Today I talked to a guy in Indianapolis who’s moving to Boulder. He wants me to help him connect with the business community. His impression is that Boulder is a very open-minded place where it’s easy to make connections.
He’s right.
As an example, I met my current business partner less than a year ago. How did we meet? It started when I heard him interviewed on the local public radio show. He sounded like an interesting guy that I should know, so I Googled him and was surprised to find that he lives in Boulder. (I assumed he lived somewhere on the Front Range, but that’s still a pretty big area.) So I sent him an email and suggested we meet for lunch. Happily, he agreed, we had lunch, and less than 6 months later we were in business together.
Of course, that’s a pretty rare outcome, but not the method in which I met him. I’ve met dozens of people here over the years the exact same way. People often think of me as being outgoing, but I actually suck at the whole grip & grin networking event thing. I still go to them from time to time, but I’ve met many more people online than off. (That group includes my wife, BTW.)
But I digress. I did similar things when I was in Chicago, but I’ve found that it’s just easier in Boulder. I think it’s probably because Boulder has a much more vibrant startup culture than Chicago, which, notwithstanding the presence of cool companies like 37 Signals, Feedburner and Threadless, is still dominated by Fortune 500s and the consultants who service them.
Oh yeah, a few other reasons I love Boulder:
- 300 days of sun every year
- A view of the Flatirons out my office window
- World class skiing less than two hours away
- Mountain biking – actually, I’m not much of a mountain biker, but I love that Boulder is full of people into it and all the other adventure sports
I’m a big city guy. I love love love Chicago and always have a great time in megalopolises like New York, San Francisco, Shanghai etc. But the quality of life here is pretty hard to beat.