s first movable five-star hotel.

READ: Inside the Colorado Semiconductor Industry Renaissance — CHIPS Act Sparks Manufacturing Revival

Autonomous Tent Co.

Home & Lifestyle

Denver, CO

Website: https://www.autonomoustent.com/

Autonomous Tent Co. sunset picture of interior.

Inspired by the soaring coastal designs of late architect Harry Gesner, Phil Parr launched Autonomous Tent to build the world’s first movable five-star hotels in 2013.

Ranging from 380 to 580 square feet, the customizable tents have evolved as Parr iterated the design and manufacturing model over the decade. With a polycarbonate frame, the company’s prototype tent was installed on the West Bijou Ranch east of Denver in 2013. Parr moved to a steel frame when Treebones Resort in Big Sur, California, became the first paying customer in 2015.

Now with more than a dozen installations from Wyoming to New Zealand, the company experimented with wood and aluminum before gravitating back to steel frames, now fabricated by Monarch Metal Manufacturing in Denver.

“Monarch has been just an amazing partner,” Parr says, noting that the learning curve for both companies has required patience and persistence. “You can sit and draw these parts for months, but until you actually make them and you’re out there in the field and you’re assembling them and you see how things fit together do you see things from a different perspective.”

The minimum budget is usually around $100,000 for an installation, and Autonomous Tent sells the frame and fabric for $60,000. The “vast majority” of inquiries come from resorts and other commercial operations.

Parr continues to work on new designs and is bullish on a model due for release in 2024 with amenities for watching wildlife and stargazing.

“We’re working on a new concept where it has a retractable roof over the bedroom and a rooftop deck over the living room,” he says. “The original idea was that it’d be portable and transportable and you could set it up in a day or two, and that just hasn’t been the case with that original design. It takes a couple of weeks to set it up. But there are so many opportunities where, if we could set up a structure in a day and take it down in a day and easily ship it, it would open up a lot of other doors.”

 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected].

Tech Startup: ThinkOrbital — Infrastructure For outer space

ThinkOrbital  

WHERE: Lafayette, CO

WEBSITE: www.thinkorbital.com

FOUNDED: 2021

 

INITIAL LIGHTBULB 

Co-founder and president Lee Rosen retired as a colonel in the U.S. Air Force in 2011 and embarked on a career in the commercial space sector. After a decade with SpaceX, Rosen came together with ThinkOrbital co-founders CEO Sebastian Asprella and CTO Vojtech Holub, Ph.D., to develop Holub’s idea for infrastructure in outer space.  

Now with about 10 employees, the company is based at a space-centric facility called Tycho Station in Lafayette. Rosen says he anticipates hiring in 2023 but doesn’t see recruitment as a hurdle: “Everyone wants to move to Colorado. It’s not like Los Angeles or Florida.” 

IN A NUTSHELL 

The legacy method of manufacturing orbital infrastructure is strictly terrestrial. “Everything is built on the ground,” Rosen says. “You’re constrained by the volume of the rocket. 

“It’s like trying to build the Empire State Building in New Jersey, putting it on a truck and taking it to New York City. It makes absolutely no sense. You want to build big infrastructure where you need it.” 

The bottom line: Rosen says ThinkOrbital could launch the equivalent volume of four International Space Stations on a single rocket in the form of its spherical ThinkPlatform. “If you imagine a soccer ball made up of pentagons and hexagons, and you were able to take those pentagons and hexagons and stack them flat, IKEA-style, you could get a lot more material in a much smaller volume,” he explains. “What we do on orbit is essentially re-assemble that soccer ball. We do that by taking that flat pack and using precision robotics and latches to align large pentagons and hexagons. That gives it its basic structure, and then the special sauce is actually welding that structure together to make it a rigid, pressurizable structure in space.” 

In the near term, the company is developing tools for welding, cutting and additive manufacturing in space. “Eventually, we’ll use that toolkit to build large infrastructure in space,” Rosen says. 

