Venture Partners News

Five promising startups spun out of CU Boulder comprise the first cohort of companies to receive investment from the Buff Venture Fund. The fund is the newest opportunity for CU Boulder startups to access critical funding on the path to success. The Buff Venture Fund is administered by Buff Gold Ventures, which has a formal partnership with Venture Partners at CU Boulder.

On two exciting nights of pitches and prizes, ten startups brought a broad range of ideas to the stage, including how to live and garden more sustainably, how to deal with the downsides of social media, how to offer practical prosthetics for kids—and sustainable water filters and hydroponic produce for all. Across the two events, eight teams took home a total of $20,000 to develop their ideas further.

Wanted: entrepreneurs ready to launch startups based on innovations created in CU Boulder’s research labs. The Embark Deep Tech Startup Creator is a new program created by Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the commercialization arm of CU, to match business minds outside the university with breakthrough inventions created within its walls.

CU Boulder has developed a groundbreaking pipeline to translate research into real-world impact, as highlighted in the 2022 Annual Report of Venture Partners at CU Boulder, the university’s commercialization arm.

The intermountain west innovation ecosystem came together at the fifth annual Destination Startup® showcase on Feb. 15 and 16, hosted by Venture Partners at CU Boulder. In a highly competitive field, 21 university ventures from intermountain west research institutions were selected to present at the showcase.

The Research & Innovation Office has announced several leadership transitions within the campuswide Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative, with Stan Hickory stepping into the role of director of the initiative, a position held by Chris Gustavson since 2019.

Commercialization activities led by Venture Partners at the University of Colorado Boulder had an economic impact of $8 billion nationally and $5.2 billion in the state of Colorado over the last five years, according to a new report from the Leeds School of Business.

From Tech Transfer Central — Since launching its Licensing with EASE® express agreement for start-up entrepreneurs in 2018, CU Boulder has seen its number of startups “increase dramatically,” according to Brynmor Rees, associate vice chancellor for research & innovation and managing director of Venture Partners.

Twelve teams of University of Colorado faculty, researchers and graduate student innovators competed for a combined $1.25 million in startup funding grants in this year’s Venture Challenge (LVC).

Vitro3D, a CU Boulder startup pioneering volumetric 3D printing for life sciences, just closed its first investment round of $1.3 million. The hard-won vote of confidence from the investment community will allow the promising new venture to pursue ambitious technical advances while continuing to build critical business capacity.