Techstars Startup Weekend Food + Tech Boulder

Friday, November 17 - 19, 2017

Overview
Schedule
Speakers
Judges
Coaches and Mentors
Sponsors
Organizing Team
Blog

Buy Tickets

Event Alerts and Updates

Get the latest on Techstars Startup Weekend, Boulder, and other local events through Techstars Startup Digest.

Techstars Startup Weekend Food + Tech Boulder

Friday, November 17 - 19, 2017

Boulder
Startup Weekend
Events
Techstars Startup Weekend Food + Tech Boulder

Friday, November 17 - 19, 2017
Event starts at 6:00 pm

New Hope Network
5541 Central Avenue
Suite 150
Boulder, CO 80301

Buy Tickets

Come create the future of food, food systems, and food technology!

Let Food Be Thy Innovation and Innovation Be Thy Food

Have you ever had an idea that would change what we eat, how we eat, where we eat, etc? The whole food system is your oyster! Here's how we're thinking about food + food tech:

(1) Food Creation --- How do we change the where and how food is grown?

Thought starters: new farm and agricultural technology, vertical farms like Plenty or rooftop greenhouses like Gotham Greens, new crop/seed developments, etc.

(2) Food Distribution --- How do we change how food gets where it needs to go?

Thought starters: supply chain disruption, new delivery methods, last mile delivery, companies like Instacartl, FreshDirect, UberEats, etc.

(3) Food Manufacturing --- How do we change how food ingredients are transformed into products?

Thought starters: new production and packaging methods like HPP, new equipment ideas, new manufacturing processes, etc.

(4) Food Consumption --- How do we change how and what consumers interact with when it comes to food?

Thought starters: new CPG brands / concepts, new restaurant concepts, new retail concepts, food e-commerce, new food education platforms, social apps, etc.

(5) Food Disposal --- How do we change how food gets disposed of and limit food waste?

Thought starters: Boulder Food Rescue, CityHarvest, Copia, recycling and composting platforms, etc.

(6) Food Access --- How can we create people-centered food systems?
Ones' that address the barriers that limit a person's access to affordable, healthy, real foods: wages, geography, housing, transportation, health/childcare, institutional discrimination.
Thought starters: Alternative access points, distribution efficiencies, local economic development models, healthy corner stores, govt/business/nonprofit partnerships

Here's your opportunity to transform your thoughts into action. Startup Weekend Food + Tech is a 54 hour experiential program where you'll be able to pitch your idea, form a team, and create your own startup. You'll meet like-minded individuals with diverse skills, passion, and dedication to help make your startup idea a reality. During the weekend you will build a minimum viable product/prototype, test your idea with potential customers, receive mentorship from some of the most experienced entrepreneurs and industry professionals, and win prizes that will help you take your venture to the next level!

We're looking for passionate foodies, students, entrepreneurs, developers, chefs, designers, and everyone in between, who want to innovate new systems and products related to food. Come learn the basics of founding and launching a successful startup while solving real problems we face in our food system.

We provide the space, meals, caffeine, and connections to local resources to keep you going throughout the weekend.

We hope you'll join us and can't wait to see what you cook up!

See what it's all about

Learn More

Latest Blog Updates

Defining “FoodTech”

Joe Matta

EVENT SCHEDULE

Friday November 17th

6:00 pm

Registration

Arrive at the venue and get checked in

7:00 pm

Dinner & Networking

Eat food, share ideas, practice pitches, get to know fellow participants

7:20 pm

Welcome & Speakers

Review agenda for the weekend and introduce speakers, coaches, and community leaders

7:30 pm

Pitches Start

Optionally line up to give your pitch

9:00 pm

Voting

Attendees vote for the top pitches

9:15 pm

Form Teams

Teams start forming and discussing ideas

10:00 pm

Begin Work

Start to formalize teams and take an inventory of skills. Be honest, and direct about what resources and skills are needed for the weekend. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Saturday November 18th

8:30 am

Breakfast

Arrive, delicious breakfast & coffee

9:00 am

Begin Working!