Case in point: ThinkPlatform 1 would be a module attached to an existing space station to prove the concept, then ThinkPlatform 2 would be a free-flying spacecraft, likely to demonstrate in-space manufacturing. “ThinkPlatform 3 is the future with a pressurized human-habitable volume for NASA or in-space manufacturing of space tourism,” Rosen says. 

Rosen says he expects demonstration missions of the company’s welding and cutting tools by mid-2024 before their market debut in 2025 or 2026, followed by ThinkPlatform 1 in 2027 or 2028. “It’s not a 20-year project,” Rosen says. 

Brandon Shelton, founder of Charlotte, North Carolina-based TFX Capital, says Rosen’s background with the Air Force and SpaceX was a big part of the decision to invest in ThinkOrbital. “We’re really looking for resilience, that ‘been there, done that’ sort of thing,” Shelton says. 

With the International Space Station set to be decommissioned in 2031, there’s a big opening. “You have to have options,” Shelton says. “What is the next step for having space in space?” 

READ: Tech Startup — Skyhook Solar: Solar-powered Charging Stations for E-bikes and Electric Cars

THE MARKET 

ThinkOrbital’s market includes government entities like NASA and Space Force as well as companies involved in space tourism, pharmaceutical manufacturing and orbital debris remediation. 

“Our near-term focus is on building this toolkit so you can actually do this type of construction in outer space,” Rosen says. “We want to be able to sell the toolkit first, whether it’s a welder, a cutter, or an inspection capability.” 

FINANCING 

The company has received two grants totaling more than $800,000 of cash and incentives from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade as it raised a pre-seed funding round in 2023. 

Rosen says ThinkOrbital will subsequently pursue a seed round of about $9 million after its first demonstration missions.  

 

Denver-based writer Eric Peterson is the author of Frommer’s Colorado, Frommer’s Montana & Wyoming, Frommer’s Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks and the Ramble series of guidebooks, featuring first-person travelogues covering everything from atomic landmarks in New Mexico to celebrity gone wrong in Hollywood. Peterson has also recently written about backpacking in Yosemite, cross-country skiing in Yellowstone and downhill skiing in Colorado for such publications as Denver’s Westword and The New York Daily News. He can be reached at [email protected]

Good Company: Mary Nguyen and the Olive & Finch Collective  

Discover the journey of Mary Nguyen, the Executive Chef and Owner of Olive & Finch, as she shares her path from finance to the culinary world. Get insights into her experiences, challenges, and the evolution of Denver’s dining scene in this exclusive interview.

Hometown: Denver 

What she’s reading: Mary’s reading two books right now — “Meditations” by Marcus Aurelius, which dives into Aurelius’ principles in “a modern but still profound way,” Nguyen says, and “The 5 Love Languages of Children: The Secret to Loving Children Effectively.” “I try to read as much as I can to learn how to be a better parent,” she says 

Mary Nguyen

Executive Chef and Owner of Olive & Finch, Little Finch and Finch on the Fly 

Denver, CO

ColoradoBiz: You’re a difficult person to track down, Mary.   

Mary Nguyen: That’s not always the case, but I’ve been traveling this summer. We’re in France for five weeks, then Switzerland.  

CB: Is this business or pleasure? 

MN: It always has something to do with food. We’re celebrating my husband’s 50th. He’s European, and his dad lives in France, so we wanted to have our girls come out with us, but at the same time I’m doing market research on my end, looking at things I can bring to the Denver restaurant space.   

CB: That’s exciting news for any locals familiar with your restaurant concepts, Olive & Finch and Little Finch. But before we dive into your brand, tell us a little more about how you got into the industry.    

MN: I’m the daughter of immigrants. My parents came here at the fall of Saigon, and they came to Denver because that’s where our sponsors were. It’s been a long time, but back then coming to the U.S. was really different when you came from Vietnam. American families could sponsor Vietnamese families to help them assimilate. 

CB: That was further back than expected, but now you’ve piqued our interest. What was it like being raised in Denver by first-generation immigrants?

