Denver Disruption 2.0: What It Means To Be A Tech Gazelle In Denver
Denver is an emerging tech market. A key component of emerging tech is the tech gazelle — startups and rising companies, nimble as gazelles, looking to find the fastest path to success. During our recent Denver Disruption 2.0 event, our speakers talked about gazelles, their place in Denver and the overall rise of tech in Denver.
The number of tech jobs in metro Denver is now nearly 80,000, putting the region in the top 10 nationwide, and recent growth in the industry has been prodigious. Between 2006 and 2016, tech industry employment has grown about 40%. Both established and up-and-coming tech companies are coming here.
Why is Denver attractive to the gazelles of the tech world? Being a tech gazelle is partly a mindset, according to our speakers. It is about seeing what is coming, and trying to capitalize on those trends. Innovation thrives in certain cities, and Denver is rapidly evolving into such a place.
One reason is the cost of living, and the cost of doing business, is still lower here than in a major tech hub like San Francisco — for now. Denver's attractiveness as a place to live is another factor.
But it takes more than lower costs and an attractive place to attract tech talent. According to our speakers, talented millennials — who are responsible for an oversized share of tech innovation — want to be part of something larger. They want to interact with the rest of the local industry. Place is important, but the people in that place are more important.
Having a critical mass of tech innovators in one place is critical, and so is an environment that supports innovative companies, large and small. One reason Seattle does well is that entrepreneurs often work for large companies (Microsoft, Amazon) before striking out on their own and availing themselves of the local talent pool.
Denver is not quite on the same level as Seattle or San Francisco, and finding tech talent can be a challenge here for young and hungry tech gazelles, the speakers said. But the local industry is growing, attracting both the large and small companies it will need to be a major tech market. That will help the cycle of new companies start, as talent goes into and out of more established companies.
The Denver Disruption 2.0 event also included a case study about the Race Street TOD. ULC tapped Zocalo Community Development as master developer for its $200M, six-acre site in the Elyria Swansea neighborhood. The mixed-use development, to be completed in several phases over a number of years, will include as many as 560 residential units, in a combination of mixed-income rental and for-sale houses, and about 80K SF of commercial space.
ULC and Zocalo’s investment, together with critical support from the City and County of Denver, marks the first significant development in Northeast Denver in perhaps two decades. The immediate goal of the first phase is to be open by the time the North Metro Rail Line opens in late 2018.
The deeper goal of this kind of public-private collaboration, according to the speakers, is to create not only a mixed-use development, but a mixed-density and mixed-income neighborhood, something that will improve the fabric of the city and the lives of the people who live in the area. It is a long process, with many stakeholders and a lot of necessary input from the community. But now it is well underway, and perhaps will be a model for other development elsewhere in the city.
