Prior to Covid-19, Colorado was known for its ability to come together to drive the tech ecosystem forward.
Whether it was sharing time or resources, Colorado’s startup community was rightfully known for its collaborative nature.
But, that Give First mantra has never been more evident than it is now.
Across the state, Colorado’s tech and startup innovators came together during the coronavirus pandemic to fill in the gaps in the fight against Covid-19.
“I am really proud to be a Coloradan. I am really proud to live in the state, because the clarity of thought, against the backdrop of this abject chaos in a situation where nobody had ever experienced it before and the desire to help each other and the continual commitment to help each other, was spectacular,” Brad Feld said during our Crisis Innovators virtual event on July 28.
Companies stepped-up to source PPE and testing materials, helped find opportunities for those impacted by layoffs, strengthened a new, virtual-first health care model and much more.
And, if that wasn’t a daunting enough challenge, they did it in the face of a pandemic that threatened their own businesses.
We’ve put together a list of some of the state’s Crisis Innovators, shining a light on all they’ve set out to do and achieved during Covid-19.
While these companies and volunteer groups span a variety of industries, they all share in the goal of making Colorado a better, and safer, place to live and work in during Covid-19.
When defining what a crisis innovator is, Wendy Lea of Energize Colorado said it involves creative thinking to tackle an interconnected set of issues.
“You’re taking a unique approach to solving a big, complex problem,” she said. “This set of crises are not little, single points. It is a big hairball.”
CirrusMD
As Covid-19 forced much of our population’s medical care to a virtual setting, Denver-based telemedicine company CirrusMD became increasingly relied on.
The company, which offers chat-based medical conversations with physicians, was seeing a boom in interest on its platform, hovering around a 400% increase of its typical action. Despite an increase in demand, CirrusMD was able to meet the needs of the community during this crisis.
“Because we’re chat first and we’re able to scale doctors up and down on the platform as the volumes come up, we never ever got above 60 seconds in seeing a doctor,” Julie Kopp, CirrusMD’s VP of product & marketing told Colorado Inno. “We had no wait times, whatsoever.”
The company also saw an opportunity to provide more support for continuity of care, particularly related to behavioral health resources.
“What we, and everyone, saw happen with Covid is that behavioral health needs exploded,” Kopp said, referencing a 1000% increase in activity related to behavioral health on CirrusMD’s platform during Covid-19.
Unfortunately, long wait times of between three and nine months to find a therapist, Kopp said, are putting people at a disadvantage. Due to an increased need during this pandemic, CirrusMD has accelerated a new bridged care model for behavioral health patients experiencing things like anxiety and depression.
“We call it a bridge service and we’re taking care of patients right now that have acute behavioral health needs. It’s a little medication management and getting you back to your baseline, and then we’ll get you into your network of care with therapists,” Kopp said. “We want to make sure we’re taking care of you physically, but also emotionally, mentally and from a behavioral health perspective.”
While Covid-19 caused the company to alter its roadmap for the future, Kopp said CirrusMD made sure it never lost sight of its overall vision during this pandemic.
“One of the things we really wanted to make sure we did well was to not take our focus off our vision and where we want to go, but making sure we were adjusting and taking care of our customers' needs as well,” she said.
Make4Covid
Since the early days of the crisis, Make4Covid, a statewide volunteer coalition, has worked to design, manufacture and distribute essential equipment for Colorado’s frontline healthcare workers and first responders during this crisis.
The organization, started in late March, has produced and distributed more than 81,000 pieces of PPE and has a network of more than 2,000 community volunteers.
Large companies like supersonic jet startup Boom and visual experience company RealD have contributed to the efforts, as have many individual volunteers from across the state.
Colorado Covid-19 Talent Network
As tech workers across the state were laid off, a group of local leaders formed the Colorado Covid-19 Startup Talent Network to help match qualified tech employees with startups looking for talent.