MN: It helped me stand out in a world of conformity and emphasized the importance of family, connectivity and hard work. My parents taught me to deeply appreciate all the opportunities that I’ve been given. And they instilled in me a work ethic to set goals and then strive to achieve them through perseverance, patience — and maybe a little luck, too. 

CB: So, you’re one of those rare Colorado natives? 

MN: That’s right! I was born and raised in Colorado. I went to school at George Washington High School and CU-Boulder.   

CB: Does CU Boulder have its own culinary program?  

MN: Actually, I’m not trained as a chef. I didn’t go to culinary school. My degree is in economics and international affairs. After college I went straight into investment banking, doing public finance, trading commodities. But I always really loved cooking. One day I decided I was more interested in cooking and recipe development. I left finance and got as many kitchen jobs as I possibly could. I literally had no experience, and I needed to learn as much as possible.  

CB: What kind of jobs are we talking about?  

MN: I applied at Starbucks because I knew I wanted to open a café, and they had a great training program. I woke up every morning at 3 a.m. to take the morning shift. Then I’d head over to Hapa Sushi Grill — this was when they first opened in Cherry Creek, in the early 2000s — to work the lunch shift. I really loved sushi and was offered a job as an apprentice sushi chef.  

CB: That sounds like an exhausting day.  

MN: I’m not finished. I also worked at a restaurant called the Beehive in the evenings. I remember eating in their open kitchen, with this beautiful, red brick, having fruit and nuts in my salads. That was almost revolutionary back then. 

CB: When’d you find the time to go back to culinary school?  

MN: I didn’t. I’m 100 percent self-taught.   

CB: But your restaurants are so polished and well-executed. How’s that possible?  

MN: I didn’t even start cooking until I was in college. My parents cooked when I was younger. My mom is an amazing Vietnamese cook, and she’d experiment with American food in her kitchen. I think I was always in an environment where food was important. As an adult, I found myself having dinner parties, being in the kitchen, loving it. When I decided to quit my finance job, I was young. I thought it would be easy. I don’t know if I’d do that now, but at 25 I was living in the moment. 

CB: OK, don’t take this the wrong way, but how’d you land any restaurant jobs with absolutely no experience? 

MN: That’s a fair question. I remember seeing an ad in Westword: There was an opening at the Beehive for a sous chef, and I showed up in my three-piece suit, with no idea what a sous chef was. I wanted to cook and was willing to do anything. The owner turned me down, obviously, but she also realized I wanted to learn. A few months later, I got a call. They had a position in the pantry. In the back of my mind, I thought, “Wow, she’s offering me an opportunity to put groceries away.” I had no idea what a pantry cook was. Now that I understand the dynamics and hierarchy of a kitchen, I can only imagine what the owner thought of me.  

CB: It’s the early 2000s, and you’re working three jobs. How long did this grind continue? 

MN: I worked all three jobs for over a year, then I worked at Hapa a while longer, moving up the ranks to become a sushi chef.  

CB: That was — what? — nearly 20 years ago? How has the Denver dining scene changed?  

MN: I think back to 2005, when I opened my first restaurant, Parallel Seventeen, and there just weren’t a lot of options in Denver. It was either very fine dining that you paid an arm and leg for, or your neighborhood pizza or burger place, or a Chinese restaurant. I’d travel to Europe with my husband and see all these great cafés, places where you could go in for something quick, and I wanted to deliver a similar experience in Denver, where people had great food without the commitment in time, diet and money. P17 stood out as a nice restaurant that morphed into a bar at night, doing Vietnamese and French cuisine. In 2013, when I opened the first Olive & Finch location, I remember talking to my PR team, and nobody understood what I was trying to do. The idea was for counter service, but we’d roast our own chickens, bake fresh bread daily. Ten years later, there were lots of places just like it, offering affordable, chef-made food in a casual setting. But at the time we opened? It was really different.   

CB: You opened the second Olive & Finch location in Cherry Creek in 2017, and both spots are still very popular, even after the pandemic. Is it because you’re serving real food? 

