Even an economic downturn and the global pullback in venture capital at the end of 2022 couldn't slow Colorado's startup scene last year.
Denver, along with Nashville and Philadelphia, bucked nationwide trends. Founders in those cities raised amounts of venture capital near the record-breaking levels of 2021 and worked to cement those areas as bonafide startup hubs, according to the most recent PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor report released last week.
In 2022, Denver startups raised $5.7 billion — a drop from the nearly $7 billion raised in 2021 but much higher than Colorado's previous record of $2.7 billion in 2020. Last year saw huge raises by late-stage startups, including DispatchHealth, Pie Insurance, Guild Education and Everside Health, as well as funding for hundreds of early-stage companies.
Here, we’ve selected 23 pre-seed and seed-stage startups worth watching in 2023, including makers of consumer products, health care innovators and companies developing solutions to combat social justice issues and climate change.
Ride iQ
Founded: 2021
Founder: Jessa Lux and McKinsey Lux
Headquarters: Denver and New York
Sisters Jessa and McKinsey Lux took home the $40,000 prize at Denver Startup Week's annual pitch competition in September for their platform that provides audio coaching to horseback riders. To create their startup, Ride iQ, the sisters partnered with their former equestrian coach, Kyle Carter, who represented Canada in equestrian eventing at the 2008 Summer Olympics. Carter is among the 21 coaches — and six former Olympians — who provide audio lessons through the platform. Jessa Lux is based in Denver, and Ride iQ has gained more of a foothold in the local startup community following its success at Denver Startup Week. The Lux sisters started 2023 by being named to the latest cohort of the Techstars Boulder accelerator program. During the 13-week course, Ride iQ, along with 11 other startups, will undergo training on customer discovery, selling and fundraising and gain access to mentors and investors. Also this year, the duo is working to launch Ride iQ in the United Kingdom.
Honest Jobs
Founded: 2018
Founder: Harley Blakeman
Headquarters: Denver
Harley Blakeman, the CEO and founder of Honest Jobs, took an atypical path to entrepreneurship. He became homeless at 15 and dropped out of high school, and at 19, he was imprisoned in Georgia on a drug-related charge. Blakeman earned a GED during his 14-month sentence and later worked and studied his way to being in the top 5% of his class at Ohio State University. Despite his good grades and other credentials, his incarceration prevented him from landing employment after graduating. To address the larger issue of formerly incarcerated people like himself struggling to get work and start their careers, Blakeman started Honest Jobs as a "fair-chance" digital hiring platform. He moved his startup to Denver in 2021 after graduating from a Techstars accelerator and securing seed funding from Boulder-based venture capital firms Caruso Ventures and Matchstick Ventures. Honest Jobs works with about 1,100 employers —including Koch Industries, Amazon, Coca-Cola and Wayfair — to help match formerly incarcerated job-seekers to positions for which they're qualified. The startup is looking to expand to more U.S. cities in 2023.
Cubby Beds
Founded: 2017
Founders: Caleb Polley
Headquarters: Denver
Caleb Polley, the founder of Cubby Beds, was inspired by a childhood friend with special needs to develop a "smart bed" to improve anxiety, sleep and safety for people with disabilities. The result was Cubby Beds, a startup that manufactures beds with speakers, sensors, a camera, canopy, safety sheets, fabric doors and circadian lights that fade out like a sunset. They're used by individuals with autism, epilepsy, dementia and other conditions. The startup shipped about 1,000 beds in 2022, most of which were covered by Medicaid and other insurance programs. Polley tripled his team to 15 people last year and is currently hiring for more positions. The founder is a longtime entrepreneur, having started his first e-commerce store at age 15. Prior to running Cubby Beds full-time, Polley worked for Denver-based SendGrid, which was acquired by Twilio in 2019.