Join up with your team and setup your workspace for the weekend

12:00 pm

Lunch

1:30 pm

Group Check-In & Mentor Welcome

Post-lunch check-in and mentor introductions

2:00 pm

Mentor Meetings

Pairs of mentors will help guide individual teams. They are here to help!

6:30 pm

Dinner

7:30 pm

Check-In

After-dinner check-in, status reports, call for help

10:00 pm

Wrap-Up

Finished for the day. You may stay and work as late as the venue will allow

Sunday November 19th

8:00 am

Yoga

Join Jenna Bee from All Terrain Yoga before crushing Sunday! (No equipment required)

9:00 am

Breakfast

Arrive, simple breakfast & coffee

10:00 am

Mentoring sessions

Mentors arrive. Final opportunity to ask questions!

12:00 pm

Lunch

3:00 pm

Presentation Prep & Tech Check

Final hours of worktime should be focused on perfecting your presentation, tech-check for final presentations also takes place

5:00 pm

Final Presentations

Each team has 5 minute to present the work done during the weekend

7:00 pm

Judging & Awards

7:30 pm

Celebratory Dinner

Congratulations, you made it! Let's celebrate over dinner

8:30 pm

Wrap-Up

9:00 pm

Go Home!

Speakers

Steve Hughes
CEO & Co-Founder @ Sunrise Strategic Partners

Stephen Hughes is a pioneer in the natural and organic food and beverage industry, and a veteran food industry executive with over 30 years of experience. Most recently Steve was Founder, Chairman and CEO of Boulder Brands, a publicly-traded natural food and beverage company with a portfolio that included well-known brands EVOL, Udi's Gluten Free, Glutino, and Earth Balance. Steve has previously worked in leadership positions on such brands as Celestial Seasonings, Silk, Tropicana and Conagra, where he led the team that launched Healthy Choice in 1988. Steve's network includes relationships with the industry's founding leaders, key influencers and decision makers, including cutting edge retailers, sales and marketing organizations, advertising agencies and consultancies. But most importantly, Steve has been fortunate to have a strong partner - and love of his life - in his wife, Grace. Throughout Steve's career, she has always kept Steve focused on doing the right thing - which ultimately led them to Boulder and to Steve's passion for the natural products industry. In 1992, Steve was offered the coveted job as Chief Marketing Officer of Frito Lay. Grace's reaction was 'Do you really want to wake up every day and sell potato chips?' Always the first one to see the next new thing, this insightful comment by Grace completely changed the trajectory of Steve's career - for the better. Steve received a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. Steve currently serves on the boards of Good Belly, Kill Cliff, Kodiak Cakes, Maple Hill Creamery, PACT Organic, Perky Jerky, Pure Growth Organic, Sunrise Strategic Partners, Teton Waters Ranch, Vital Farms.

Event Judges

Carlotta Mast
SVP of Content & Insights @ New Hope Network, Informa Global Health & Nutrition Network

Carlotta leads the New Hope Network Content Team, producing all content and conference programming for Natural Products Expos, NBJ Summit, Esca Bona, Natural Foods Merchandiser, newhope.com, Nutrition Business Journal, the NEXT portfolio and Delicious Living. In addition she is the chief author of the NEXT Natural Products Industry Forecast. With 20 years of experience, Carlotta has her finger on the pulse of new health, wellness and natural product trends and the forces shaping consumer attitudes and behaviors. Carlotta is a frequent speaker at industry events and conferences and has been interviewed about the natural products industry, regulatory issues and market performance by media outlets including The New York Times, Cosmopolitan, NPR, ABC News, BusinessWeek and many others. In 2013, Carlotta co-founded a paleo snack company called Wholly Bites, which hit the market well before Whole Foods Market and other retailers began adding paleo sections to their stores. A Colorado native, Carlotta is the president elect of Naturally Boulder, as well as a Board member, and communications co-chair. Naturally Boulder is a trade group with the mission of nurturing community, leadership and innovation in the Colorado natural products industry. Carlotta graduated from Northwestern University with a degree in Journalism.