MN: That’s one reason. Everything is made from scratch, and you can taste it. But also, our restaurants are easy and convenient.   

CB: Is it the same with your newest concepts, Little Finch and Finch on the Fly? 

MN: Before Little Finch, we opened a wholesale operation in 2019, selling pastries and grab-and-go items to other restaurants and businesses in the area. Then Little Finch opened in February of 2023 as a very casual all-day café focused on beverages and grab-and-go items. Finch on the Fly is a healthy, quick option at Denver International Airport.  

CB: You’ve added a lot to the Olive & Finch brand in just a few years. Have you thought about tapping into the home-cook market, too, which has been on the rise since the pandemic?   

MN: No, but years ago, when I had a restaurant called Street Kitchen, I’d close during weekend days and teach cooking classes, turning the dining room into a little cooking school. If we did that today, we’d sell out.  

CB: It’s hard to talk about the restaurant industry without bringing up COVID-19. How’d you make it through, and were there any takeaways that surprised you? 

MN: It was just as hard for us as it was for everybody else. Our pivot wasn’t as challenging, though, because we had already had a strong to-go business. We were very lucky in that regard. Our business is just so fickle, and we learned that it’s going to be important for us to remain dynamic and flexible if we want to stand the test of time. 

CB: Did the pandemic change consumer dining trends? 

MN: People are so much more curious and educated about food now, and I think the typical dining consumer is more discerning. They know what they want, and they don’t want to be disappointed.   

CB: What does that observation mean for you as a restaurant owner? And has inflation impacted the acumen of dining consumers?   

MN: The problem is that our cost of goods has gone up, but the consumer mentality hasn’t shifted. While our labor is higher, and our product costs more, we’re required to stay within a certain price point. It was always important to me to make great food accessible, and that’s still the case, but the margins have narrowed, more so for us because we’re committed to affordability. Plus, we provide benefits to our team, and we pay more than at a typical restaurant.    

CB: What’s the message for other Denver-area chefs? Should they quit their day job if opening a restaurant is their dream? 

MN: I think if it is your passion — absolutely — you have to go for it. But for those who think opening their own restaurant is a dream, first go stage with another restaurant owner. Once you open a business, everything changes. I don’t do as much cooking anymore because I’m involved in day-to-day aspects of business. That said, I get so much joy seeing a full dining room, seeing staff learn and grow in their careers, just like I did. 

 

Jamie Siebrase is a freelance writer based in Colorado.

Cooking Up Success with ‘Sticky Fingers’: Erin Fletter’s Inspiring Journey as a Mompreneur

With three young kids at home, a traditional 9-to-5 wasn’t in the cards for Erin Fletter — and yet being a mom hadn’t smothered her desire to work. In 2011, at her kitchen table, Fletcher and her dad, Joe Hall, co-founded Sticky Fingers Cooking, a culinary school offering enrichment cooking classes for kids.  

READ: Balancing Work and Motherhood — Strategies for Success in a Busy World

Fletter and her husband, Ryan, co-own Barolo Grill Restaurant in Cherry Creek, so a food-related pivot wasn’t totally unforeseen. “It was a typical entrepreneur story,” Fletter says, thinking back to the organization’s inception. “I went to about a hundred schools, and 97 said, ‘What are you talking about?’” But three Denver area schools gave Sticky Fingers a chance. “That snowballed into 30 schools, then 300 and 1,000,” Fletter says.  

The concept is simple: Chef-instructors lead small-group cooking classes centered around a plant-forward weekly recipe. Food is used as a jumping-off point for exploring new cultures. Students might learn about Mongolia, for example, while chopping bell peppers for fried rice. They’ll also study a featured ingredient — usually a vegetable, fruit or grain — and they might pick up some math, science and reading while honing their culinary skills.  

READ: Plant-based Protein is Taking Root in Colorado’s Food Economy

Business boomed. “We’ve always had a 99 percent retention rate,” Fletter notes. Then in March 2020, everything shut down. “The 1,000 schools we’re in closed; it was scary,” says Fletter. But the Sticky Fingers leadership team bound together, integrating Zoom into the organization’s proprietary software to launch online cooking classes.  

