Colorado’s startup ecosystem is growing and evolving, and it’s not just the established local leaders and companies leading that charge.
If you’re looking to predict what the future holds for this startup ecosystem, look no further than the young entrepreneurs that are currently making an impact.
With hands-on innovation programs at the state’s universities and a rich accelerator and incubator system, Colorado is ripe with startup resources - and the next generation of innovators are taking advantage.
To highlight a handful of Colorado’s most accomplished young entrepreneurs, we reached out through our newsletter, social media, community leaders, accelerators and schools for nominations. We’ve trimmed that to a list of 18 local innovators who are 25 years old or younger.
Here are Colorado’s 2020 Inno Under 25:
Jack Roswell (22), Alex Zhuk (22) and David Schurman (22) | Cloud Agronomics
The trio launched Cloud Agronomics, a SaaS-based agtech startup born out of a college project at Brown University. They continued the company post-college, creating an agricultural intelligence engine that provides analytics on crop and soil performance to enable a digital revolution towards sustainable food production. The company recently raised a seed round to grow its operations.
Lorne Jenkins (25) | Mini Money Management
Jenkins is the founder of Mini Money Management, an app that helps parents and teachers educate children on the importance of financial literacy using everyday experiences. MMM creates an economy where the child receives income such as a salary, bonuses and overtime and then pays for real-life expenses and activities such as rent, meals, and fines. The company, which started in Aug. 2019, has begun earning revenue and has users in the U.S., India and the U.K.
Madison Rifkin (22) | Mount Locks
The Colorado native is finishing up her degree in finance at Northeastern University, while running her startup Mount Locks, a company she started back in middle school. Mount Locks is an IOT company leveraging a smart lock data analytics platform to track mobility patterns, locate lost vehicles and provide a holistic approach to mobility asset management.
Caden MacKenzie (25) and Tommy Riley (25) | Handoff
The two co-founded Handoff, a chat-based alcohol recommendation and delivery platform, at 23 years old and have since launched in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Colorado Springs and Manhattan. Earlier this year, they launched the #HelpingHand initiative, delisting all non-local beers from the Handoff app, selling more than $30,000 of local beer on the platform over the course of the campaign. The team most recently launched a web-based plugin that allows alcohol brands to process delivery orders from their native websites.
Andrew Ferraro (21) | CU Boulder
The CU Boulder undergrad has been an entrepreneur since 2011, founding and running a variety of businesses to profit. He founded Exchanging303, a premium clothing reseller, and Flippers, a business buying, fixing and reselling cracked iPhones. He has interned at Northwestern Mutual and Boulder’s Boomtown Accelerators and is now a venture intern at Denver’s Stout Street Capital.
Shreya Nallapati (19) | Never Again Tech
Nallapati founded Never Again Tech, a data-driven startup that aims to stop mass school shootings. The company analyzes historical gun violence data, using factors like the socioeconomic status of perpetrators and the availability of firearms in the affected state. From there, it uses predictive analytics to find the likelihood/prevalence of the next attack. Nallapati has garnered attention from Forbes, Smithsonian and the Denver Business Journal, which named her its 2018 Youth Tech Leader of the Year.
Jack Bonneau (14) | Teen Hustl
Bonneau founded the last-mile delivery service, which is operated by teenagers. They deliver from restaurants, grocery stores and Amazon lockers using electric bikes and scooters. Bonneau recently competed in the Denver Startup Week pitch finals after winning the Youth Pitch Competition. Prior to that, Bonneau landed a deal from Shark Tank’s Chris Sacca in 2016 for his lemonade stands and marketplace startups.
Jonah Saya (22) | Venable Technologies
Saya has already built and sold two Shopify companies and has recently founded a technology consulting firm. In 2016, Saya built WatchOutfitters.com, an ecommerce website dedicated to men’s timepieces. Two years later, he sold the company and founded Fraud Scanner, an application to handle filtering fraudulent Shopify store orders to minimize the risk regarding chargebacks. Now, Saya is in charge of Venable Technologies, a consulting firm working on a wide range of technologies for clients.
Lauren Barnes (20), Kayle Migaki (20) | One Kind Cup
The University of Denver team founded One Kind Cup in 2019 with a mission of creating the first and only backyard compostable, industrially compostable and recyclable cup, straw and lid combination. The product, which resembles a takeout rice container, is patent pending and is designed to give restaurants a sustainable alternative to the traditional soft drink cup, straw and lid combination.
Grace Wankelman (19), Maddie Membrino (19), Shannon Saul (22) | Do Better
The University of Denver trio co-founded Do Better, a platform to reduce campus gender-based violence, earlier this year. The nonprofit works with students and university administrations to prevent gender-based violence and support survivors on college campuses.
Davis Foster (24) | Scythe Robotics
Foster is a Thiel Fellow and cofounder of Boulder-based Scythe Robotics. The company, which is backed by True Ventures, is building fully autonomous lawnmowers for commercial landscapers. Foster was also named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list this year in the manufacturing and industry category.
Josh Moser (25) | Laborjack
The 2018 Colorado State University graduate has his pilot license and is the co-founder of variable workforce startup Laborjack. The Fort Collins-based startup connects individuals and businesses to a community of college-aged manual laborers. In addition to his work at Laborjack, Moser takes part in two charitable organizations, Guys Who Give and Realities for Children.
