Originally published on the Silicon Flatirons site on September 2, 2022.
This summer, Silicon Flatirons brought together students from across the nation to participate in the 11th iteration of Startup Summer. The program was offered in a hybrid format to accommodate students attending both in-person and virtually. The center engaged people from across the emerging company community and brought in more than 25 guest speakers to work with their students. Over the course of the summer, seven companies were formed within the Startup Summer cohort, and student teams were guided through the startup ideation and creation process. In August, they wrapped up the program by competing for a total of $10,000 in prize money.
Startup Summer 2022 delivered a high-value experience across the board. Representative feedback from student participants included:
- “[Startup Summer] really encouraged that spark of entrepreneurship within me, the wanting to be a part of starting something bigger than me. I’m very thankful and really love this whole community.”
- “I knew virtually nothing about business coming into the program. Through these 10 weeks, I have accumulated so much helpful knowledge. I am able to hold my own in business discussions now. I’m more familiar with business vocabulary and feel comfortable adding suggestions to business plans and revenue model brainstorms. I’ve realized how powerful a network is and where my strengths lie.”
This year, 28 students participated, with students from the following schools: University of Colorado Boulder, St. Andrews University, Washington University (St. Louis), Front Range Community College, University of Washington, Oxford Brookes University, Colorado College, and the University of Utah.
“The pandemic invited us to continue to expand the way we thought about the program. We opted to host the program in a hybrid model, which allowed students who were out-of-state or had other obligations to join us for our summer meetings, resulting in amazing attendance from our participants. One student even mentioned that this was one of the best hybrid models they had ever experienced!” Noah Levin and Beatriz Salazar—2022 Startup Summer, Co-Managing Directors
A very special thank you to our weekly speakers and mentors, supporters, community members, and of course, our generous sponsors: Anchor Point Foundation, The Caruso Foundation, Libby Cook, and Dale & Pat Hatfield for making this year’s program possible.
1st place/2nd place tie
- Goodie Bag (Ethan Mills, Kevin Gonzalez, Greg Cusak, Luke Siegert, Eddy Connors)
- Jot. (Sonia Amin, Tia Noyes, Magill Stewart, Ben Hofstra)
3rd place:
- Tick-Click (Kyle Komarnitsky, Leo Nguyen, Kash Challapalli, Garrett Weber)
4th – 7th place:
- ArtDato (Matthew McDaniel, Collin Dunn, Sam Ellsworth, Grady Forsythe)
- Boulder Kidz (Xinran Li, Kaden Sisk, Charles Msilanga)
- Norlin (Marcus Orlando, Michael Cossio, Alex Liston, Bianca Meurer-Zeman, Joey Nolan)
- Tamatar (Graham Blanco, Clara Black, Ben Furr-Johnson, Gabby Mejia)
