Zeb King, Managing Director at Endeavor Colorado

[00:00:00] In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan Caruso sits down with Zeb King of Endeavor Colorado for a look at how one organization is quietly transforming the tech ecosystem right here in Colorado. Zeb shares how Endeavor Global, operating in over 50 countries and counting, is betting on founders outside the traditional Silicon Valley and New York playbooks, and why Colorado is emerging as a serious contender for deep tech on the world stage.

[00:00:25] He opens up about the vision of making Colorado a global hub for deep tech, and how cycling on boulders canyon roads shapes his thinking as a leader. Let's poke the bear to kick off the conversation. Well Zeb, so I learned something about myself recently. You want to know what? What is that? That's when I am really excited about the job that someone is doing. I say, you're a rock star.

[00:00:50] And you know who you are? You're a rock star. And that's what we're going to talk about for the next hour and a half, because what you are doing is making a huge difference in a lot of people's lives, as well as the vibrancy of the tech community, entrepreneurial community here in Colorado. And we're going to learn all about that. And I'm excited.

[00:01:14] Yeah, I'm excited too. There's a lot of great stuff going on and a lot of stuff people don't even know about that's happening here in Colorado on a day-to-day basis. Yep. And you want to know what a hard job is? A hard job is making me look good. And you, with your work that you've been doing in Endeavor Colorado, you're making me look good. So I appreciate that as well. Likewise, likewise. Okay, so what is Endeavor? What's Endeavor Global? What's Endeavor Colorado? Why does it matter? Why are you doing it?

[00:01:43] You know, tell us about, I'll probably interrupt you before you get to the third of those four questions, but tell us what Endeavor Global is all about and what Endeavor Colorado, you know, how that fits into it. Absolutely. Endeavor was started about 27 years ago by Linda, who's been on the podcast. And it really is just... What's Linda's last name? Rottenberg. Rottenberg. Linda Rottenberg, New York City. Force of Nature. An author, Force of Nature. She's been doing this for 27 years. Yeah.

[00:02:10] It's her passion. And she was also on my board at Zale Group for seven years. That's how I met her and learned about the incredible work that they're doing. Yeah. And on a global scale, we operate in over 50 countries around the world. 50? Moving to 100 over the next 10 years, part of vision. I've been saying like over 40 or maybe 45, but it's over 50 now. Wow. Yeah. And then we have some global hubs in big cities like London, Dubai, Singapore, New York, where the headquarters is. But we support... And what does a global hub mean?

[00:02:39] Essentially, we have this diaspora effect. So we think about a lot of our founders say started business in Nigeria. They move their business later for growth stage capitals to say London. And so there's basically founders from all over the world that kind of congregate in these big cities. And maybe one day, Colorado will be a hub for deep tech, which we'll probably get into later in the podcast. Yes. Yes. For certain. Okay. So what is Endeavor Global?

[00:03:04] At the end of the day, it's an organization for growth stage entrepreneurs, like way past the startup phase, all about scale-ups. And being a founder from where I sit, it can be very lonely. It has ups and downs. And we support over 3,000 entrepreneurs. And they honestly give back to the ecosystem. They support each other, whether it's raising capital, whether it's going through hard parts of the business. But it's truly a peer-to-peer network focused truly on the founding CEOs of companies.

[00:03:31] And the founding teams, too. The founding CEOs and quite often the teams around them. And when you say you support 3,000, those are the ones who have officially made it to kind of a certain level where they are then recognized as Endeavor entrepreneurs on a global scale. And for every one of theirs, there's probably 10 others, 20 others who are getting inspiration. So the fact, like take Colorado, for example, which we'll get into. We have our seven endeavor entrepreneurs, which we're going to talk a lot about.

[00:03:59] But then there's a whole bunch more who want to be in there following their footsteps that they become kind of the role models for. Absolutely. And I think what's really unique about these founders is they all have a pay-it-for mentality. That's like part of the criteria as they go through the selection process, that if they do achieve success, whether it's financial or in their ecosystem, they give back and support the next generation of founders. So we call this the multiplier effect. We first saw this down in Chile and Argentina about 27 years ago.

[00:04:28] Now it's a global phenomenon. So the idea is, because I've been very involved with this as well. So the idea is when you have a very successful tech company in your geography, that is really good for your geography. It creates obviously jobs directly, but it also creates economic activity. But it also creates entrepreneurs who are inspired by or maybe spun off from the successful startups.

[00:04:57] So they start to feed off of each other. It becomes the flywheel. They start to multiply. And a given geography, if they're fortunate enough to have successful tech companies, benefits significantly. So the idea that Linda had a long time ago, which seems so obvious in today's world, but go back 27 years ago, it was not necessarily that way.

[00:05:22] It was thought that to be a highly successful on a global scale tech company, you pretty much had to be in San Francisco or maybe New York or China or India, maybe London. But other parts of the world, it just wasn't seen as a realistic goal. Maybe once in a while, something would happen somewhere else. But for the most part, very concentrated on a handful of geographies.

[00:05:47] So the idea that Linda and others had was if we can find a way to stimulate the most talented entrepreneurs in these other geographies and help them get to the promised land, wouldn't that be great for these other geographies? And as you mentioned by mentioning Chile and Argentina, that's where they started.

[00:06:12] Yeah, I think the most recent statistics, we have 90 unicorns in the globe portfolio. We did over $100 billion of collectively revenue last year. And the most recent stat is 4.5 million jobs our Endeavor entrepreneurs have created around the globe. So in terms of impact, it's a pretty big impact. Significant impact. So what does it mean to be in 100 countries? Does that mean that the entrepreneurs are in 100 countries and all of Endeavor is in New York? You mentioned these in New York and you mentioned London.