Shari Leidich
Founder

Shari is currently the founder of Know Brainer Foods, the author of Two Moms in the Raw, and founder of Two Moms in the Raw. Shari began making raw foods after being diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis in 2004 and hasn't stopped since. She is committed to creating products that support the well being of your mind and body.

David Brown
Co-CEO of Techstars

David Brown is a founder and co-CEO of Techstars.

David is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three startups and been involved with two others. He is one of the original founders of Pinpoint Technologies, Inc. which is now part of ZOLL Medical Corporation and provides solutions to the emergency medical services market. He was President of the company from founding through over $50M per year in revenue and over 250 people.

David later co-founded Techstars along with David Cohen, Brad Feld, and Jared Polis. He has been an investor and advisor to Techstars since inception. In 2013, he joined Techstars in a more active role, overseeing global operations.

David has a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. As a ski instructor in the past, David still enjoys hitting the slopes on a good powder day.

Follow @dbrown

Vincent Love
Finance & CPG, Co-Founder/CFO/COO @ Sunrise Strategic Partners

Vincent Love is responsible for originating, due diligence, structuring and monitoring of Sunrise Strategic Partners’ investments. Prior to co-founding Sunrise Strategic Partners, Vincent spent 10 years in investment banking at Citigroup, focused on the consumer and retail sectors. Representative advisory transactions include Boulder Brands acquisitions of Udi’s Healthy Foods and Glutino Food Group, Colgate-Palmolive Company’s acquisition of the Sanex brand, the sale of Peet’s Coffee & Tea and the initial public offering and split-off of Mead Johnson Nutrition. Prior to Citigroup, Vincent spent three years working in Scotia Capital’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Vincent received a Master of Business Administration from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business and a Bachelor of Commerce from the University of Manitoba’s Asper School of Business. Vincent currently serves on the boards of Kill Cliff, Kodiak Cakes, Maple Hill Creamery, PACT Organic and Pure Growth Organic.

Coaches and Mentors

Karina Costa
Director of Techstars Anywhere

Karina is the Director of the Techstars Anywhere accelerator program. Prior to that Karina was the the Global Director of Startup Next (former Techstars pre-accelerator program) and Entrepreneur in Residence at Techstars Boston.

Prior to that Karina was the co-founder and COO of Fábrica de Startups accelerator in Lisbon where she spinned off 6 national and international programs and worked with +90 startups that raised over €30 mio in capital. In 2009 Karina founded Glutone, a waste management hardware solution for fast food chains. Prior to that Karina worked in marketing at Kellogg's and other consumer Fortune 500 companies.

Dan Andrews
Senior Software Engineer

Дэн — один из менторов Techstars, где он работал в течение 5 лет в качестве Senior Software Engineer. До TechStars он работал Application Engineer в компаниях Oracle и RightNow. Дэн родился и вырос на Аляске, а также получил высшую степень по Математике в University of Alaska Anchorage и в University of California Berkeley - по Математике, Статистике, Информатике и Цифровом Анализе. Его специализация — программирование на языках C, C++, PHP, BASH, and MySQL на Linux.

----

Dan Andrews is a software developer and founding member of the engineering team at Techstars. He has spent his career building web sites, applications, services, and APIs, and has worked with or consulted various startups along the way. His passion is helping entrepreneurs and startup founders leverage technology to build innovative products.

He loves skiing, riding on Polar Bears, and eating mexican food.

Ethan Hirshberg
Founder, Ethan's

Ethan was born on Stonyfield Farm in New Hampshire and raised by two organic food entrepreneurs. As a kid growing up in the natural products industry, he came to understand the impact that delivering real, delicious and organic products to people can have on their health and happiness. With his team at Ethan's, he launched his brand with a very simple goal: To make products that taste great and are great for you. Learn more at www.ethans.com.

Robbie Vitrano
CEO @ Good Spread

Robbie is a designer who works as a ceo, investor, and mentor. His focus is on high impact, profitable, social innovation—working through the food system, e-commerce, and media. He manages his holdings through portfolio company Innisfree.

