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Fletcher Richman sat down with Built In Colorado to talk about CU Boulder’s first student shared workspace and incubator, Spark, set to open next week Friday, February 21.
Fletcher Richman and his MusikFly venture are proof that the entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well at CU. Still, there is something left to be desired; the whole culture lacks a certain cohesive element. A certain spark, if you will. There simply wasn’t enough interaction going on, due mainly to the fact that there was no place for this interaction to happen, Richman said. So Richman took it upon himself to innovate within this space, or rather, create one.
The problem with the startup community at CU isn’t any lack in talent or ambition. The issue is that all the talent is fragmented across different parts of campus: the engineers stay holed up in the engineer building, the business students stayed in their own space, etc. So Richman wanted to create a melting pot, one where business students, computer engineers, marketing students and the like could all sit side by side so that entrepreneurship could blossom.
The efforts to create such a space began in earnest when Richman was introduced to a piece of property on the Hill about a block off of campus. It was then that this dream became a very achievable reality. Still, there was no shortage of obstacles to overcome before next week’s opening could be made possible.
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Richman and his fellow Spark founders were able to secure funding from Archer Bay, a Denver law firm that had found success with similar projects in the Florida area.
Interestingly enough, Richman somewhat serendipitously facilitated his own involvement with Archer Bay. Richman first connected with Archer Bay at an event he himself helped put on during Boulder Startup Week. The event was thrown in an effort to help CU students connect with the Boulder community, and it did just that. It was here that Richman met David Cline from Archer Bay.
Archer Bay immediately recognized the potential of what the Spark incubator project could yield in a student community like Boulder’s. Archer Bay and Spark had found perfect symbiotic potential: Archer Bay could set up an office space in Spark and offer free legal in mentoring services. In exchange, Archer Bay would be sitting on a hot bed of potential leads, a place where the next big idea could arrive.
With Archer Bay’s backing and experience, Spark quickly gained momentum in the community. “They helped us setup a nonprofit, negotiate a lease, a lot of the back end stuff,” Richman said. He and his fellow student entrepreneurs then turned to the Boulder community to secure the rest of the funding needed to finish the project, were they discovered a very encouraging and enthusiastic response. Companies like SendGrid, TapInfluence, and Zayo Group all invested, expressing interest in branding themselves around Spark, hosting events at the incubator and using it as a recruiting resource. Brad Feld, managing director of the Foundry Group, has also supported the Spark initiative.
After handling all of the logistics, Richman and the Spark team are in the homestretch of realizing their vision. They have taken the $130,000 investment budget and turned a 5,400-square-foot vacant basement into a space with 10 permanent desks, 25 individual desks and room for 50 to75 mobile memberships, including two conference rooms, four private offices, a bathroom and a kitchen. An appropriate analogy to describe the Spark space can be borrowed from the world of physics: potential energy.
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The next six months will be all about building the culture at Spark, with a heavy emphasis on mentorship. Richman realizes the importance of these mentoring relationships, saying that it “doesn’t happen as much as it should.” Richman said he envisions Spark as much more than a shared workspace. Speaking on the inspiration of Galvanize, Richman explains about what makes that place (Galvanize) so special is that “it’s not just a workspace, it’s an entrepreneurial ecosystem. That’s what we want to be.”
Spark will be the primordial soup where startups are given the chance to congeal and evolve, a place of inspiration and collaboration for generations of CU students to come. It is a unique space, for students and by students, welcoming any and all who are interested in getting involved in a startup, regardless of their fields.
Photo Credit: Kjell Ellefson
