Editor’s Note – This is a guest post from Boulder resident and recent CU grad Joni Klippert, who managed to attend a number of Boulder Startup Week events and receive her MBA at the same time! She is a valued member of the Boulder community.

Boulder Startup Week boasted 55 events in 5 days including the always fun Boulder/Denver New Tech Meetup and an excellent Ignite! Amongst all of the amazing events offered, I made it a priority to attend the two ‘Women & Startup’ events. I recently graduated with an MBA from CU and over the past 18 months, I’ve had the opportunity to engage with a number of entrepreneurs in the tech space. I was thrilled that Boulder Startup Week offered the chance to hear from local women about their ventures and I noticed a number of things that made it clear that these ladies are building some pretty special companies…

1. It’s not just about the technology.
In a town flush with entrepreneurs, one will run across myriad types of companies and approaches to business. All are comprised of passionate founders who are extremely excited about the technology they’ve created. Some develop code and pre-alpha, are focused on valuation, funding and exit. They believe themselves to be on a GYM (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft) trajectory before they’ve quantified their addressable market or identified if anyone actually wants the technology on which they are investing copious amounts of time and resources.

Others are absolutely killing it… building the Boulder image of entrepreneurship and tech, and inspiring articles like that posted in the NYT earlier this week. They understand the importance of community, mentorship, and business fundamentals – using the town’s tight networks to fill their companies with brilliant people who are eager to produce.

I consider Ingrid Alongi and Tara Anderson of Quickleft and the ladies of TweetyGotBack representative of the latter. Whether their business grew out of a technical expertise or a hobby, they are focused on vetting their technology, understanding their markets and building sustainable companies. While certainly technically proficient, the women of these companies are also incredibly active in the Boulder community, accessible as mentors and taking advantage of the resources available to them in growing and building their companies. As well, they exhibit great focus on the people that comprise their companies. Ingrid demonstrated amazing dedication to her employees, glowing with pride while talking about acquisition of health insurance for each Quickleft employee. She takes responsibility for the livelihood of her employees and is resolute in creating a successful, sustainable business in support.

2. Tech Companies as ‘LifeStyle’ Businesses? Interesting.
Sitting in the two ‘Women & Startup’ events, I heard a lot of the same discussion and approaches to business as are common in most startups. Talk of ‘bootstrapping,’ importance of founder chemistry, contracting traps and thoughts on dealing with departed founders. They understand the capital markets (quoting from Brad Feld’s blog, referring to insight from their VC mentors), yet the vast majority of women that introduced their startups made it very clear that it isn’t about the ‘exit’ for their companies.

Several of these Boulder women entrepreneurs are building high-technology ‘lifestyle businesses.’ The aim is to do what you love, solve a pain-point and build a great company – not to just quickly scale and exit. The women representing these companies have shown their ability, and desire, to adapt and iterate. In this case, ‘lifestyle’ is not synonymous with less work… they absolutely devote their lives to growing their businesses into sustainable companies.

3. Information Sharing & Support
Though info sharing is certainly not unique to female startups in Boulder, the extent to which it is part of the culture is worth noting. The beauty of these ‘women & startup’ groups is that they keep entrepreneurs from operating in a vacuum. Bi-weekly events provide a forum for founders to ask for help and share resources. There is strong emphasis on supporting female entrepreneurs in the Boulder community, and a willingness to share tips on legal/contracts, great consultants and overall experiences.

In one session each woman discussed a success and failure that they’ve experienced. ‘Failures’ almost exclusively revolved around the theme of ‘giving away your power’ – and examples ranged from dispensing a significant portion of profits to a ‘marketing consultant’ that ultimately offered little help or expertise to giving away disproportionate amounts of equity when hiring for a particular skill set.

Overall, the discussion was about traps that an entrepreneur can fall into when they have invested time, heart and resources into a company – and when lacking confidence, the pressure of the success of the venture can end up leading to poor decisions. The take-away: Don’t give away your power, and know when to ask for help. Though seemingly at odds, they can be summed up to mean ‘know when to ask for help, but don’t give away the farm for it.’

I was thrilled that Boulder Startup Week provided the opportunity to get to know more women that are dedicated to making great things happen in the Boulder community. I am so excited to see what happens with their ventures, and looking forward to many more interesting conversations over morning coffee!