[00:06:42] What does it mean to be in 100 countries? Yeah, so right now we're in 50 countries around the world. I'm sorry, 50 countries. Yeah, but 100 countries by 2035. And that's more of a regionalization approach. So we think about Endeavor Bulgaria right now as one office. That's going to become Endeavor Balkans over the next few years. And so it's part of that kind of expansion instead of doing it by country by country.

[00:07:03] If you're only one office, you're talking about there's actually Endeavor employees that exist in a lot of these countries. Like how many countries would you guess there's actually Endeavor employees in? Yeah, I'd say close to 50. I think it's about 42 actual offices that are set up. And then, you know, it kind of quickly expands as people move and migrate around the world. And who pays for those? Who pays your bills there?

[00:07:32] People like Dan Caruso, Kent Theory, amazing people. So each local office has its own local board. And so while it started in South America, it's obviously expanded around the world. We launched this office in late 2019, early 2020, just in time for the pandemic. But you and a few others here in Colorado came together and really just wanted to pay it forward. You know, you've all had a success. There's entrepreneurs, investors, executives.

[00:07:59] And you saw that Endeavor is the platform to really have a global impact and support these growth stage founders. Startups are great. And we even have like David Cohen from Techstars on the board. But these growth stage companies are ones that make the true impact. And so that's really what we're focused on here in Colorado and really around the globe. But on a typical day, I'm usually sending WhatsApp messages with managing directors in probably 15 different countries. Just suck to rat off countries that Endeavor has offices in.

[00:08:28] So we had a virtual international selection panel just yesterday. And that's the final stage of selection to become an Endeavor entrepreneur. We were listening to the panels on the way to Denver for some meetings. There was Pakistan yesterday. There was an energy company out of Italy called Energy Dome. They're actually in Colorado this week with the U.S. expansion. There was Peru on the call yesterday. Malaysia was on the call yesterday.

[00:08:55] So that's just kind of example of that's four continents right there that were just part of this international selection panel. So very strong presence in Central and Latin America. Very strong presence in Indonesia. And I should say the whole region of the Far East. There's Vietnam. There's Korea, I think. South Korea is part of it. Japan, our Tokyo office has really come back recently. Gotcha. So a lot of presence there. Presence throughout Africa. Presence in Middle East.

[00:09:24] Europe, an interesting Europe. It's more the Central Europe and Southern Europe. Whereas Germany, for example, or France, for example, don't have offices, I don't think. But if you go around the belt there, everything from Spain, Portugal, Italy, you mentioned, Greece. Ukraine. Ukraine is one of the newest offices. Poland.

[00:09:53] Then as you start going toward the Middle East, you hit Turkey, Jordan. I mean, you go to UAE, Saudi Arabia. I mean, all. Lebanon. Lebanon. Just all over, really, the map. And in nearly all the cases, they literally have teams of people on the ground, as you said, that are locally funded. So the teams are somewhat independent from an entity standpoint. But they all fit within this entity called Endeavor Global.

[00:10:25] One thing I'd like to say is everyone thinks doing a startup is hard. Doing a startup is easy. All you've got to do is fill out some paperwork, and you're a startup. It's doing a successful startup that's very hard. And what we call successful startups are scale-ups. Scale-ups are where you're going from having been a startup to starting to really scale your business into something significant. And there are, you know, in any given area, there's lots of organizations that cater towards startups. But when you start to get the scale-ups, it's different, right?

[00:10:53] Because, you know, you only have a limited number of them in any given geography that are really scaling at the same time. And so it starts to become a little bit of a rarefied ear there. And those people, yeah, they've got a board. And, yeah, they have investors. Yeah, they have, you know, spouses, perhaps at home, families. But what they also need is people who have been there and done that but aren't kind of, you know, looking over their shoulder as an investor or a board member.

[00:11:20] And they need people who are going through it at the same time they're going through it. And that's really what Endeavor provides, wouldn't you say? Absolutely. So I think if you look at statistically, like, less than 1% of venture-backed companies make it to $100 million revenue. We have five companies in our portfolio doing over $100 million annually in revenue. We meaning Endeavor, Colorado. Yeah, yeah. So just here in Colorado. And who are they? Quantum Metrics, the first that comes to mind. Sondermind, JumpCloud, and a few others are kind of right on the cuffs of that. Yep. And a few have exited since then as well. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:11:51] Yeah, very cool. So let's stay on Endeavor Global a little bit more. So let's say, for example, you know, I had a cousin who was running a business. And since I'm like a board member of Endeavor Colorado, I could just make them an Endeavor entrepreneur. Is that how that process works? Not at all. There's a pretty rigorous selection process that all of our founders go through to become selected as an Endeavor entrepreneur.

[00:12:17] On the global scale, we scan 5,000 to 6,000 businesses a year on the global level. And last year, 81 companies were selected. So what is that, like 2%? Less than 2% get selected. So it's a very rigorous process. There's three steps, three, four steps locally. And then the final step is the international selection panel. There's five of those a year that are virtual for entrepreneurs that can't travel. And then there's five in person. And I got to go last year to two of those. One in Cambridge with Mabel Quantum.