Mad Capital
Founded: 2022
Founders: Brandon Welch and Phil Taylor
Headquarters: Boulder
Mad Capital, a business spun out of the nonprofit Mad Agriculture, aims to help farmers access the funding needed to transition their land to regenerative agriculture. Regenerative agriculture refers to the process of rebuilding the organic matter in soil that is stripped by conventional farming methods. It takes about three years for farmers to fully regenerate and produce a consistent crop yield, and many traditional banks are unwilling to supply farmers with the financing needed to get them through that transition period. Mad Capital offers farmers operating, equipment and infrastructure loans, as well as mortgages, flexible lines of credit and transitional loans. In some cases, farmers have the option to pay only the principal on a loan until their land is certified organic and is yielding crops. The Boulder startup is already working with 24 farmers in 13 states. It raised $4 million at the end of 2022 and is pursuing the lofty goal of financing 10 million acres of farmland by 2032.
HNA Live
Founded: 2021
Founders: Cooper Mojsiejenko
Headquarters: Denver
HNA Live, which uses artificial intelligence and 3D technology to increase productivity in manufacturing facilities, relocated its headquarters to Denver this month with a plan to hire 36 employees in the city. Founder Cooper Mojsiejenko had the help of Colorado's state government when making the decision to move from Michigan — the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade, or OEDIT, approved up to $164,284 in job growth incentive tax credits to HNA Live over the next eight years. In addition to moving to the Mile High City, HNA Live is expecting to enter the market with its manufacturing technology, as well as close a round of venture capital. As of December, the startup was in the process of raising a $1.4 million pre-seed round. Later in 2023, Mojsiejenko believes HNA Live will be ready to launch its data tools for the real estate industry.
Inclusive Journeys
Founded: 2019
Founders: Crystal Egli and Parker McMullen Bushman
Headquarters: Denver
In 2022, Crystal Egli and Parker McMullen Bushman, the founders of Inclusive Journeys, launched the Inclusive Guide — a national, online guide that directs users to safe businesses that are inclusive of all races, genders and abilities. The concept was modeled after the 1936 “Negro Motorist Green-Book,” a guide for Black travelers to identify businesses where they’d be relatively safe. The duo wants users to leave positive reviews in the Inclusive Guide in order to create a network of safety, and they also encourage honest, negative feedback. Egli and McMullen Bushman are looking to grow their platform after going through an intensive, eight-week accelerator program in October. The Inclusive Journeys founders were two of 25 women selected by Amazon Web Services for the company's Impact Accelerator for Women Founders. The program offered individually-curated training, mentoring, technical guidance and introductions to investors.
Fulfilld
Founded: 2020
Founders: Yosh Eisbart, Rick Fischer and Michael Pytel
Headquarters: Denver
The warehouse management technology startup Fulfilld had a big year in 2022. In November, it raised $3.2 million in seed funding that valued Fulfilld at $21 million, and the startup ended the year by signing a yet-to-be-announced Fortune 50 company that plans to adopt Fulfilld's cloud-based solution. The startup was founded by a team of local serial entrepreneurs that was behind another Colorado-based venture, the enterprise software and services firm NIMBL. NIMBL was acquired by the Milan-based IT business TechEdge in 2018. So far, the trio has raised more than $7 million in pre-seed and seed funding for Fulfilld, including a $250,000 grant awarded last year by the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. The founders plan to continue gaining traction throughout 2023 in order to put Fulfilld in a good position to raise a Series A round.
Odessey Energy Solutions
Founded: 2017
Founders: Emily McAteer and Cathy Zoi
Headquarters: Boulder
This year is forecast to be a boon for climate tech startups, and Boulder's Odyssey Energy Solutions could stand to benefit. The startup raised a $5.34 million seed round in 2022 to streamline renewable energy projects in developing economies across the world, and it has since signed new partnerships. Odyssey provides digital technology and data tools to developers of low-carbon, small-scale energy projects to help them through the stages of financing, building and operating the projects. The startup's goal is to enable the distributed renewable energy, or DRE, sector to achieve global climate targets, and it's working to launch new financial products to infuse more private capital into the market. It's starting the year by hiring for new positions and setting new goals. "With so much growth in the DRE industry, we see infinite opportunities for Odyssey to play a key role in supporting renewable energy companies," company leaders said.