He is ceo/co-founder of Good Spread, an organic food brand that activates solutions to the global malnutrition crisis (1 billion starved, 2 billion obese) through the $10 billion nut butter market, transparency and integrity in the supply chain, advocacy and adventure. Good Spread was launched from a non-profit that makes a nutrition-fortified peanut butter-based treatment that has a 96% cure rate for the chronic disease of severe acute malnutrition (SAM, the leading cause of death among children globally). Good Spread engages the market — as part of a global ecosystem of organizations working to eliminate severe malnutrition — to fund millions of lifesaving treatments for children around the world.

Robbie is a serial entrepreneur, co-founding international healthy fast casual franchise Naked Pizza, social entrepreneurship accelerator The Idea Village, brand studioTrumpet, and natural food+e-commerce media company Natchcom. Naked Pizza was sold to Mark Cuban in 2012. Both Trumpet and Naked Pizza were named Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Companies in the World.” He is on the board of Tulane’s Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, the New Orleans Culinary & Hospitality Institute. Innisfree holdings include Natchcom, Trumpet, Porchjam Spirits, Uncanny full-spectrum hemp-derived CBD, and better-for-you fast casual concept Freedom Pizza.

Robbie splits his time between the food epicenters of his hometown New Orleans and Boulder with his wife of 31 years, artist Patricia Duffy Vitrano.

Ashley Colpaart
Founder, CEO

Ashley Colpaart is the co-founder and CEO of The Food Corridor, a virtual food hub that connects food entrepreneurs to commercial kitchen space. Their mission is to enable efficiency, growth and innovation in local food. The Food Corridor is the first fully integrated software platform, handling scheduling and booking, compliance management, invoicing, billing, and community development. She is also the founder of the Network for Incubator and Commissary Kitchens, a community of practice that supports the food industry through sharing data, best practices, and technical assistance to build and grow successful shared-use kitchens businesses.

Ashley has a PhD in in Interdisciplinary Studies in Food Science and Food Safety from Colorado State University and is a Registered Dietitian. She earned a Master of Science in Food Policy and Applied Nutrition from the Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy at Tufts University, and was previously the Northern Colorado Food Cluster coordinator in her home of Fort Collins, Colorado. She has a unique system understanding of food and human health in social, economic, and environmental spheres.

Michael Memsic
Co-Founder, CEO @ Sanitas Brewing Company

Michael didn’t always want to be a brewer. In fact, when he was a kid, Michael was dead-set on playing baseball for the Oakland A’s. But after a string of injuries and a strong dose of reality, our boy Memsic came to terms with the fact that he may not be destined to go pro. It was in college that Michael began experimenting with what would soon become his lifelong passion: brewing. And as the story goes, what started as a hobby soon evolved into an obsession. During his time at the University of Colorado in beer-loving Boulder, Michael carved out time between classes and powder days to work at the town staple Oskar Blues Grill & Brew. Following graduation, he took over as a brewer at Boulder Beer where he would spend several years developing creative beers and chasing his dream of opening a production brewery of his own.

Catherine Walsh
Practice Coordinator

Catherine Walsh is the Food & Beverage practice coordinator at Holland & Hart’s Boulder office, and focuses her work on consumer packaged goods (CPG), with an emphasis on food, beverage, and natural products companies.

Catherine also serves on the board of Naturally Boulder and has previously co-founded Yummari leading up to its acquisition by 1908 Brands.

Bill Capsalis
Partner

As an avid healthy lifestyle expert, Bill works with emerging brands as well as mid-sized companies on everything from brand & sales channel strategy, finance, operational challenges and product innovation. He has held positions of VP of Marketing at Kinko’s (1985 -1997), EVP of GAIAM (1999 – 2003) and has been a co-founder of OurHouse (environmentally safe cleaning products). He has also worked as agency director at public relations firm Fresh Ideas Group. For the past 15 years he’s been a consultant, public speaker and trainer in the LOHAS and Natural & Organic Industry.
In addition Bill was previously a member of The Boulder Farm Team – a strategic consulting firm and after that a partner with Big Picture Brands – a consulting group dedicated to helping early stage food and beverage brands expand nationally. Presently he is in the early stages of forming a new company called Co-Lab that works on high level strategic issues for brands in diverse industries. He is the past President of the Board for Naturally Boulder, a trade association in Boulder with 1000 members and 150 sponsoring companies all involved in the healthy living and food space. He lives and works in Boulder Colorado.

