Here’s to the entrepreneurs during Great Recession

May has been a red-letter month for local entrepreneurs.

The month began with a celebration of visionaries who have led our region to its frankly enviable position in the midst of the Great Recession. The theme of this year’s Bravo! Entrepreneur Awards could have been Bravo! to the Job Creators. From Don Churchwell, who just can’t stop working to attract new employers to Northern Colorado, to Curt Richardson, whose Otter Products has been on a hiring trajectory that begs the question, “What recession?”, these are the people who not only took the risks but stayed the course. They have brought their vision to life, and we all benefit because they choose to do it here.

Among this year’s Bravo! class is at least one serial entrepreneur who has enriched the region’s business community for a quarter of a century. In true entrepreneurial fashion, Ted Warner has stayed ahead of the computer industry learning curve to guide Connecting Point to its silver anniversary.

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He wasn’t the only one in startup mode in 1985, when Old Town Square finally fulfilled Gene Mitchell’s vision of bringing downtown Fort Collins back to its future.

And now we close the month with our annual salute to the fastest-growing companies in the region. Our Mercury 100 list elsewhere in this issue includes a number of businesses still going strong that were founded the last time the economy tanked big time.

The first recession of the 1980s was over by November 1982, and the next one didn’t start until Black Monday 1987. By 1985, unemployment was on the upswing in notoriously countercyclical Northern Colorado, so why not start a company? It can’t get any worse, and the only way to go is up.

Northern Colorado Business Report is also celebrating an anniversary this year. The paper was founded not during a bust but during an unprecedented boom. Bubbles – like the one that engulfed our region in the late 1990s – tend to inflate when too many people spend too much of other people’s money with the sole objective of growing big enough fast enough to sell at the top. The inevitable sharp shock that follows brings us back to business basics, the ones true entrepreneurs never let out of their sight.

Early indications show a whole new crop of truly entrepreneurial ventures are hatching as you read this. In a couple of decades, we will be proud to say we knew them when.