Random Games
Founded: 2021
Founders: Tony Harman and Wyeth Ridgway
Headquarters: Boulder
Random Games, created by gaming industry veterans Tony Harman and Wyeth Ridgway, publicly launched in 2022 and simultaneously announced its $7.6 million seed raise. The duo has lofty ambitions for its gaming platform, including to revolutionize the relationship between gamers and game developers and "reinvent the games business," they said. Their science fiction video game franchise, Unioverse, uses blockchain technology to make its assets available to players and other video game developers. Those players and developers can then use Unioverse's characters, artwork and other assets to make their own games, comic books or other merchandise to sell. The team has a long history in gaming development. Harman previously ran development and acquisition for Nintendo of America, where he helped launch the games Donkey Kong Country and Killer Instinct. In the late 1990s, Ridgway founded Leviathan Games, which built games for Disney, Konami, EA, Warner Brothers and Sony. For this latest venture, they're being advised by David Jones, the Scottish video game creator who developed Grand Theft Auto, among other popular games.
Vitro3D
Founded: 2020
Founders: Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert
Headquarters: Boulder
Vitro3D, which spun out of the University of Colorado and the Colorado Life Science Incubation Program, is using a $1.3 million seed round raised in November to prepare for the commercialization this year of its 3D-printing technology. Founders Camila Uzcategui and Johnny Hergert say the startup uses a rapid, cost-effective method of 3D printing that can mix and match different materials. The duo is focused on using the tech to first print dental retainers, aligners and mouth guards before expanding it to other medical uses. The startup's investors have so far been Colorado-based venture funds, including Buff Gold Ventures, Rockies Venture Club, Caruso Ventures and The Deming Center Venture Fund. Their investment will help Vitro to "demonstrate the power of our revolutionary 3D printing technology," Uzcategui said.
Bitewell
Founded: 2020
Founders: Samantha Citro Alexander and Chris Fanucchi
Headquarters: Denver
Bitewell is new to Colorado, having established its first physical office in Denver in mid-2022. Before the move, the startup's C-suite was spread across Dallas, Chicago and Philadelphia. Now, Bitewell is housed in Taxi by Zepplin, a mixed-use development of offices, residences and retail in Denver's River North Art District. The foodtech startup is growing a corporate food-health platform, which takes employees' food preferences, health goals and dietary restrictions and helps them make decisions about what to eat. It provides meal-planning tools, grocery shopping, personalized recipes and restaurant recommendations — plus, the platform gives a food-health score to whatever users are eating. Bitewell started 2023 by receiving a "top vendor award" in the corporate nutrition category from Shortlister, a marketplace used by employers and consultants to find human resources, well-being and benefits vendors.
Posterity Health
Founded: 2021
Founders: Barrett Cowan and Pam Pure
Headquarters: Parker
According to the American Society for Reproductive Medicine, both men and women should be evaluated when facing problems with conceiving a child. However, that rarely happens, said Barrett Cowan, one of the founders of Parker-based Posterity Health. Only about 6% of counties in the U.S. have a practicing reproductive urologist, and for men in those areas, the wait time to see one can be up to two months. Cowan, who's one of the 200 or so urologists in the country, set out in 2021 to increase men's access to fertility treatment. He and his wife, Pam Pure, founded Posterity Health, a digital male fertility platform that promises to expand access to male fertility treatment to places where it would typically be unavailable. The company is working to make its platform available across the United States and expanded to four more states in the Midwest at the end of 2022. Posterity Health raised $6 million in seed funding in 2022 and announced another $1.5 million in January.