Candidates looking for any sort of employment within Colorado's tech sector (part-time, contract, full-time), were, and still are, encouraged to submit their information on the website.
On the flip-side, employers are able to view a sortable list of candidates to fill the positions they need.
Guild Education
At the beginning of the pandemic, Guild joined a movement started by Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff that encouraged CEOs to hold off on layoffs for at least 90 days. The company, which has more than 550 employees, committed to the no-layoff pledge for three months, starting in April.
Then, in collaboration with a group of the nation's largest employers and academic institutions, Guild launched a new program to help laid-off or furloughed workers. Next Chapter enabled displaced workers who had recently filed for unemployment to identify new roles with employers and in sectors that are hiring.
And in mid-May, the company made its first acquisition, bringing on Entangled, a Bay Area product studio focused on the intersection of work and learning. The acquisition was partly motivated by the current unemployment climate caused by Covid-19 and enabled Guild to accelerate the development of solutions that help employers solve complex workforce challenges.
Energize Colorado
In an effort to help local small businesses get back on their feet, Energize Colorado has brought together a diverse professional community to provide crucial resources to those in need.
The nonprofit, which has hundreds of volunteers, is focused on a variety of areas to help kickstart the small business economy during this crisis.
“We want to experiment, we want to have projects and initiatives,” Lea said. “We know that to rebuild this small business economy, it’s going to take a lot of different things.”
The organization has developed initiatives around financial supports, PPE distribution, mental health resources, professional services, reopening guidance and more.
Energize is preparing to launch its gap fund to provide more than $25 million in small business loans and grants to boost small businesses. Sole proprietors, businesses and nonprofits with less than 25 full-time employees can apply for up to a $15,000 grant and a $20,000 loan for a possible combined total of $35,000 in financial assistance.
Lea said Energize Colorado isn’t a short-term play, rather, an extended vision to support Colorado’s small business community.
“The first band of work was ‘stabilization and reopening,’” she said. “The next band is ‘innovate to grow’ and we have four brand new projects and initiatives we’re beginning to frame there.”
Misty Robotics
As companies prepare to return to the office, there are a variety of safety measures that will have to be taken. To help ease that transition, Boulder's Misty Robotics leveraged its latest robot to create a Temp Screening Assistant.
The Temp Screening Assistant for Misty II is an automated, contactless and touchless way to screen and detect individuals with an elevated temperature and other health risk factors associated with Covid-19.
The Core edition of the robot comes with a blackbody referenced thermal imaging camera, with accuracy within +/- 0.5 C, an interactive health question survey, immediate pass/fail result determination and recording, configurable SMS and/or email notifications and web-based administration and reporting.
Puro Lighting
In May, Lakewood's PURO Lighting partnered with The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) to use its UV technology to help disinfect public transportation for riders across New York.
PURO, which launched in 2019, teamed up with Orlando-based Violet Defense to develop high-intensity broad-spectrum UV disinfection units that it says can rapidly kill up to 99.9% of viruses and bacteria and can reduce the growth of fungi such as yeasts and molds.
The pilot program with the MTA deployed about 150 dual-headed mobile devices across subway trains, buses and crew facilities in New York City. In addition to partnering with the MTA, PURO units have been implemented in hospitals and urgent care clinics, hotels, manufacturing facilities, universities, police departments, fire departments and fitness centers throughout the U.S.
PharmaJet
So far in 2020, Golden-based PharmaJet, a maker of needle-free injection technology, closed two partnerships to deliver potential Covid-19 vaccines and therapeutics to patients in need.
The company is working with Abnova Corporation, an antibody manufacturer based in Taiwan, to deliver a messenger RNA vaccine against Covid-19.
PharmaJet also partnered with Maryland-based Immunomic Therapeutics, Inc. as it is developing a Covid-19 vaccine candidate. The company's needle-free injection system was chosen because it precisely targets delivery to the intradermal tissue depth.