When inflation sparked a resurgence in home cooking, CEO Fletter and her team capitalized on that, too, reaching a younger generation through their TikTok and YouTube channels. Fletter started writing cookbooks, too, and Penguin Random House will release the fifth in a series, “Kid Smoothies: A Healthy Kids’ Cookbook,” this October. 

“That’s how we made lemonade out of lemons during Covid-19,” Fletter says. But there sure were a lot of lemons. “Women were so disproportionately impacted,” Fletter continues, noting that many women haven’t re-entered the workforce after stepping out to care for children and/or aging parents.  

READ: Surviving Food Inflation — How Colorado Restaurants Adapt to Rising Costs and Labor Challenges

Sticky Fingers is 90 percent women-led, and Fletter is passionate about bolstering female business owners. It’s this resolve that led her to explore a franchise model. “What’s great about franchising is that it’s a symbiotic relationship: Our success is their success, and vice versa,” she says. Since initiating a franchise brand in late 2022, Sticky Fingers has opened three territories in two states (Texas and Illinois). The company has retained its company-run headquarters in Denver and Boulder. “We’re in the game as well, running our cooking classes side-by-side with franchisees,” Fletter says. 

 

Jamie Siebrase is a freelance writer based in Colorado.

What is ThingVC? How Two Entrepreneurs Are Investing in Small Business Dreams

Serial entrepreneurs Mike Gellman and Chris Glodé want to pay it forward.  

Glodé was a client of Gellman’s Denver-based web development firm, Spire Digital, on a few different projects. Gellman sold Spire after 23 years in 2019, but the duo continued to meet for lunch and brainstorm about startups. 

A shared inclination “to give something back and try to help people get their businesses off the ground,” as Glodé puts it, led to the launch of ThingVC in spring 2023. Gellman knows well the struggles involved in starting and developing a business. He launched Spire in 1996, and over the next two decades employed hundreds of people, generated more than $100 million in revenue and helped shape an industry. But it was far from easy. In the beginning, he bootstrapped the business by working at Outback Steakhouse. His first two employees were ex-cons. 

READ: Top Tips for New Business Owners to Empower and Guide Their Teams to Success

Still, he had an ally. Additional early funding came in the form of a credit card with a $10,000 limit his dad let him use. The power of a hand-up, however small, resonates with both entrepreneurs today. 

Mike Gellman and Chris Glode talking to eachother in a bar, wearing casual shirts
Mike Gellman and Chris Glode, founders of ThingVC

“We had such great experiences starting our own businesses and thinking about the many people out there we speculated would be great entrepreneurs if they could just have, number one, the encouragement and the belief from somebody and, two, the capital, and three, the experience, perspective and mentorship that we could provide,” Glodé says. “We decided to give it a go, and ThingVC was born.” 

The standard deal? ThingVC is offering $10,000 investments for a 5 percent stake of companies valued at $200,000. 

The process for prospective investees is straightforward: Fill out the online form at ThingVC.com (questions include “What’s your Thing?” and “How will you spend $10,000?”), then Gellman and Glodé schedule Zoom meetings with their top prospects. 

“We were trying to arrive at a size that we felt like it could help jumpstart somebody with an idea for a small business,” Glodé says. “We also wanted to keep it as simple as possible, because we want to create something here for very early-stage companies. We expect people to not have anything more than a sketch on a napkin in most cases.” 

The process is intentionally simple. “We wanted to impact as many companies and people as we could by streamlining it,” he explains. “I think a lot of people’s great ideas for a small business can die on the vine because it becomes so daunting to do all of the planning and analysis and vetting the idea.” 

That’s where ThingVC can help. Glodé says he and Gellman want to support the companies in ThingVC with their entrepreneurial experience. 