Gritly
Founded: 2019
Founders: David Lopez
Headquarters: Boulder
David Lopez is attempting to remove barriers to economic mobility for women, minorities, veterans and other populations that often face difficulties breaking into the technology industry. He's accomplishing that through Gritly, his hiring platform that matches diverse, qualified candidates to non-technical, entry-level jobs in tech. Gritly gained support in 2022 from Google and Techstars, both of which accepted the startup into their accelerator programs. Lopez is spending the start of 2023 finishing the Techstars Workforce Development Accelerator, which provides funding, mentorship and business coaching to participating startups. Gritly also received a $100,000 grant from Google, which provided Lopez and other founders included in its Latino Founders Fund with mentorship, programming support and free mental health care. Lopez said he's working to build out the Gritly brand, acquire new customers and invest in the startup's product development.
You:Flourish
Founded: 2022
Founders: Steven Haden
Headquarters: Denver
Organizers of the Colorado nonprofit Envision:You, which helps LGBTQ individuals who are struggling with mental health or substance use disorders, established the public benefit corporation You:Flourish last year with the goal of creating a platform that connects LGBTQ patients with affirming mental health providers and introduces them to a community of peers. That platform — which will be offered via a mobile application designed and developed by Denver-based AppIt Ventures — is expected to launch in the spring of 2023. The venture was founded by Steven Haden, CEO of the nonprofit Envision:You. Through You:Flourish, Haden intends to help the queer community find adequate mental health providers by vetting health care professionals before listing them on the platform. The startup is running a crowdfunding campaign through WeFunder, and it received support from the ESG holding company CoPeace.
Mini Money
Founded: 2019
Founders: Lorne Jenkins and Ellen Ross
Headquarters: Denver
Lorne Jenkins describes himself as the original graduate of Mini Money, which started as a household game created by his mother to teach him and his sister about spending, budgeting and money management. Jenkins used that concept to create the current iteration of Mini Money, a Denver-based startup that teaches financial literacy through in-classroom workshops and one-on-one sessions. The startup also developed a digital platform that allows teachers to run and manage a "classroom economy" that gives students life-like expenses, such as rent, meals and fines. Jenkins argues that financial education is lacking in schools, and it's now more important than ever as the cost of living rises and wages remain stagnant. The startup recently added to its team and is working toward the goal of taking its courses to 50 nonprofits and camps across Colorado and North Carolina this summer.
Guest House
Founded: 2016
Founders: Alex Ryden
Headquarters: Wheat Ridge
The cooling housing market in Denver and across the United States is a good thing for Guest House, a Wheat Ridge startup that partners with real estate agents to stage homes and allows homebuyers to purchase the furnishings. As homes sit on the market longer, agents are looking for tools to help their homes stand out and sell, said Alex Ryden, the founder of Guest House. Ryden sees a "huge market opportunity" for his startup in 2023, he told Colorado Inno. Near the end of 2022, Ryden was in the process of fundraising for Guest House in order to help scale its business. The startup currently works across Colorado and in Southern California and is looking to expand.
Tynt Technologies
Founded: 2020
Founders: Michael Strand, Tyler Hernandez, Mike McGehee, John Dwyer, Taylor Aviles and Ameen Saafir
Headquarters: Boulder
The team at Tynt Technologies is preparing for the launch later this year of its residential windows, which promise to optimize a home's overall energy use and lower carbon emissions. The "smart windows" use reversible metal electrodeposition technology to control light and heat flow while offering users the ability to change their tint. The tech reduces HVAC use while giving homeowners control over the appearance of the windows. The startup has raised more than $10 million in seed funding, including $250,000 last year from the Colorado Office of Economic Development and International Trade. Two of its founders — Tyler Hernandez and Michael Strand — were included on Forbes' latest 30 Under 30 list for 2023.
LivedX
Founded: 2020
Founder: Geeta Verma
Headquarters: Denver
LivedX — an online platform that allows learners to build portfolios of microcredentials to capture and share lived experiences and soft skills — is off to a fast start in 2023. The startup was one of a dozen selected by Techstars for its 2023 Workforce Development Accelerator, a 15-week program designed for companies that work to address challenges in the labor market. And in early January, LivedX was listed by Global Silicon Valley among the top 200 pre-seed and seed-stage startups working in the digital learning and workforce skills sector. Founder Geeta Verma is a STEM education professor at the University of Colorado's Denver campus, where she works to empower women and minorities to enter STEM fields. Her platform leverages artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve opportunities for marginalized populations.
