PEOPLE AND PLACES
Accelerator or TVA. TVA is an annual competition. Finalists are selected to receive $30,000 to catalyze their businesses. Of the five companies in the class of 2018 from across industry sectors – bicycle pedals to organic toothpaste, demountable walls, workout recovery aids, and a baby toy – four are headed by women. Finalists are required to relocate for six weeks to Telluride, where they are provided with shared office space downtown and mentors to cultivate and support their new business endeavors. Mentors come from Telluride’s growing community of successful entrepreneurs and investors, many of whom expressed an eagerness to focus their skills in the service of socio-economic development. “Eighteen years ago, when Ron Allred founded the organization, in addition to using the Foundation to improve the quality of life for those who live and work in our extended community, he also wanted to create a space for second homeowners to come together because many were feeling disenfranchised. A number of those second homeowners became TVA mentor volunteers, coaching young men and women on how to start and build businesses. Through their work for TVA, those mentors have become a community within a community. And they said they feel TVA’s entrepreneurial environment is a value-add to a lifestyle they were already enjoying in Telluride,” says Major. “For them, TVA became one more great reason to choose to live in Telluride over any other resort.” Major is talking about mentors like Meg Whitman, the seasoned Silicon Valley mogul, with more than three decades of experience leading huge brands like Hewlett Packard and eBay. Whitman was recently named CEO of a new venture that aims to revolutionize entertainment with short-form premium content customized for mobile consumption.
paradise we call home is something that is more possible now than ever before. The unique history of innovation and creativity found in the region has always attracted some of the world’s most accomplished and ambitious people. Nunn is an example. And Telluride today remains a perfect environment to support entrepreneurs and their ventures.” Entrepreneurs like Kelly Waters of Western Rise, a company she co-founded in Telluride, built through TVA, and which remains based in Telluride. “Telluride proved to be the ideal community to design, test, and live the lifestyle of the brand we are creating. My partner and I were able to build a business with global sales from the place we love, which is both personally and professionally rewarding. The fact that there is an emerging startup community in Telluride is what drew us here and it has helped us continue to scale our business.” While Fresh Monster flew the coup to Denver, leaving Telluride to house its business on the left and right coasts, roughly three years from its post-accelerator launch in town, its products are now sold in more than 3,000 stores in the U.S., including some of the biggest retailers in the world, Target, Wal-Mart, and H-E-B among them. And it was early funding from investors, including the Telluride Venture Fund, totaling $700,000, which contributed to the company’s ability to scale so quickly and successfully. Being able to build a company in one of the most inspiring settings on the planet is clearly a major draw. In addition, the Foundation board sees one more bang for their bucks: enhanced branding that comes from happy entrepreneurs like Fresh Monster, also Hyperlite Mountain Gear, LifeDojo, Thimble.io and Side By Side Pet Nutrition, all successful graduates of TVA who took their shows on the road, high on their experiences in Telluride. Hard to buy that sort of advertising.
"Telluride is incredibly special to me, and having entities like TVA involved in creating an ecosystem supportive of innovation and entrepreneurship makes this community that much more unique and important,” Whitman explains. The Telluride Venture Accelerator was founded by entrepreneur and philanthropist Jesse Johnson in conjunction with Paul Major to further innovation and entrepreneurship for young, high-growth business ventures. “The impact TVA and its community has had in our region has far exceeded our expectations of six years ago when we started this venture within the Foundation,” says Johnson. “Back then, if you were someone looking at Telluride and asking what was going on here around innovation and entrepreneurship, you would have gotten blank stares. Now, it is fair to say that, without exaggeration, Telluride is a global leader amongst mountain communities in the accelerator and start-up space. If that is what this community could create in six short years, imagine where we will be in another six.” Since 2016, Marc Nager has worked as VP of Innovation for the Telluride Foundation and Managing Director for TVA. “The Telluride Foundation has established a reputation as one of the most progressive community foundations in the nation. The challenges we face in Telluride serve as a microcosm reflecting many dynamics happening across the country – like the need to create jobs in rural communities and preserve a middle class. Efforts like TVA prove Telluride is a great sandbox for playing around with new approaches to some of the systemic challenges we face as a nation. The dream of being able to live and work as a professional in the
“Over a thousand startup accelerators have emerged in the US over the past decade, but Telluride is the smallest town we know of in the world to host such an initiative,” adds Nager. “The unique dynamics of operating in a remote, rural context has led us to test out new models such as our special alternative funding offering and our hybrid on-site/ remote program. As a member of the Global Accelerator Network, we are helping to lead some of the innovation happening within the national accelerator space.” As young as it is, TVA has produced offspring, including Telluride Angels, a casual group of angel investors who meet up to four times a year and hear pitches from highcaliber startup ventures from across the nation; the Telluride Venture Fund (TVF), highly aligned with TVA and now on its third fund with most of the investment being made into companies in the region; Telluride Loan Fund focused on supporting established and growing businesses in San Miguel, West Montrose and Ouray counties; and Mountain Ventures Summit, an annual conference that brings together over 100 leaders from more than 20 mountain communities across the nation to discuss strategies and tactics for creating more diverse and sustainable economies in mountain towns such as Telluride. This winter, TVA also created Telluride Works, a shared workspace and community of local creatives, entrepreneurs, and freelancers, located above the historic Roma Bar. Their combined energies, like all the aforementioned initiatives, collectively serve to boost Telluride’s seemingly unstoppable mojo.
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