The fourth annual
Rocky Mountain Entrepreneurial Summit will be held March 6-7 at the University of Denver, organized by the local chapter of the Entrepreneurs' Organization.
This year’s theme, "Creating A Legacy -- What Do You Stand For?" focuses on three cores: business, family and personal. It’s epitomized by this year’s keynote speaker Marcus Luttrell, a Navy SEAL and co-author of
Lone Survivor, now the subject a movie of the same name.
Entrepreneurs' Organization Colorado President Cam Mochan explains that the summit modeled largely after the New York Entrepreneurial Week. "New York Entrepreneurial Week has been crazy successful. They've been running two events for an entire week over the past five years," he says.
"They brought together the disparate pieces of the entrepreneurial ecosystem, which is the entrepreneur [along with] venture capital, private equity, angel investors, and then government, economic development folks, academia -- which is students as well as the faculty, and brings them all together in kind of learning opportunity to break down some of the walls that exist between those silos in the ecosystem," says Mochan.
"We took a little chink of that and we do a little two-day event. That's what helps to create some of those relationships between operators, capital and just the ecosystem is more vibrant and relationships are created," he says.
This year the summit will include, for the first time, a
Shark Tank-style event. "As the event's kind of evolved, we do the R&D -- rip off and duplicate." Mochan explains. "
Shark Tank obviously is super-successful and we've seen this kind of mini-entrepreneurial award or competition at some other events."
"When I see the younger entrepreneurs, the startup entrepreneurs kind of get in to the grind of entrepreneurship, their enthusiasm and optimism is pretty inspiring and sometimes they think about solving problems in an entirely different way," Mochan asserts.
Contact Confluence Denver Innovation & Jobs News Editor Chris Meehan with tips and leads for future stories at chris@confluence-denver.com.
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