Denver and Boulder’s distinct identities in the tech world could be holding the region back from being considered a true hub for innovation, a local tech CEO said at an event Tuesday.
“You think about the Bay Area, you think about Boston-495, you think about Raleigh-Durham, but here, it seems like there is separation,” Apto CEO Tanner McGraw said. “It’s absolutely an opportunity.”
“You’ve got Boulder Startup Week and Denver Startup Week and Fort Collins Startup Week,” he said. “In Austin, you’ve got South by Southwest. The notion of having a Round Rock South by Southwest is absurd, yet we do it here.”
Apto, a commercial real estate software company, moved its operations to Denver from Houston last year, drawn to the Mile High City’s startup sensibilities and deeper talent pool. Currently inside the Galvanize tech campus, the 50-plus employee firm is planning a move to Lower Downtown in the near future.
“It’s a really interesting opportunity to have a collective identity,” McGraw said of the Front Range tech community. “I’ve not been here long enough to know what it is, but there is a real opportunity to try to combine and become something together, as opposed to these disparate parts.”
McGraw was one of the speakers at The Denver Disruption, a Bisnow forum about technology and commercial real estate in Denver.
Large technology companies and established multinationals — including Panasonic Enterprise Solutions — are starting to look to Denver because of its Rocky Mountain backdrop, affordability and public-private partnerships that have led to innovative projects such as Peña Station NEXT, said Sean Campbell, CEO of Formativ, a Denver real estate development company.
Campbell, the co-founder and co-developer of Industry, is working on the new World Trade Center Denver campus near the recently opened 38th & Blake Station.
Denver is poised to disrupt larger tech markets such as San Francisco, he said, although attracting capital and talent will be key.
“We are going to be 60 cents on the dollar for a little while compared to those markets,” Campbell said. “When you’re making $250,000 at Google, and you have to live in Oakland because you can’t afford to buy a place in San Francisco and you’re taking the Google bus, Denver and Boulder start to look pretty darn attractive.”
Denver’s red-hot housing market could pose challenges in the future, though, said Brian Levitt, president of NAVA Real Estate, one of the few local firms with large condominium projects in development today.
“We have 25,000 new households created in the Denver metro area a year, so amazing numbers of people moving here,” Levitt said. “By the same token, just the cost of doing business is exceptional right now — over the last two years, we saw construction costs increase about a percent a month, which is insane.
“People being able to find real estate and affordable housing is going to be a challenge going forward.”