“It’s very much industry-agnostic,” Glodé says, noting that the focus is on Colorado-based companies to start. “We’ve talked about everything from somebody starting their own food truck to expanding to a second location, or if they’re an independent service provider, like an electrician or a plumber or a handyman, maybe this could give them the bump they need to hire another employee.” 

Glodé says ThingVC would like to close on “a handful of deals done this year, and hopefully more than that next year.” 

The first $10,000 investment went to Daniel Valdez, who plans to develop a platform that aims to accelerate leadership for underrepresented minorities in businesses. ALUM is the Denver-based startup’s placeholder name. Valdez, who is a manager for Accenture in Denver by day, says the investment will allow him to build a prototype of the platform. 

“Even if they weren’t giving any money… their backgrounds are excellent,” he says. “Mike has built companies bootstrapping, and Chris is on the other side of things where he’s raised a decent amount of money, so you’ve got the best of both worlds.” 

And what about the name, ThingVC? “Anybody who has an idea for a thing, let’s talk about it,” Glodé says. 

ONLINE: www.thingvc.com 

Top Company 2023: Architecture & Interior Design

Now in its 36th year, ColoradoBiz magazine’s Top Company Awards program recognizes businesses and organizations based in Colorado or with a significant presence in the state that are leading the way in their fields, as demonstrated by financial performance, notable company achievements and community engagement.

To be considered, Top Company entrants submitted applications throughout the year online at ColoradoBiz.com. From those entries, which numbered in the hundreds, the magazine’s editorial board narrowed the field to three finalists (in most cases) in each industry category. A judging panel made up of area business leaders and ColoradoBiz staff then met to compare notes on the finalists and decide winners in 14 industries plus the Startup category, for companies in business four years or less.

Congratulations are in order not only to the 41 winners and finalists profiled on the following pages, but to all the companies that took the time to tell us about their achievements and obstacles surmounted over the past year that make them worthy of Top Company consideration.

Winner — Sopher Sparn Architects

Boulder, CO 

Website: www.sophersparn.com 

Custom Residence Gemini
House on the foothills, designed by Sopher Sparn Architects

Founded in 1978, Sopher Sparn Architects (SSA) designs a wide range of residential, institutional, commercial and retail projects, while also consulting on master planning, entitlement and interior design. Principals Stephen Sparn, Adrian Sopher and Erin Bagnall lead the 18-employee firm today. 

Sustainable design is a core tenet at SSA, says Syd Berkowitz, marketing and operations manager. “From every phase of our design process to our projects’ climate impact, studio operations and education for our staff, clients and communities, we strive to be impactful industry leaders,” she says. “Our goal is to ensure that every building we design makes a meaningful contribution toward climate well-being and environmental preservation. Our objective for the architectural structures we design is [for them] to function as carbon sinks, effectively sequestering a greater amount of carbon than they emit.” 

Berkowitz also highlighted SSA’s community engagement. “We pledge to be active in our local Colorado communities and engage in outreach opportunities as a team,” she says, noting that the firm’s employees work with Sun Valley Youth Center, the Colorado Green Building Guild, PorchFest, ULI Colorado and SpeakUp Arvada. 

SSA is ultimately about the people, she adds, and it shows. “We establish our work environment through celebration, community, enrichment and wellness,” Berkowitz says. “We celebrate holidays, birthdays, wins and Friday afternoons. We contribute to our local communities and use our offices as hubs for Halloween contests, happy hours and potlucks. We encourage our team members to continue their education and studies through trainings and classes. And most importantly, we support the wellness and well-being of our team through daily walks, bagel Tuesdays and mental health time.” 

Women to Watch 2023 — YMCA of Metro Denver

Everywhere in Colorado, women are leading our business communities to new levels of success. They each have a unique story that has shaped our state through economic, social and enterprising contributions. Yet, at times, these women go unnoticed. ColoradoBiz is here to change that.

Throughout the YMCA’s history, many incredible women have grown its mission and impact. Today is no different. Across the YMCA of Metro Denver, women are charting the course of the organization under the leadership of President & CEO Sue Glass, who is the first woman to head the organization in its 143-year history. As a non-profit organization, we serve our community’s greatest needs, working to equip our youth and address affordable child care, social determinants of health and individual and family wellbeing. Get to know the YMCA!

