Denver Startup Week Pulls in Record-Breaking Attendance

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Denver Startup Week 2016 has broken a record: It is officially the biggest free entrepreneurial event in North America thanks to 12,500 registered attendees who will witness 300 events between September 12 and 16, 2016. And, since there's still a full day of programs left, that record-breaking number can only get more impressive.

The week-long summit highlights Denver's small business community by emphasizing and inspiring entrepreneurial energy, innovation, and connection.

Denver Startup Week Continues Growing Since 2012

The Denver Startup Week first clocked in at 70 events and 3,500 attendees when it debuted in 2012 (an event that Tech.Co was luckily able to experience first-hand). The record broken this week was set in 2015, when the week saw 10,875 registered attendees.

Tami Door, co-founder of Denver Startup Week and the president and CEO of the Downtown Denver Partnership, issued a statement on the 2016 record:

“We convene community better than anywhere in the country, and Denver Startup Week is an excellent representation of our thriving and diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem. Our strength in numbers grows our culture of innovation and entrepreneurship and further establishes a powerful platform in Downtown Denver to attract the most innovative companies and investors in the world.”

Denver Startup Week 2016 includes over 300 volunteers; 54 sponsors, including title sponsors Chase for Business, Comcast NBCUniversal and the Downtown Denver Partnership and the 71 companies hiring at Wednesday's job fair. Almost 32,000 votes helped determine which programs made it to the final schedule.

Denver Entrepreneurs Are on the Rise

The broken record at Denver Startup Week 2016 is just the latest signal that business owners in the area are having a great year. The healthy economy is growing in a number of measurable ways, as a new report from the Downtown Denver Partnership indicates. Here's a list of takeaways from the Downtown Denver Startup Report:

  • 4,508 people work for 664 tech startups in the center city;
  • Nearly 8 percent of center city businesses are tech startups;
  • 56 startups raised more than $420 million in venture capital in the last year; and
  • 165 tech startups were founded in the center city just last year.

Denver's future as a startup hub appears to be on the upswing, and anyone in the Denver area who wants to witness the free event can drop by on Friday; maybe you can be number 12,501.

Additionally, make sure to catch best-selling author, CEO and serial entrepreneur Mel Robbins tomorrow at her talk “Disrupt Yourself to Accelerate Your Startup Growth”. Learn more about it here.

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Written by:
Adam is a writer at Tech.co and has worked as a tech writer, blogger and copy editor for more than a decade. He was a Forbes Contributor on the publishing industry, for which he was named a Digital Book World 2018 award finalist. His work has appeared in publications including Popular Mechanics and IDG Connect, and his art history book on 1970s sci-fi, 'Worlds Beyond Time,' is out from Abrams Books in July 2023. In the meantime, he's hunting down the latest news on VPNs, POS systems, and the future of tech.
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