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If you’re active in Colorado’s world of tech startups, you know New Tech Colorado and its monthly meetups in Boulder and Denver. The grassroots organization is almost 10,000 members strong, and a few hundred tech companies—ranging from Google to Backflip Studios to Techstars companies to brand-new startups—have presented at its gatherings.
You also know Robert Reich, the local serial entrepreneur who organized the first Boulder-Denver New Tech meetup. Reich remains the Boulder event’s ringmaster and is the primary organizer of New Tech Colorado.
So it’s probably hard to imagine that seven years ago, Reich was new in town and hardly knew anyone. Like any entrepreneur who has just relocated, Reich wanted to build his personal network and get a sense of what was going on around him.
“I was here for less than 30 days,” Reich said. “I was trying to find the best way to reach the local community, so I thought, ‘Let’s start something, let’s be an entrepreneur,’ so I started New Tech.”
Reich’s informal get-together has become one of the leading institutions in Colorado’s burgeoning tech scene.