Colorado Startup Week back in downtown Denver

The annual meetup of startups and technology companies is back to take over downtown Denver.

Colorado Startup Week began its main programming on Tuesday and is set to run until Friday. The event is known for bringing in more than 10,000 people to downtown Denver — many of them founders, entrepreneurs and tech professionals — to showcase and discuss the biggest trends affecting Colorado’s tech economy.

It’s the event’s second year under a new name. The conference was founded in 2012 and is run by the Downtown Denver Partnership and a team of community volunteers within the startup community.

It was first called Denver Startup Week but changed its name last year to Colorado Startup Week to highlight how entrepreneurial culture spans across the state.

Since its inception, the event has grown in the number of attendees and has been able to attract guests from every state across the nation. This year, several events focus on Colorado’s economic connections with other countries such as France, New Zealand and Japan.

Colorado Startup Week is free for anyone to attend and has events mainly around downtown Denver, though there are some events hosted across other tech cities in the state like Boulder.

This year, the event includes discussions on Colorado’s aerospace industry, its quickly-growing quantum hub and the rise of artificial intelligence. There will be about 20 keynotes, more than 100 sessions, and more than 200 community events or meetups, according to the event’s website.

Denver’s technology startups account for nearly 13% of downtown’s businesses, according to the Colorado State of Tech report released by the Downtown Denver Partnership. The state attracted $7.4 billion in venture capital funding in 401 deals last year, marking the second highest-year on record, the report said.Still, the industry is facing headwinds as getting investor funding is more difficult and companies have to prove a path to profitability faster than several years ago, the report said. AI is also taking a large chunk of capital and making it more competitive for other tech companies to get the funding needed to grow.

“Coloradans are building some of the most successful companies in the world out of garages, basements, and coworking spaces right here in our state. Long before I was Governor, I was one of them, a founder chasing an idea with no guarantee it would work,” Gov. Jared Polis said in a press release. “That’s the spirit of Colorado StartUp Week, and it’s that spirit which helps drive innovation and growth in Colorado’s economy.”