Intelligems
Founded: 2020
Founders: Adam Kitain, Drew Marconi
Headquarters: Denver and New York
Adam Kitain and Drew Marconi, the founders of Intelligems, first met while working at the ridesharing company Via Transportation in New York. Kitain ran pricing algorithms for the company, while Marconi worked on the revenue operations team. The two set out on their own in 2020 to introduce the pricing strategies they used at Via to e-commerce brands. They formed Intelligems, which helps companies on Shopify to test their prices, discounts and shipping rates in order to maximize their margins. Their technology has been used by more than 100 brands, including other Colorado-based companies, such as Sheets & Giggles and Shinesty. The recent economic downturn makes their pricing algorithms more essential, Marconi told Colorado Inno. This year, the duo plan to add more services and go after larger brands.
Bulwark Coffee
Founded: 2021
Founders: Rich Turner
Headquarters: Boulder
Marine Corps veteran Rich Turner founded Bulwark Coffee — a direct-to-consumer coffee retailer — while getting his master's at the Leeds School of Business in Boulder. The startup, which launched to the public in 2022, offers e-commerce sales of its coffee, including subscriptions to receive its six coffee varieties. It also partners with local roasters Wander Coffee in Fort Collins and Corvus Coffee in Littleton to provide Bulwark's blends. The startup's profits are donated to veteran, law enforcement, fire and EMS organizations, as well as disaster relief efforts. Last year, Bulwark dedicated a portion of its initial profits to aid Ukrainians following the Russian invasion.
Chembotix
Founded: 2020
Founders: Kailey Shara
Headquarters: Boulder
The Boulder startup Chembotix, spun out of the University of Colorado, is developing a robotic automation platform to dramatically speed up chemistry research and development. Kailey Shara, a doctoral candidate and the founder of Chembotix, is working with a team of 10 to build a chemical synthesis robot, with the overarching goal of automating tedious and time-consuming chemistry lab operations, such as weighing solids, dispensing liquids and running reactions. The idea earned Chembotix the first-place prize in CU's 2022 New Venture Challenge, a pitch competition for startups founded by CU students and faculty. Chembotix took home $45,000 in prize money from the competition.
Goodie Bag
Founded: 2022
Founders: Eddy Connors, Ethan Mills, Luke Siegert and Kevin Gonzales
Headquarters: Boulder
Last year, University of Colorado students and graduates Eddy Connors, Ethan Mills, Luke Siegert and Kevin Gonzales developed the concept for a platform that works with restaurants and grocers to sell surplus meals for discounted prices, rather than discarding the food. The foursome created Goodie Bag and took the platform through beta testing at the end of 2022. This month, they launched the service with their first partner, Barchetta. Through the platform, restaurants, grocers and other food providers will put any surplus food in "goodie bags," and list them on the platform. Customers can then reserve goodie bags for pickup, and the startup will take a fee for each bag sold. The concept has won the founders multiple pitch competitions, including Denver's Founders Live event in December. "2023 will be a wild year," the founders wrote on LinkedIn. "We’re excited to embark on this journey with you."
Little Sistas Treats
Founded: 2020
Founders: Zyaire Hawkins and Char'Les Hawkins
Headquarters: Highlands Ranch
Little Sistas Treats, started during the Covid-19 pandemic by sisters Zyaire and Char'Les Hawkins, has been selling an array of desserts at events and pop-ups around Denver since its founding. The pair took second place at Denver Startup Week's annual pitch competition in September, where the sisters — then ages 13 and 11 — impressed the judges with their story. The sisters want to inspire other young girls to become CEOs, they said. The duo won $6,500 at the event, which went toward their efforts to raise $50,000 to purchase their own food truck and hire staff to run it.
Related content: Startups to Watch flashback: Highlights from our 2023 list