[00:12:46] And then I got to go to South Africa last December with Trey from Watchmaker Genomics. So you mentioned Mabel Quantum. And you mentioned Watchmaker Genomics. Who are those companies? Why did you mention them? They are two of our most recently selected Endeavor entrepreneurs. From Colorado. From Colorado. Trey built his first company in Boston. This is his second business. And he had a good exit on his first business and said, if I ever build another business, again, I want to do it in Colorado because it's just an amazing place to live.

[00:13:16] And he's in Boulder, Colorado. He's in Boulder. Him and his two co-founders started Watchmaker here in 2019. And they've just grown incredibly quickly over the past few years using connections. And what was really unique about that is the main offices here in Boulder, their second office is in Cape Town, South Africa. And so when Trey and I were down there in Stellenbosch for the ISP, I got to meet all of his teammates in the Cape Town office.

[00:13:39] And so he has about almost 200 employees globally, 150 of those here and about 50 in Cape Town. So it was amazing to meet both the local team here in Colorado and then the extension team in South Africa last year. And what about Maybel? Who are they? They are the picks and shovels of the quantum revolution that has already started. You are an early investor of them. Wow, I didn't know that. And now they're an Endeavor entrepreneur. And Endeavor outlier. Endeavor outlier. Yeah.

[00:14:09] So basically the top 10% of Endeavor companies, we call them Endeavor outliers. And there's more programmatic things for them. There's a global retreat every year. This year it's in Portugal. It's about three weeks from now. And both Trey and Corbin, Kyle and Brian from Maybel are Endeavor outliers for 2026. But they are building dilution refrigerators. Pretty amazing refrigerators ranging from half a million dollars to a million dollars for the big fridge. They look just like a data center cabinet, but instead of costing a couple grand,

[00:14:39] they cost the better part of a million dollars. And they're being assembled right here in Denver, Colorado. So it's been cool to visit them and see both the fridges and all the wiring and tubing as well being facilitated in Denver. Yep. So you kind of applied this a little bit already. The other thing about scale-up tech entrepreneurs is they're typically at stages where they need to be much broader than the geography that they're from.

[00:15:08] They often will have supply chains that are international in nature. They could have offices that span lots of different geographies. They certainly will have customers in many different parts of the world. And I think that's the other extraordinarily unique part of the Endeavor value proposition is when you have a company in your geography that gets proposed, basically, gets nominated to be an Endeavor entrepreneur on a global scale.

[00:15:36] They have to first get through the full selection process. But once they do, they're part of this global family of companies that are called Endeavor entrepreneurs. And with that, they get support really around the globe because of the presence of Endeavor in so many different parts of the world that a given company, for example, Watchmaker Genomics, who's active in South Africa, will be able to lean on, often through their local office,

[00:16:06] additional support from Endeavor in that geography. Yeah, and I think JumpCloud's a great example of this. And if you speak to Raj or Greg Keller, they're both like, if you want to be... Who is JumpCloud? What do they do? They are open source directory, kind of think of it as like a cybersecurity for device management. So really as much of the globe went remote back in 2020, they're all logging on on iPhones and MacBooks and things like that. And so they can make sure that there's secure login for employees from a globally dispersed workforce.

[00:16:35] They got selected in 2021 to be Endeavor entrepreneurs, end up raising $450 million the year they got selected. A Colorado company. Colorado company, a couple of billion dollar valuation. And since using Endeavor, we've really helped them expand globally. Like, obviously, they've been a global business since day one, but they didn't have teams in all these parts of the world. So recently we worked with them on a Brazil acquisition last year. They've acquired a company from Lebanon. And really they want to use these local offices to get that insight,

[00:17:05] whether it's attorneys, just workforce development, who to hire, things like that. And so our global offices, we have 650 employees around the world. And we call it one Endeavor. But essentially our entrepreneurs, just like they can access me here in Colorado, they can access any of our employees around the world as they travel, expand, things like that. Yeah, and you mentioned a few different examples of how an entity like JumpCloud would want to use

[00:17:32] kind of assistance, help from different geographies. But another way that JumpCloud used it is for business development. When they go into geography and they want to figure out who should we be talking to from a customer perspective, they've been able to tap into some help as well from the local offices through really the Endeavor Colorado office.

[00:17:55] And you mentioned how we have 650 employees as part of the Endeavor umbrella, but each one of those offices also has a board. And they also have sponsors that are also leaning in and making themselves available to be helpful. Do you want to talk a little bit more about how that works? Yeah. So outside of Dan Caruso, the best board chair would probably be the Edge from U2. He's the board chairman of our Irish office. The Edge is my chief of staff AI agent.

[00:18:24] So make sure when you say Edge, you give my agent a little bit of a call out as well. He's probably listening in. Probably taking notes right now. But yeah, so our current board is 12 members, and they've all kind of been there and done that. And so whether it's our local board... And current board, you're talking about the Colorado board. Colorado board. So you mentioned Kent earlier. You mentioned me a couple times. Tell us about other members of the board. Yeah, so we have Vinay Nair. He's the CEO, founder of Tiffin.

[00:18:53] His first business, 55IP, started in New York, sold that to J.P. Morgan, who just found me here to Boulder just to have access to the beautiful outdoors we have access to. Greg Keller from JumpCloud, so he's an endeavor entrepreneur and also a board member. Ed Halen from Klaviyo just joined our board two weeks ago. Welcome, Ed. Really excited to have Ed. I actually used Klaviyo when I was at Specialized Bicycles years ago, so I've always been a fan of Ed and just the product. It was great for what we were doing at the time in the business.

