By Lu Snyder
From the outside, the Vail Center for Entrepreneuriship’s (formerly Vail Leadership Institute) co-working facility, BaseCamp, may look like any other coworking space. Closer inspection, however, indicates it’s different from the rest.
“We didn’t set out to compete or make it different,” says Ross Iverson. BaseCamp was created as a community asset for local businesses and organizations.
It’s not only the location — a mere 5-minute drive from Beaver Creek’s slopes — that makes BaseCamp stand apart from other coworking spaces. With its Avon location, and having Vail Centre as its landlord, BaseCamp naturally attracts a large number of Vail Centre program participants and former executives, creating an incubator, of sorts, for leaders and entrepreneurs.
“If you put a whole bunch of entrepreneurs in a room — idea people, tech people, lawyers and accountants — you’re not going to be surprised the things that come out of this. Our goal is to give you the room and then call the painter, paintbrush and canvas guy and throw them all together.” — Brad Bickerton
Brad Bickerton, of Minturn, has been working out of BaseCamp since it opened in early 2014. A business consultant and attorney, Bickerton struck up a conversation one day with fellow BaseCamp member Doug Clayton about the book, “Startup Communities,” by American entrepreneur, Brad Feld. For a year, Bickerton had attempted to bring together a group of entrepreneurial leaders, to no avail. But, working together, Bickerton and Clayton brought it to life.
“One of the great things about BaseCamp is it brought (Clayton) and I together,” Bickerton says. “We would have never met and we would have never had this conversation and we would have never had a place to launch this if Vail Centre hadn’t started BaseCamp.”
From it, 8150 – High Altitude Entrepreneurs was born. The entrepreneurial group is still evolving, but it gained steam quickly. Within four months, 8150 had 80 people on its mailing list and an 80 percent read rate for its weekly newsletter. “More importantly, about 25-30 people show up every week to talk about entrepreneurship and pitch new business,” Bickerton says.
When describing the goals of 8150, Bickerton prefers to use a metaphor. “If you put a painter, paintbrush, paint and a canvas in a room, you’re not going to be surprised what happens,” he says. “If you put a whole bunch of entrepreneurs in a room — idea people, tech people, lawyers and accountants — you’re not going to be surprised the things that come out of this. Our goal is to give you the room and then call the painter, paintbrush and canvas guy and throw them all together.”
The weekly meetings are a place for entrepreneurs to exchange ideas and gather information, feedback and inspiration from like-minded people with similar goals. Ideally, it will also be the place where members find the advice or partner or guidance they need to hatch their ideas from the “metaphorical little egg” into a product or company.
Mountain communities, like Vail, may not be known as the base for entrepreneurial groups, but are the ideal place for them, Bickerton says. Most mountain residents have that entrepreneurial spirit. They’ve left their families, moved to Colorado and are doing whatever it takes to make a life in the mountains, which includes often creating their own businesses.
“That’s the exact parallel to someone who leaves their safe job at GE and their 401K and health benefits and goes and starts their own company. That’s what made me realize we could do it up here, because we have the right mentality,” he says.
Summit County resident, Larry Sullivan, 61, agrees, and wants to take that entrepreneurial spirit one step further and develop a “tech-savvy start-up ecosystem” in the Vail Valley and Summit County with an accelerator based in Avon. An entrepreneur himself, Sullivan had a first-hand view of the accelerator concept when his son, Ryan, went through the Boomtown Accelerator program in Boulder recently. It inspired him to start an accelerator program in the mountains, focused on the outdoor, health and wellness, and travel and tourism industries. “Accelerators define themselves within some niche. We picked this one because we think it’s a good one and it fits well in the Vail Valley,” Sullivan says.
Sullivan shared his idea with Iverson at the 2014 Breckenridge Startup Weekend. Now he’s working closely with Vail Centre to make it a reality. “Vail Centre is playing an important role in bringing this to life,” he says. “It’s a natural extension of what we’re doing at BaseCamp. We’re working very closely with Vail Centre to get the word out in hopes that the community will come in to help sponsor and mentor.”
Outside:tech opens its doors with the new year and plans to hold its first three-month accelerator program based in Avon, using BaseCamp facilities, in September. In the interim, Sullivan is working to build a network of mentors and sponsors for the program. He expects the application process to be as rigorous as any other accelerator program — accepting only 1 percent to 3 percent of the 500 or so young entrepreneurs from around the world expected to submit applications for the program.
“Only the very best startup teams will be invited into the program,” says Sullivan. Outside: tech will make a $25,000 investment in each company accepted and, in return, will receive a 6 percent equity stake in those companies. “It’s a win-win for both our sponsors and mentors as they get to see, early on, the fresh new business ideas and work with them as they develop through the three-month program. Our program attendees will have the benefit of developing their business plans with the support of the very best executives from the outdoor community.”
In less than a year since it opened its doors, Vail Centre’s BaseCamp became a metaphorical incubator. The coworking space doesn’t simply house people working side-by-side on their individual projects, but has instead become a venue where, in addition to working, members exchange ideas and inspire each other. In a roundabout way, one could even say that in opening BaseCamp, Vail Centre has found another method to making leaders.