Fran Schoenwetter
Managing Director

Fran is a senior strategic communications specialist, a brand champion, who optimizes audience/customer engagement via digital integrated content marketing solutions coupled with live event audience centric programing.

She specializes in Values based CPG industry sector: Natural, Sustainable, Organic, Fair Trade and Social Responsibility.

Todd Budin
Managing Partner @ Boulder Insights

Todd has spent the last decade at the global information firm Nielsen, helping Fortune 500 companies (such as Ford, Verizon, P&G, Nestle, Citi and more) collect and analyze data to make marketing and business decisions. He is an experienced market research and product leader who stays close to the cutting edge of data and analytics. On client engagements, his expertise goes beyond just data and extends to helping translate the research insights into actionable strategy.

Today, Todd runs Boulder Insights Group (aka BIG), a boutique market research and strategy firm that brings the research expertise used by big brands to smaller companies. Todd is an adviser to several Boulder area start-ups, is a mentor at Techstars and advises the City of Louisville on economic strategy. Todd graduated from Oklahoma State University with a Bachelors in business, studied EU economic policy at Mid-Sweden University and earned an MBA from the University of Missouri. He lives in Louisville with his wife and 2 kids.

Andrea Blau
Director of Operations and New Business @ Natural Food Works

Andrea Blau is the Director of Operations and New Business for Natural Food Works LLC (NFG) with manufacturing facilities in the Denver and Boulder regions. NFG is a co-packer for natural and organic brands specializing in granola, snack bars, mixes, sauces, High Pressure Processing (HPP) and more. We make real food for the real world and pride ourselves on our quality and safety practices. She has over 15 total years in the food service industry, spent extensively in supply chain and operations, as well as significant accomplishments with cost saving initiatives, promotions execution, and project management.

Jennifer Rosenthal

Jennifer Rosenthal is a corporate partner in the Boulder office of Koenig, Oelsner, Taylor, Schoenfeld & Gaddis, PC (KO Firm). Jennifer's practice focuses on corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, venture capital and private equity investments, company formations and general corporate representation. Jennifer works with clients ranging from startups to public companies with an industry focus on consumer products and technology. Jennifer is also an Adjunct Professor at the University of Colorado Law School where she teaches Venture Capital Drafting and serves on the Entrepreneurship Advisory Board for the Silicon Flatirons Center.

Pat Hughes
VP Commercial Operations at Sunrise Strategic Partners

Pat Hughes is Vice President Commercial Operations at Sunrise Strategic Partners, which provides growth capital and expertise to emerging brands in the healthy, active and sustainable living space. Pat works with Sunrise’s portfolio companies in functional areas such as marketing, sales, and operations. He also is responsible for originating and performing due diligence on Sunrise’s investments. Prior to Sunrise, Pat held brand management and marketing positions at Boulder Brands, working across a portfolio of brands that included EVOL, Udi’s Gluten Free, Glutino, Earth Balance, and Smart Balance. Before Boulder Brands, Pat served with distinction in combat in Afghanistan as a U.S. Marine Corps officer with 1st Reconnaissance Battalion. Pat received a Masters of Business Administration from the University of Colorado Boulder Leeds School of Business.

Wendy Lu McGill
Founder/CEO @ Rocky Mountain Micro Ranch

Wendy Lu McGill has a background in sociological research in international development and intercultural communication, bringing a global perspective and deep understanding of the why and how of farming insects for food. Working for nearly a dozen years with UN agencies helping them communicate to internal and external stakeholders about complex topics such as human trafficking, water and sanitation and rural infrastructure development, she has transitioned to create a holistic approach to business development and sales, fostering partnerships and deep relationships.

Marshall Hayes

Marshall Hayes is the CEO and Founder of Amplio Digital, a digital marketing agency that focuses on helping brands grow on Amazon. An entrepreneur at heart, Amplio is 1 of 9 companies Marshall has started. Amplio has been names one of Colorado's top 50 Companies to watch as it continues to grow in the community.