[00:19:21] We have Sandy Lewis, who is with you at Zayo. John Goen from Liberty Global. He's the managing partner of the Venture Arm. But that's kind of the collection of people that we have. You mentioned David Cohen earlier. Then we always had support from Brad Feld. Ryan Heckman. Ryan Heckman. Eric Rosa. Eric Reamer. Reamer was on the board for a while there, as was Rosa. They continue to support it. So thank you all. You're making a huge difference by providing the support that you provide.

[00:19:50] And there's also sponsors. There's corporate sponsors and mentors that are – well, we mentioned a couple of the mentors already, but talk about what the role of a corporate sponsor is when it comes to supporting an organization like Endeavor Colorado. Yeah, so we have some great partners. Yesterday I was in Denver having lunch with Wilmer Hill, law firm here. We met this morning with JP Morgan for an hour, Mark Berman, L. Bruno. And really it's all about – they believe in the long-term vision of Colorado.

[00:20:18] I think when we think about board members or corporate sponsors, we're thinking about the long-term viability of the Colorado ecosystem. And they believe in us to be that platform to help these entrepreneurs scale their revenues, scale their teams, and then give back to the local ecosystem. So we have four corporate sponsors. And then KPMG this year has been awesome. They have some suites at Denver Nuggets Games and Avalanche Games. We've been able to bring founders to those. We call it founder evenings. It's really just a great chance for founders to come together,

[00:20:47] not talk about CAGR, not talk about internal rate of revenue, rate of return, and really just enjoy the – meet people from different industries. So the most recent one we had AI companies, quantum companies, genomics companies, SaaS companies all just kind of congregating and getting to meet each other. Yeah, you mentioned J.P. Morgan. You mentioned Morgan Stanley as well as also a local sponsor and a global sponsor as well.

[00:21:11] Yeah, one of my favorite stories from the past several months was one that KPMG hosted boxes where together we invited a lot of extraordinary entrepreneurs in that box. So anyone who would look in that box would just look like a ragtag group of high school friends or something. All were in hoodies. Yeah. But what we knew is the talent that existed within that box.

[00:21:37] And there was one guy who was invited to a box that was relatively new to Colorado, a Denver guy. And I remember standing there talking to him, and he was recently from San Francisco. So he was talking about how the one thing about Colorado is there's very few real tech entrepreneurs building significant companies. And almost no one's ever gone public. And when they have, they're not that big of a deal. And he's talking and hasn't bothered to ask who's around him.

[00:22:06] Didn't know who I was. And I'm like, wow, that's interesting. I'm looking around the box, and I'm seeing a few people who are, you know, I think it's safe to say there was at least a couple people there who were not outright billionaires. They were certainly on the path to be through the companies they started up. And there were tons of really successful tech entrepreneurs there. And it was even funny because he, you know, he's talking to me, not knowing who I am, saying there's almost, you know, no companies here who have gone public. I'm like, really? That's interesting.

[00:22:36] I'm like, look around, like, who is this guy? But obviously I took Zale public, but I also was part of level three that went public out here as well. And there's at least two other public company CEOs in the box at the time that either present or past that took their startups public.

[00:22:54] So it was one of those cases where in Colorado there is a very vibrant tech ecosystem and a very vibrant investor system around tech, but both of which are not as obvious to those who aren't in the inside as you think it would be. And this was a perfect example of someone who's been here for a little while but had no idea how much tech activity. I'd like to talk to them. I can't remember the person's name. I'd like to talk to them now and see if they would say the same thing.

[00:23:23] My guess is they would deny they even said that. But, yeah, I think, you know, part of my work at Endeavor, Colorado is really just telling the story of what's happening here. I think there's so many people that, you know, they moved to Colorado for their second business and they kind of fly under the radar. Because even Trey at Watchmaker, like me and you met him from Trevor at Unless Ventures, and he's a mile and a half down the road and he wasn't even on our radar. But my team's done a great job kind of using PitchBook to map the ecosystem along with Cruiser Ventures.

[00:23:49] And I think we have 120 companies that have raised at least $10 million in the last four years alone. Wow. So there's a ton of stuff going on here. I think people come here and they don't really brag or boast their chest too much, but there's some amazing things going on. And, you know, I'm just making sure that we get better at telling those stories with us founders because there's so many amazing things across a variety of industries happening here. So we're going to get into, slowly into this, why I said you're a rock star.

[00:24:19] But tell us a bit more about the recent activity at Endeavor, Colorado. You mentioned Watchmaker and you mentioned Maybel, but you've been on a string. You and your team have been on a string of attracting a lot of really interesting tech companies and getting them all the way through the process. So maybe before you go into the answer, when I say your team, who is your team? So Sean Buscelli, we hired him fresh out of CU Boulder last year.

[00:24:47] He's kind of jumped in, guns a-blazin' and just kind of, you know, tackled any tasks that he could. And then Brianna Real, she was an NBA classmate of mine. And so when we had an opening on the team earlier this year, I was like, you know, who's the smartest person from NBA cohort that I think would be perfect at this? I sent her a message one day when I was out on a bike ride and she's like, I would love to chat about this. I'm looking to pivot. So small team here, but we do share an office with Crucible Ventures. And so I kind of think of them as an extension of our team.

[00:25:14] So there's probably about 16 of us that are in the office almost five days a week now. But, you know, small but super agile team. And, yeah, no, it's been a great partnership, a great collaboration. And it used to, from a Crucible Venture standpoint, it used to feel one-sided. It used to feel like, you know, we were really doing a lot of this stuff and handing it over to the Endeavor, past lives of Endeavor,

[00:25:40] and really not getting much in return, including not even the satisfaction of thorough follow-up and really making progress on the mission of Endeavor. And now it's not only feeling balanced, but it's feeling balanced in your guys' favor that the value you are delivering, you know, on your own has just been a pleasure to watch.

