The Southwest Colorado Accelerator Program for Entrepreneurs kicked off its 2022 startup showcase Tuesday as companies from around the Four Corners pitched their business to investors.
To date, SCAPE investors have put $37.5 million behind startup companies.
The companies create pitch videos for the investors to view and then the investors will generally take two or three months to make a decision based on the company’s capital needs.
“It usually takes a few months, depending on how much money the company is looking to raise and how they're going to use it,” said SCAPE Executive Director Elizabeth Marsh. “But historically, we're able to help the companies raise the amount of money they need, within a few months, so that they can get started.”
The SCAPE investors are looking for companies that have a unique idea with a potential nationwide customer base because it allows businesses to grow and scale. Another aspect investors evaluate is the company’s potential for employment. SCAPE wants companies that are able to create a positive impact in the community by offering employment opportunities.
This year’s SCAPE companies include:
- Alpine Origins, which is the parent company for TrueFly Supply and Talos Outdoors, headquartered in Montezuma County. TrueFly Supply is a fly fishing subscription service focusing on quality, education and conservation. Talos Outdoors is an outdoor sporting goods company specializing in product development of gear storage and recreational equipment.
- Base Medical, which provides online, remote and in-person education for wilderness medicine and search and rescue.
- Cold Case Gear, which is based in Pagosa Springs and creates protective phone cases for the outdoors made with space-age materials.
- Farm to Summit, which is a Durango-based company that makes nutrient-dense dehydrated meals.
- GeekPack, based in Durango, which is an online service dedicated to teaching women computer coding.
- Higher Purpose Homes, which is a Durango company dedicated to building sustainable and affordable homes.
- TripOutside, which is a Durango-based outdoor-adventure booking site.
Farm to Summit is one of the companies trying to expand its workforce in manufacturing. The company has a retail location on Durango’s north Main Avenue but also distributes products to 50 retail locations across the country.
“We just want to have a really stellar team to be able to increase our production,” said founder Louise Barton. “So most of that money we're trying to raise will go toward paying folks to help us.”
One of the positions will be a production manager so Barton can focus on the finance and marketing side of the company.
She said Farm to Summit will also try to add a farm coordinator to find local produce for its dehydrated meals.
“There’s a lot of need for produce in Durango, and there’s a lot of seconds produce and things like that and surplus produce in the Front Range and beyond that could be put to use here,” Barton said.
Seconds are produce that may not be sold in retail because of damage, deformity or surplus.
Higher Purpose Homes is looking for an investment to fund a facility in the Four Corners to build affordable homes. The facility would be 49,000 square feet on 15 acres of land.
“Our focus is really on our community and solving these problems. Specifically for me, my wife’s a teacher, and I saw what's happening where we can’t keep teachers here because of cost of housing,” said Nick Lemmer, co-founder of Higher Purpose Homes.
The company is designing the facility for flexibility so they can build a variety of housing options.
“We're really trying to gear toward permanent foundation homes as opposed to trailers,” Lemmer said.
The company tries to focus on permanent foundation homes because they have better financing options than mobile homes.
Higher Purpose Homes also looks to hire about 150 employees to work in the facility. The total cost of the project is an estimated $6.5 million.
TripOutside looks to make connections in the Durango community and receive funding for marketing purposes.
“We are looking for mentors and potentially investors that can help us to really grow our business,” said co-founder Julie Singh. “And people that kind of understand both the outdoors and maybe even e-commerce or marketplace businesses.”
The company would like to hire a marketing manager with help from investors. Singh said TripOutside has done a great job of building its platform but wants to further increase website traffic.
“We're going to be focusing most of our efforts around marketing and driving demand driving traffic to our site,” she said.
GeekPack founder Julia Taylor also looks to add to the company’s labor force. With help from the SCAPE investors she hopes to add a wide array of positions. Because GeekPack is a service-based company that teaches women how to code, she looks to add more instructors, marketing team members and sales associates.
“My vision is to reach over 100,000 women in the next five years. And I know that I can achieve that by growing the team faster and providing better support to our current students and future students,” Taylor said.
Taylor would like to add 12 to 15 employees over the next year. She also would like to use investor money for advertising efforts. She said the company has done a great job with organic marketing but needs paid advertising.
“For our paid advertising efforts, we know our ideal customer spends their time primarily on Facebook. That being said, next year we will branch out more into Google ads, potentially YouTube ads and things like that,” Taylor said.
SCAPE has bolstered companies like Dolores’ EsoTerra Ciderworks and Durango’s Tectonic Components.
SCAPE helped EsoTerra gain the capital necessary to build its manufacturing facility in Dolores.
“We're really proud of that local support and all hands on deck initiative to help companies get off the ground to enhance the region and create more jobs,” Marsh said.
tbrown@durangoherald.com
