Backflip exec to keynote CU’s New Venture Challenge

BOULDER – Backflip Studios founder and chief executive Julian Farrior will keynote the University of Colorado’s New Venture Challenge kickoff event on Monday.

Now in its seventh year, the New Venture Challenge is a campuswide entrepreneurship contest that culminates in the spring with a pitch night and cash prizes for winning startups.

Monday serves as an informational session to get students and community members interested in the program, and to get participants thinking about ideas.

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“We definitely want to make sure we’re hitting people who have kind of heard a little bit about it or have some entrepreneurial spirit hidden under the surface, and get them excited about it to where they’re coming back to future events,” NVC director Andy Evans said.

On Oct. 29, NVC will hold a one-minute pitch night where students pitch their ideas in an attempt to garner interest and recruit team members. Teams start forming in November and the competition begins in earnest in the spring, as teams worth with a network of dozens of mentors from the business community who volunteer to help out. Each team must have at least one member who is a student or a member of CU’s faculty or staff.

Winners from each track — research and development; information technology; music; social impact; mobile apps; and general business — will advance to the NVC finals in late April. Evans said the prize purse is still being finalized this year, but last year’s co-champions split $10,000.

The NVC is a collaboration between several organizations on campus, including Silicon Flatirons Center, the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurship Center for Music, CU Cleantech, ATLAS, the College of Engineering and Applied Science, the Interdisciplinary Telecommunications Program, InnovateCU, and the Leeds Entrepreneurs Alliance.