[00:26:04] So tell us about some of the other Endeavor companies that have gone through the process recently and that, you know, are gaining traction. Maybe they haven't quite achieved Endeavor entrepreneur status globally, but they're seemingly on a track to potentially become Endeavor entrepreneurs. Yeah, so just in the last nine months, we've added four new companies to the portfolio, Watchman Genomics and Mabel Quantum, which we mentioned earlier. We've also added Justin Cyrus from Lunar Outpost.

[00:26:29] By the time this recording is released, they'll be announcing a series B raise, which is great. And then also Adil Khan from Magic School AI, so one of the fastest ed tech-growing companies in the history of ed tech, based in Denver, got selected last November. So those four companies all added in the last nine months. And then just three weeks from now, we'll have Landon Mossberg from Peak Energy will be in the virtual ISP next month.

[00:26:54] So if I'll go well there, there'll be five companies that we've added since I stepped into the managing director role within one year. Yeah, which is incredible. And we'll put that in perspective in a second from an Endeavor Global standpoint. But I got to tell you a quick story from last night that's a fun one. So last night I was invited to be part of an event that Steve Case was in town for with his Rise of the REST Fund. So they've been a partner with Endeavor. So I got to spend a little time with Steve, which was very nice.

[00:27:24] And I was in a dinner conversation. And the conversation was about using AI for education. And the person who opened up the conversation said that, you know, they've gotten together at their school and decided to limit the use of AI. And I brought up, I don't know, I think that's the exact wrong approach.

[00:27:44] I think if anything, you want to see what your kids, your students, you want to see what they are able to accomplish in the world that is AI. I mean, that's the world that exists. So it'd be like once calculators came out to say, I don't let our kids use calculators. I'm making them do it. Like, you better have your kids learn how to do calculators. And then with spreadsheets, no, you better use spreadsheets.

[00:28:13] So the person across from me then jumped in. And she started talking about magic school and, you know, how they use magic school. And she's in Utah. And I got thrown a few brownie points by saying, oh, yeah, a deal is going to be at my house this coming Monday. Because we're going to have a roundtable discussion on the very topic of, you know, how to leverage AI to make your education system even better. So that was kind of a fun story. So tell us about a deal and tell us a little bit more about Lunar Outposts. Yeah.

[00:28:41] So a deal, my mom works in education. So I've always had a soft spot for what a deal is building at Magic School. He launched in 2023. And then it's the sharpest hockey stick growth you can imagine. But he did a Series A from Bain. And then Baylor Equity did a $45 million Series B with him last year. And he's a former teacher, former principal, if I remember right. Wasn't a tech guy. And now he's doing this. Yeah.

[00:29:07] Essentially, you know, when ChatGPT launched in late 2022, he was kind of taking a little break from his professional career as an educator. Started tinkering with ChatGPT and said, whoa, there's going to be so much utility for this for teachers with lessons plans, building IEPs for children with disabilities, things like that. And kind of built a MVP, went on Loom, recorded a video of himself, pitched it out to some educators and kind of started tinkering with it. And had like 30,000 teachers using it within like a week, just the things he had built.

[00:29:36] And now it's used by 8 million teachers globally. U.S. obviously is the biggest market, but really working with him currently on expanding to UAE. So he's done a few trips to Dubai, which we have an office there, which has been really helpful for him. Great. And then Lunar Outposts? They are basically building infrastructure for life on the moon. And so right now they are bidding.

[00:30:00] They're one of three finalists for a huge multi-billion dollar contract with NASA for the Artemis project. We actually went down to Rye, Colorado. It's in the middle of nowhere a few weeks ago during the big space. You know, people from Rye are going to hear you say that. Probably. They're going to come at me with pitchforks. They're going to hear you say that too. But they have their Eagle Rover, and our team got to ride on this rover.

[00:30:29] There were some, you know, everybody comes in for this big space symposium. So we're there with investors from Japan and China and the Middle East. And a few of our teammates got to ride on the Eagle Rover with their CTO. And yeah, just really fascinating business. You know, Justin's been building it. His brother's a co-founder. And, you know, revenue is rapidly growing. And if they win this contract, it would be a huge thing for the state of Colorado.

[00:30:56] It's, for those who don't know, Colorado is one of the top two, three ecosystems in the U.S. for space tech. And as we love to say, we're one mile closer to space. Yes. Yeah, so we're a really big ecosystem for space tech and aerospace in general. You mentioned quantum earlier. You're one of the leading in the globe ecosystems for quantum. I think that's the other thing that Endeavor brings out because they kind of feed off each other.

[00:31:22] You get companies like Lunar Outposts who's coming from a developed vertical that Colorado's really strong at. But then it gets stronger when you have success stories like Lunar and many others, including Agile Space that's in our portfolio and Voyager that just went public last year. You just see that start to feed off each other, which makes it even more interesting.

[00:31:46] And in quantum, we had our first quantum IPO from Colorado inflection that happened earlier this year. And we're rumored to have a second one called Quantinium that is likely to happen probably in the coming weeks or months as well. So, you know, just a great example how you get these verticals, these sectors that perform really well in the geography, and they kind of feed off each other and create other ones. So fantastic momentum.

