Boise Startup Week overview: Idaho’s technology community comes into its own

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More than 2,600 attendees, over $53,000 awarded to early-stage companies, more than 70 partners, 122 talks, three pitch competitions and one dodgeball tournament later, Boise Startup Week is over for the year. And what have we learned?

“We believe this was the year Boise Startup Week finally began achieving its original ambitions: Provide opportunities to our local entrepreneurs, make connections for our existing companies and showcase our statewide emergence around technology, food innovation and the ambitions/entrepreneurial spirit of Idahoans,” said co-organizer Nick Crabbs in an email message.

Out-of-state visitors

One notable factor was the number of attendees from outside the state during the event, held Oct. 7 through 12 at a variety of downtown Boise locations.

“In years past, most of our attendees came from the local Boise market,” Crabbs said. “This is the first year where our reach has extended beyond the Treasure Valley.”

Compared with last year, where 9% of registrants came from Ada and Canyon counties, 26% of attendees this year were from outside those areas, a “huge leap,” Crabbs said.

Speakers came from out of town as well, including Seattle, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Chicago, Portland, Denver and Austin. At the same time, close to 70% of the speakers came from Idaho.

Companies such as StagedotO, Silicon Valley Bank and EPIC Ventures wouldn’t be coming to Idaho if there wasn’t money and potential here, said Bill Benjamin, managing partner of Galena Capital Partners, which started in Boise in April to help companies raise capital, do mergers and acquisitions and restructuring.

At the same time, creating a startup community doesn’t happen overnight, said Techstars executives Mark Solon, from Boise, and Amos Schwartzfarb, from Austin. Austin’s first boom was 30 years ago, and Silicon Valley started 100 years ago, Schwartzfarb said.

Nobody in the room at Trailhead was a leader in the startup community when Solon moved here 20 years ago, he noted.

Some presenters said it was Boise’s reputation specifically, and not Idaho’s, that was the draw.

“You go to big cities and say you’re from Idaho, and they laugh at you,” said Caleb Donegan, Vacasa vice president of digital. “You have to say you’re from Boise.”

Talent and capital

At the same time, Idaho continues to suffer from several bottlenecks in the tech community — talent and capital — noted one panel on later-stage startups.

Paris Cole, CEO of Truckstop.com, which received what some said could have been up to a $1 billion investment earlier this year, said the region was missing C-level executives such as chief marketing officers and chief information officers, while Kount CEO Brad Wiskirchen said his company had to import out-of-state talent in specific technical areas, such as artificial intelligence and machine learning.

Idaho needs more talent in marketing, channels and sales leadership, said Todd Krautkremer, chief marketing officer for Cradlepoint, while Faisal Shah, co-founder of AppDetex, said the region needed more capital at the early stage, and more talent at the later funding rounds. While angel funding is available here, until recently companies had to go outside Boise for venture capital funding. Silicon Valley wants “unicorns,” or companies worth at least $1 billion, he said.

State and local government officials are accessible, Wiskirchen said, but he noted that Boise can be hard to reach.

“Boise is the only city with no direct flights to anywhere,” he joked.

Boise does boast a thriving coffee shop and craft brewery scene, which helps people meet, said Gregory Pogue, deputy executive director and senior research scientist for the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas in Austin.