News

Five promising startups spun out of CU Boulder comprise the first cohort of companies to receive investment from the Buff Venture Fund. The fund is the newest opportunity for CU Boulder startups to access critical funding on the path to success. The Buff Venture Fund is administered by Buff Gold Ventures, which has a formal partnership with Venture Partners at CU Boulder.

What do Oprah, Forbes, Business Insider, and Vogue all have in common? They endorse and love floral bouquets by Fresh Sends. The fragrant aroma, striking appearance, and heartfelt sentiment behind the gesture create an unforgettable memory. Ty Hiss started Fresh Sends with her co-founder and husband, Jesse Hiss, to help people feel seen, known, and loved through modern gifting.

On two exciting nights of pitches and prizes, ten startups brought a broad range of ideas to the stage, including how to live and garden more sustainably, how to deal with the downsides of social media, how to offer practical prosthetics for kids—and sustainable water filters and hydroponic produce for all. Across the two events, eight teams took home a total of $20,000 to develop their ideas further.

Wanted: entrepreneurs ready to launch startups based on innovations created in CU Boulder’s research labs. The Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator is a new program created by Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the commercialization arm of CU, to match business minds outside the university with breakthrough inventions created within its walls—and provide those ventures with funding.

As a kid, Max describes himself as having a “drive to do good and try and make things better in one way or another.” That’s why he founded Urban Farms: a robotics company focused on indoor agriculture.

CU Boulder has developed a groundbreaking pipeline to translate research into real-world impact, as highlighted in the 2022 Annual Report of Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the university’s commercialization arm.

As a first-generation college student turned molecular biologist, Brian DeDecker imagines a day when humble soybeans beans, which his family has grown for generations, pack a bounty of therapeutic but hard-to-obtain natural compounds.

The intermountain west innovation ecosystem came together at the fifth annual Destination Startup® showcase on Feb. 15 and 16, hosted by Venture Partners at CU Boulder. In a highly competitive field, 21 university ventures from intermountain west research institutions were selected to present at the showcase.

While most people attend college to prepare for the job market, Rylan Montoya decided to do things differently. As a sophomore at CU Boulder Leeds School of Business, Rylan decided to put his skills to the test by founding the clothing and content creation company DumbClub.

The Research & Innovation Office (RIO) has announced several leadership transitions within the campuswide Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, with Stan Hickory stepping into the role of director of the initiative, a position held by Chris Gustavson since 2019.