[00:32:15] Yeah, I think if you think about there's some of the huge primes here for space tech. So Justin and his brother both came from Lockheed Martin. So a lot of these people, they started these big companies, Raytheon, BAE. They have these really creative ideas. They get ignored by these big primes, and they go off and start their own thing. And, you know, they've had a lot of success with that here locally. Yep. And so let's get back to, you know, you, Zeb the rock star.

[00:32:42] And I want to put in perspective, because now that we've established a bit of this, we started Endeavor, as you said, around 2020. And we got off to a really good start. We had several Endeavor entrepreneurs become part of Endeavor in that first year and a half or so. But then we went through the original founding managing director, kind of moved on. He was maybe there for two years.

[00:33:09] And then we went through kind of a series of MDs and really lost a lot of momentum. We didn't really gain traction. We didn't see things through. We didn't get companies through the Endeavor entrepreneur process. We held the board together, but we really weren't moving the organization forward. It wasn't fulfilling its purpose and mission. There were kind of sort of shots on goal, but they weren't strong shots on goal.

[00:33:39] And then you joined, and you didn't join as managing director, but you joined as what and when? Yeah, so I've been here just over three years as of like two weeks ago. I'm the longest tenured employee now, I think, of Endeavor Colorado. And I started in marketing and community, and I think that gave me a unique perspective because I had to tell stories about what's happening here in the Colorado ecosystem.

[00:34:04] And then with the community piece, we do a lot of dinners, curated dinner series, things with the startup week. So I got strong access to a lot of the founders that we were working with. And for me, it just gave me an incredible ability just to listen. And so the first year and a half, I was able to just kind of listen to what are the pain points of these CEO founders, the CTOs, COOs.

[00:34:24] And I think as I grew into the managing director role and got the opportunity here, it's, you know, I'd spent 12, 18 months really listening to where we could truly add value instead of trying to guess where we should add value. And I think that's one of the unique things that I... But you were also getting your MBA at the time too, right? You were in the night program at CU. And I remember you would tell me when you were going through an MBA how, you know, you'd be talking about stuff at one of your MBA classes.

[00:34:50] And you had all this, you know, broad, real-world experience by working with the, you know, most kick-ass entrepreneurs and a lot of very significant board members. And be able to kind of feed off of that with your program. So tell us more about that. But, yeah, so, you know, my undergrad's in public health, of all things. My grandparents were medical doctors. Always knew I'd get into business area eventually, but ended up going back to school. And I'm like mid-30s. Team MBA did that here at CU and did that for the first two years here at Endeavor.

[00:35:20] I think I did my onboarding at Endeavor. And then the next night started my night school. So we were in class from 15 to 930, a couple nights a week. But it really gave me a unique perspective because, you know, I came from outdoor industry, cycling world. And all of a sudden I had exposure to fintechs with, like, Wade at Move, Vinay at Tiffin, quantum companies with, you know, with Ben at Atom Computing.

[00:35:44] And I think for me I got to understand how different go-to-market strategies work, how margin profiles work from software to hardware, things like that. And so I was able to really bring a lot of value, I think, to my classmates and also learn a lot from them. You know, Google has a big office here. Apple has a big office here. So a lot of my colleagues come from these big tech companies where I was working with more just thinking the next generation of innovation. And it was kind of cool to share notes and kind of learn from each other during two years of that evening program. Yeah.

[00:36:11] And we have to figure out how to get Google and Apple, those companies, more directly involved with Endeavor. We've developed very good relationships with Google over the past really year or so. The local Google office here, some of the globally significant people in there. So definitely want to bring them into the fold. But I haven't really spent much time with anyone at Apple that lives here in the Boulder area. We've got to figure out how to get relationships going with them.

[00:36:41] Yeah, I'll do some digging. I know all my classmates that works there are really focused on like the AirPods and the Vision Pro goggles there, more so than kind of early startups and business stuff. But I definitely think we can crack into that one. Yep. So why do board members, and to put in context, to be a board member, you've got to write a big check. That's how we fund.

[00:37:09] Not the only way, but it's one of the primary ways we fund the office and fund all the activities. So it's a big ask. It's like we're going to ask you to be a board member, and we'd love to tap into your expertise. We'd love for you to come to these fun events. And by the way, you're going to need to open up your checkbook and write a big check. What's in it for them? Why do these people agree to not just write a check once, but continue to write a check for subsequent years?

[00:37:37] Yeah, I think first and foremost, everyone on the board loves Colorado. And then they also just love an innovation. They've been part of innovation that have kind of transformed their life as their kind of platform to give back. And I think a lot of the people on the board, probably everybody, just loves being around people that are optimistic. I mean, you can't become a founder of a growth stage company and be a pessimist. So very optimistic founders. And I think having access to these founders, there's part of the selection journey. You get to mentor these founders.

[00:38:06] I won't say mentor, but really just kind of help guide them through the ups and downs of building a kind of category. Be there for them as a resource. And sometimes what they need more than anything is some cheerleading because, you know, you're working your ass off as a founder. You're overcoming obstacles, but you're living a really hectic life. And I think it means a lot to founders when they're in that part of their journey to hear from others saying, we appreciate what you're doing.

[00:38:32] We know this isn't easy and we know that this is going to provide a significant contribution to so many more people and their families and the community around them. So we recognize what you're doing. We appreciate what you're doing. And we want you to know that we're here to support you. I mean, I think that alone goes a long way to what a lot of entrepreneurs need to hear.