Nick Molé
Vice President Investments @ Sunrise Strategic Partners

Nick Molé is Vice President Investments at Sunrise Strategic Partners, which provides growth capital and expertise to emerging brands in the healthy, active and sustainable living space. Nick is responsible for originating, performing due diligence on, and structuring Sunrise Strategic Partners' investments. Nick also works with Sunrise’s portfolio companies in functional areas such as financial planning and analysis, strategy, and business development. Prior to joining Sunrise Strategic Partners, Nick worked at Castanea Partners, a private equity firm focused on the consumer and retail sectors. Previously, Nick worked in investment banking at Bank of America Merrill Lynch. Nick received a Masters of Business Administration, with Distinction, from Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Finance, summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from Lehigh University.

Karen Frame
CEO & Co-founder @ Makeena

Karen Frame, with over 20 years as an executive in the software and data industries, is a three-time tech co-founder, and her current company, Makeena, helps make healthy and eco-friendly products more affordable and accessible, while providing natural products brands with the shopper marketing data that allows them to grow exponentially quicker. Makeena was just named the #1 Power Ranked Startup Company in MarTech by TiE Denver, and is the second tech company she's founded in the natural products space.

Karen earned her B.S. in Accounting & Business from Indiana University and her J.D. from the University of Illinois, and attended University College, The University of Oxford, England. She's been in-house counsel for a number of technology companies (leaving Intel Corporation in 2017 to focus 100% of her time on Makeena), as well as startups and taught entrepreneurship at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado.

Blake Mitchell
Principal @ Interact Boulder

Blake is the principal at Interact, a design firm in Boulder, Colorado. While known as a start-up in town, Interact has a 25-year history. From its inception in Toledo, Ohio, the company set its sights on the grocery industry. Since then, we have partnered with over 100 food and beverage clients on branding and package design projects.

Blake's involvement in the creative industry began a decade ago in Los Angeles. Originally, focusing on commercial production and worked with large brands such as Ford, Absolut, and Heineken. Additionally, he was briefly involved in reality television, working with both MTV and VH1.

After eight years in California, Blake joined Interact and moved the business to Colorado. Interacts placement in Boulder positions us closer to the forefront of natural foods innovation. With a passion for farmers markets, culinary hot spots, grocery stores, and worldwide industry trade shows, Blake enjoys keeping our team informed on global insights.

Joseph Matta
Commercial Operations Manager @ Sunrise Strategic Partners

Joe works for Sunrise Strategic Partners, a Boulder based Venture Capital focused on investing in better-for-you food & beverage brands. He provides assistance to portfolio companies in functional areas such as marketing, sales, and operations. He is also responsible for originating and performing due diligence on Sunrise's investments, as well as providing assistance in functional areas such as financial planning and analysis, strategy development, and business development.

Prior to joining Sunrise Strategic Partners, Joe worked at Trilantic Capital Partners where he focused on investments in the Consumer and Business Services industries. Previously, Joe spent two years working in investment banking at Barclays.

Eric Bruno
Director of Strategy @ Interact Boulder

With nearly 25 years of strategic planning and consumer insight experience he’s worked deep inside many fascinating and incredible brands. From Starbucks to the International Rescue Committee, and ESPN to Home Depot, Eric has led research, brand architecture and product innovation projects across a wide and interesting range of categories.
From niche pharmaceuticals to global automotive Eric’s learned that every single project has a white-hot spot of inspiration within it… he’ll tell you many stories about how difficult finding that inspiration-bullseye can be sometimes.
He’s earned his Consumer Insight stripes on a wide range of brands in many diverse categories including- Chevrolet, Subaru of America, British Airways, Nike (training, running, Jordan), TD Ameritrade, Shire (ADHD) and many more.
Today, Eric is the Director of Strategy at Interact, a food & beverage-centric branding and design firm in Boulder.
Recently, Eric has been Lecturer at the University of Colorado’s Leeds School of Business. He focuses on entrepreneurship and being super-kind to his students by using the fewest number of powerpoint slides in his lectures possible.
At some point in the mid-nineties Eric graduated from Oklahoma City University, eventually winding his way to graduate school at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL where he earned a Masters in Integrated Marketing.
Eric and his family moved to Boulder after 10 years in NYC. He’s quite certain he’ll be “de-toxing” from the countless hours standing on subway platforms waiting for the F-train to arrive.