 

This article is sponsored content.

Tech Startup — Skyhook Solar: Solar-powered Charging Stations for E-bikes and Electric Cars

Skyhook Solar  

WHERE: Carbondale

WEBSITE: www.skyhooksolar.com

FOUNDED: 2019 

 

INITIAL LIGHTBULB  

With a background in the Aspen hotel business, President and CEO Daniel Delano came out of a brief retirement to co-found Skyhook Solar with Chief Product Officer William Gilmore. He didn’t want to sit on the sidelines in the face of climate change. 

“I became increasingly concerned about climate change, and that led me to look at the solar energy space and ultimately to Skyhook Solar,” Delano says. “We created the Skyhook Solar Station, and initially that was used to charge EVs in prototype. A year later, we deployed the first EV-charging solar station at a public school.” 

That station is still operational, but Skyhook has since focused on e-bikes, working with PBSC Urban Solutions to supply solar stations for WE-cycle’s bike-sharing program in the Aspen area beginning in 2021. 

READ: Tech Startup — OneClock is Your Solution for a Tech-free Bedroom

IN A NUTSHELL 

Skyhook’s D4 Solar Stations (which sell for $28,000, minus a 30 percent federal tax credit) in Aspen and Basalt were “the first solar-powered e-bike docks anywhere,” Delano says. “The solar stations include a microcomputer and large batteries that allow us to charge when the sun’s not shining.” 

“In 2020, we introduced e-bikes into our fleet,” says Mirte Mallory, co-founder and executive director of WE-Cycle. “At that point in time, we were changing batteries back at the shop, and it became very apparent that it wasn’t scalable. It was not cost-effective or operationally efficient.” 

But Skyhook’s technology was eminently scalable. WE-Cycle now shares 420 bikes (153 of them e-bikes) at about 80 stations in the Roaring Fork Valley. For 2023, 10 of those stations are solar-powered Skyhook products from Aspen to Carbondale.  

“It went from impossible to scale and not value-aligned to possible to scale and mission-aligned,” Mallory says. “Our e-bikes are now 100 percent solar-powered by the Colorado sun.” 

Skyhook Solar currently assembles its products in Carbondale, but Delano says he is looking to open a manufacturing facility in Grand Junction. The company is in growth mode as it looks to supply municipalities as well as bike-sharing companies and
nonprofits. 

“We’re in a number of other cities now on a pilot basis, including Detroit and Montreal,” Delano says. “The transition is just beginning in bike-share to electric bikes, so we see Skyhook Solar being in many cities in the U.S. and Canada in the next couple years. We’re also looking at expansion into Europe.” 

Skyhook is releasing a new EV-charging station with a three-kilowatt solar array in 2023 that’s 50 percent larger than the D4 Solar Station. 

“The EV transition is absolutely necessary if we’re going to avoid the worst consequences of climate change, and one of the necessities of that transition is the infrastructure,” Delano says. “In many places, it may be easy to add a plug or two to a parking lot to charge EVs, but in other places, it’s very expensive to connect to the grid if you have to dig trenches across sidewalks and streets.” 

He also notes that the stations are great for remote areas without electrical service, or where connection costs are high, and installation is notably user-friendly. “It deploys in an hour and it can be moved, so it has flexibility if you need to move it.” 

THE MARKET 

“We haven’t gotten to the point where EVs are dominant in the market, but California and New York have fairly strict laws that mean EV sales will be phased into 100 percent by law by 2035,” Delano says. “There is a need to convert from gas-powered transportation to electric, and there’s a need for infrastructure. It’s a matter of all hands on deck now.” 

FINANCING 

Delano says Skyhook has raised funds from friends, family and angel investors. The company began pursuing a seed round of $2.5 million when it graduated from the Endless Frontier Labs program at the Sterns School of Business at New York University in May.