[00:38:55] They need that reinforcement and they need to know that there's a lot of us in this community who recognize how much value they're bringing to the broader community. I think, you know, in today's world, it mystifies me why this isn't the case. But there's such a low appreciation for those who are building these next generation businesses successfully, including by our politicians, which is kind of one of my current pet projects. It's trying to get Colorado politicians to wake up.

[00:39:23] You know, I'd like and respect them all as individuals, but they have been leading us astray in the recent years. And they've been undermining, not intentionally, but by focusing on stuff that isn't what's best for Colorado, but maybe is what's best for their national political party. They've been losing sight of the fact that Colorado benefits from and depends on a thriving tech, very vibrant ecosystem.

[00:39:51] And part of what we need to have that is we need to have both entrepreneurs and those who invest want to be here in Colorado, want to invest in Colorado. If we start sending them a bunch of signals by having policies that are unfriendly to those who are deploying capital and unfriendly to those who are building businesses, you know, we are going to lose and we are losing those businesses. And, you know, and those entrepreneurs, you know, when they're hearing those messages, they're like, man, I'm, yeah, we're building a company here.

[00:40:21] We're creating jobs. We're creating kind of disposable income that people spend on local small businesses. We're funding, you know, the tax base. And all we're hearing from our politicians is words that make it sound like they could give a shit whether we stay here or not. And some of them are leaving as a result.

[00:40:38] And, you know, we need to rally around that and wake up our politicians and make them, you know, put a lot more focus on what's best for Colorado than, you know, whatever political agenda might be popular at the particular moment.

[00:41:22] Yeah. There's a lot of people, especially when they're going to rally our lives. I think there's been a lot of people in three years. And, yeah, we're really shock to you. It's kind of a lot of hate عنés. But we're feeling like, you know, it's a lot of just kind of a concern within between ourselves. And we're going to have to move forward to seeing how we're choosing. Great. And it's been very exciting. We've been having me on the show in a show in Beethoven. And I think it's a lot of excitement so that we can see if we're doing this.

[00:41:52] And you know, it's something about too many times. It's Ariana, right? Yeah, Ariana. I sent her, after you gave me the update, I did send her an email, and I invited her to something that I'm working on that I haven't really shared with many people. It's called the Bold Summit. It comes at the end of Boulder Roots Music Fest, which maybe we'll talk a little bit about that in the context of kind of the cultural scene that's so important when you want innovation to thrive. But anyways, the Bold Summit is going to be an invitation only.

[00:42:21] This is year one, a small 40 to 50 people in year one, but all around the intersection of content creation, which includes film and gaming and music, but also includes experiences like X Games. So those who create content, those who create platforms to help enable those who create content, and platforms could be tools, it could be how to distribute,

[00:42:51] how to monetize, as well as the investors who are focused. And so in this moment in time where we're staring down AI and what AI might do to the human experience, how do we as kind of humans kind of rally around each other to create things that are going to make humans be able to stay in charge, as opposed to AI taking this over,

[00:43:18] and create opportunities for people to enjoy and get fulfillment out of life and out of one another. So after hearing your update and reflecting on what they're doing, I figured they would be a really nice complement to what we're doing at the Bold Summit. So I shot her an invite. I haven't heard back yet. Maybe, at least maybe I have this afternoon, but hopefully they become part of that as well and bring them more into the fold.

[00:43:44] Yeah, and she's also speaking at the outside event with Robin and Foulis as well. Oh, and Robin's going to be at the Bold Summit. Yeah, he's involved with Endeavor for the past couple of years. So let's go there. Let's go there. We've got Outside Days. We've got Sundance. We have Boulder Roots Music Fest, which is near and dear to my heart since we've at Caruso Ventures have put our full resources behind that.

[00:44:10] Those are three of lots of gatherings that bring people together. There's some other music fests. I didn't know about this, but in Denver, there's a Sundance equivalent for TV series. I think TV, but the importance of culture, the importance of arts when it comes to creating the right type of tech entrepreneurial ecosystem. What's your thoughts about that?

[00:44:39] Yeah, I think the more that I look into it and spend time around you and Chris Ventures, how important they are and how much they feed off each other. I think sometimes it would get too deep into coding and things, but so many of these engineers or artists themselves. You can think about Eric Rosa, who's a mentor of Endeavor, former board member. He also has a band called the House Cats. He's going to be playing at our Endeavor event at the Roots Music Festival. What's your Endeavor event at the Roots Music Festival? You kind of slipped that in. Yeah, yeah. Talk about that.

[00:45:09] I haven't heard about it. Yeah, so we work all day long with our founders in the portfolio, but really this is going to be a great chance to bring our founders and their employees together. So on the Friday of Roots Music Festival, we're going to be inviting all of our portfolio and then kind of our top candidates to come, purchase tickets, spend the whole weekend in town, but also just have a very dedicated event to kind of bring their employees together. A lot of these companies, they're engineers and marketing people,

[00:45:36] haven't met other kind of tech startups here in the Colorado ecosystem, so it's just kind of a fun event for them to mingle and meet some others that are part of these category-defining companies here in Colorado. And since Boulder Roots Music Festival isn't just about music, but music is a central theme, Eric Rosa and the house cats are going to perform during the Endeavor event. That's so cool. Yeah, I love the name. I've been to Eric's house a few times, and there always is a cat running around his house or hopping on countertops, so it's very appropriate for Eric. Yeah, absolutely.

[00:46:05] So what kind of value do you give? Give us examples of value that you give to the Endeavor entrepreneurs of Colorado as well as the broader ecosystem, including those who aspire to get to the point where they can be Endeavor entrepreneurs as well. Give us examples of the type of gatherings that Endeavor either hosts or participates in to help build the tech and innovation community.