Alisha Stagg
Managing Director @ Interact Boulder

Alisha lives to eat and has managed to make a career out of her obsession with food & beverage. After working for a large grocery retailer, a specialty foods distributor, and as a brand manager for various natural and organic brands, she realized that creatives have more fun. She is now Managing Director at Interact, a Boulder-based branding and design agency focused exclusively on the food & beverage industry, where she is fortunate enough to work with an insanely talented team to help visionary entrepreneurs and legacy CPG brands succeed in market. Alisha holds an MBA from Yale and despite working at a creative agency is most at home in a financial model, manufacturing facility, or making a mess in her own kitchen.

Jody Feihnor-Dennis
Founder and CEO @ Missy J’s Snack + Treats

Jodi Feinhor-Dennis, founded Missy J’s Snacks + Treats in 2011 after realizing the difficulty in finding a sweet indulgence that could work with her dietary sensitivities. (Caffeine, dairy, and sugar intolerances). Tired of saying, “No I can’t eat that” to most candy and desserts, she created the original Missy J’s recipes in her home kitchen in Boulder. Missy J’s Snacks + Treats is proud to manufacture in Boulder and is on the shelves of over 300 stores nationwide, including Whole Foods, Natural Grocers, Safeway and other natural markets across the country.Jodi is also a graphic designer and published interior designer. She graduated with honors from the Design program from the University of Cincinnati and the Sheffield School of Interior Design, NYC. From the packaging desgin, marketing materials and expo booths, she brings her keen sense of design (fresh, sophisticated, yet simple), into every aspect of Missy J’s venture. Her goal is for Missy J’s to be synonymous with “better-for-you snacks and treats”. She says, “Think if Mrs. Fields and Godiva had a healthy baby. That’s Missy J’s.”

Ross Shell
CEO @ Red Ideas Partners

Ross has spent his professional career as a marketer and business strategist, as well as an entrepreneur and venture investor. His career has included serving as President of Tesser, a nationally regarded branding firm focused on the restaurant and food sectors, and working for IDEO, a global innovation consultancy. Prior to launching Red Idea LLC, he directed client services for a private investment firm which managed a platform of hedge fund and private equity products, with offices in the U.S., U.K., Asia and Canada. During his tenure, the firm grew from $250 million to a peak of nearly $700 million in assets under management. In 2008, Ross launched Red Idea LLC, a "consulting + ventures works" firm, serving growth companies, entrepreneurs and now corporate innovators. He has served on the Advisory Board for Bhakti Chai, Board of Directors for Natural Foodworks Group, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Olomomo Nut Company. He is a strategic advisor to Green Alpha Advisors, a public equity investor in eco-efficient corporations. As a volunteer, he served on the Advisory Board of the Innovation Center for the St. Vrain Valley School District. Ross serves as an Independent Director for Financial Investors Trust, an affiliate of ALPS Holdings, where he helps oversee approximately $13 billion in assets. Ross was a Boettcher Scholar award winner, and graduated with honors from Stanford University in 1993. He lives in the Boulder area with his wife and two sons. He is also the author of Cooper's Crafted and Curious Kite Company, a children's book on entrepreneurship and innovation, with copyrights owned by Red Idea LLC.

Event Sponsors, and Partners

The Techstars Startup Weekend Food + Tech Boulder team is grateful for the support of local community partners without whom this event would not be possible.
Learn how to become a sponsor here.

Signature Sponsors

The New Hope Network is at the forefront of the healthy lifestyle products industry. With solutions for the complete supply chain from manufacturers, retailers/distributors, service providers and ingredient suppliers, the network offers a robust portfolio of content, events, data, research and consultative services.

Visit Website