A thriving startup community provides a boost to the greater community in lots of ways. It encourages innovation and investment, attracts creative, entrepreneurial people, and generates a certain energy– making the entire city a more desirable place to live.
Additionally, when local startups are acquired by big companies, and those companies hire more people in the area, the result is more jobs, which boosts the local economy in a lot of new ways.
A great example of how big companies get here is Sketchup, a startup that my partner Mark Solon invested in back when it was a tiny company. Google acquired Sketchup in 2006 (yep, I was blogging about Colorado startups way back then), and we’ve had the footprint of Google’s presence in Boulder ever since then. Bolstered by the addition of around 1,500 jobs in Boulder, over the years that acquisition has significantly contributed to Boulder’s growth and housing boom.
Similarly, in 2011 Federated Media purchased Lijit (now Sovrn), leading to an increase in hiring at the Boulder office. And in 2014, Boulder startup Gnip was acquired by Twitter, leading to their large office here. By the way, even as I write this Twitter has 10 job openings in Boulder right now.
Microsoft brought an office to Boulder when it bought the startup Vexcel. Later, Uber opened up a Boulder office when it acquired some of the Bing assets and Microsoft continued to operate here.
There are plenty of other examples in Boulder alone. By my count, about 2,000 high paying, high tech, “big company” jobs in Boulder can be traced back to startups from the last decade. Not to mention the many thousands more jobs that are enabled by the current generation of startups today.
This is how an active startup community impacts the broader community, well beyond just the startup community itself. It impacts all aspects of the area, including real estate, retail and housing in major ways. Next time you find yourself wondering if startups really matter to a community, take a look at Boulder and ask yourself why Google and Twitter employ so many people here. Startups are responsible for most net new jobs in America. As big companies continue to cut back, we can continue to look to startups to create our future.
