Startups generate much of the buzz in the business community, with giant funding rounds and product launches dominating the news cycle.
But, not every business is destined for unicorn status.
In Denver, TrueSpace is focused on a different-sized business, as it aims to boost revenue growth for second-stage businesses.
After seven years operating in the city, the company announced the executive promotion of Jamee Fred to president this week.
Prior to this role, Fred served as the company's co-founder, along with her father Charles, and as chief marketing office since the company's inception in 2013.
“For my own personal mission, I want to ensure that 50 percent of our membership is for female entrepreneurs.”
While second-stage businesses can be a loosely-defined term, Fred said TrueSpace typically looks for companies that have generated between $2 million and $10 million in revenue, have more than five employees and have been in business for at least five years.
TrueSpace offers a place for members to work on their business, while partnering to help them reach their goals at a pace they determine.
“We really want to refute the status quo that rapid growth is better than sustainable growth,” she told Colorado Inno.
During her time as CMO, Fred helped brand TrueSpace as a provider of primary research to understand second-stage businesses, building the relationship between TrueSpace and Gallup and developing the company's Five Conditions Assessment.
The Five Conditions Assessment offers entrepreneurs an instrument to diagnose their business, scoring them on a variety of factors and comparing them to a top performing benchmark.
“The big hope is that our assessment will be able to eliminate bias around the current investor behavior and patterns we see today,” Jamee said. “Investors won’t even need to see or know who the entrepreneur is, and then we can begin to eliminate that bias around what they’re investing in.”
In her new role, Fred said little will change in her day-to-day duties, though she does have goals for the company moving forward.
“For my own personal mission, I want to ensure that 50 percent of our membership is for female entrepreneurs,” she said.
As it works to be a resource for companies that have graduated from startup status, TrueSpace recently partnered with Innosphere, a Colorado incubator for science and technology companies, to support startups throughout their entrepreneurial journey.
As startups graduate from Innosphere and begin to scale, they are invited to join TrueSpace to continue receiving support.
Since the launch of this partnership, there have been three companies to graduate from Innosphere's program that have transitioned to TrueSpace, including SunTech Drive, a Boulder-based solar power electronics company. SunTech Drive grew to about $2 million in revenue while they were in Innosphere's Scaleup Program, at which point they graduated from Innosphere and became a client of TrueSpace.
Fred said that strategic partnerships like this are key to supporting Colorado companies throughout their life-cycles, beyond the initial startup phase.
“What we’re trying to do is show that there is this next layer of growth that happens in the second stage, understanding that these are the businesses that are the backbone of our economy,” she said.