[00:46:33] Yeah, so we've kind of, you know, this is my fourth year running our curated dinner series. We've been doing that for a number of years now, and really it brings founders together in a very kind of off-the-record conversation. We're hosting a dinner here at Colorado Thrives next week at your house, but a lot of these founders, they're going through similar issues. Well, this is the one that we're kind of co-hosting with Colorado Thrives.

[00:46:56] This is a unique one because it's being done with Colorado Thrives and really at their suggestion or to support one of their initiatives. So use that as an example. What happens when these dinners? Who attends? You know, what gets accomplished? Yeah, so we usually try to get a mix of kind of public service people. So the mayor of Denver will be here. We have a lot of entrepreneurs in the room who are kind of building the tech

[00:47:23] that's going to define the next, you know, 10, 20 years of life. And so we have people like Ian from Freeplay, which is now part of NVIDIA. Yes. Very exciting. Congratulations, Ian. We have people from Anthropic joining the dinner, from Zskeller. We have Josh from LAI, which is, you know, following how people do flips and twists and X games and such. And so just people that are, you know, really deep in this technology building

[00:47:53] and kind of conversation around how do we continue to make sure the workforce here in Colorado is ready and adapting this technology to be a front runner, both nationally and internationally. Like this should be one of the best places to build an AI company. And Deal's going to be there too? And Deal from at school. So it's really about AI as it applies to how the workforce is going to be able to, you know, adapt and thrive with AI.

[00:48:21] Like what should we as the Colorado community, what should we be doing to make AI a positive influence as opposed to a job disruptor? And so what we assembled here is kind of a grouping of people who have deep, deep experience with AI from a lot of different perspectives. And we want to stimulate a conversation for them really to talk to one another, not come there and present kind of their plan for what we should do, but have them riff with one another

[00:48:47] while others of us listen in and learn from it and hopefully walk away from there with actual ideas about what the state can and should be doing in the realm of, you know, of getting in front of AI as opposed to having AI get the better of our workforce. Absolutely. And I think too, like having Anthropik in the room on Monday will be great because kind of understanding what the roadmap looks like for AI.

[00:49:13] And you hear their CEO speaking a lot about the disruption it's going to cause, but I think we can also get ahead of that and create jobs that we don't mind, I even imagine yet. There will be new jobs created with AI. And I think that's where we can be a leader on the innovation side. And then as we do these gatherings, what other benefit it has is people build relationships. So now they spend a couple, two and a half hours together, not just socializing, but, you

[00:49:39] know, talking to each other, communicating in a, in a, you know, dinner format. And out of that, you know, we've seen a bunch of relationships really get developed and built. And usually what we try to do is we try to get a few of the Endeavor entrepreneurs, some of the board members and other sponsors, uh, with aspiring entrepreneurs, as well as mixing a subject matter expert or two. So getting the right curation on a curated dinner, uh, the right topic, the right people

[00:50:07] to have discussions about that topic, uh, and the right mix of people so that they benefit both from the relationship building, but also from the conversation about that topic itself. Yeah, absolutely. And I think, you know, speaking of like building friendships, these dinners and connecting afterwards, like Seth Sternberg from Honor Care, Kent Theory was at Davida before and Mark Frank from Sondermine. Now they're like mountain bike buddies. They met, we were at a longevity dinner together a couple of years ago and that's kind of where that friendship kind of spurred from. Yeah.

[00:50:37] That's crazy. Uh, so what about sponsors? What are sponsors that you mentioned earlier? JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, you mentioned, uh, Wilmer Hale, you mentioned KPMG, you know, what do they get out of it? They just feel good because they, uh, they, you know, help give a little bit of money and help fund it or do they get something more out of it? They get a lot of it. And I think for them, it's like, they believe in the ecosystem. They want to build connections with these companies, um, and support them. And yesterday we were at lunch with Wilmer Hale.

[00:51:06] He said, Hey, like, sure. We want all these people, other customers at some point, but like, we're here to help first and foremost. And, you know, they work with a lot of companies in New York, Boston, San Francisco. So they've seen a lot of these issues that these founders will have to go through, whether it's messy cap tables, things like that. And, you know, and they're, you know, first and foremost, they're here to support our founders. And they know that if they do that, it's kind of give first mentality that Brad Feld started years ago that, you know, they're going to get a lot of value out as well. But, you know, I think they just want to be part of what we're building. I think it's exciting.

[00:51:34] They see the growth of the ecosystem and the exciting companies that we keep bringing through the selection process. And this is their way to, you know, be a teammate to those founders from day one. Yeah. What still shocks me is, well, first part doesn't shock me. And that is the amount of value that Endeavor gives to these sponsors compared to the size check that these sponsors give back is so in favor of the sponsors.

[00:52:01] I mean, there's huge value for relatively small checks. What amazes me is that so few of those type of sponsors have caught on to that. I mean, it's just misfinding me. I mean, they should be trying to bust down your door to say us, not them. And a little bit that's happening right now. And certainly the dry spell we went to didn't help, but now it should be so obvious. And there was one conversation I had recently, I guess it was an email conversation, but with

[00:52:30] one of the major law firms here and someone I know and I've offered for them to be involved in that. And Boulder Roots as well. Boulder Roots, we have what's called the Founders Experience, which is how we fund Boulder Roots. It tends to be kind of high net worth. A lot of them are tech, either entrepreneurs or tech investors. But also the professional services that surrounds it. And the value that they would get out of that, because we have this collection of the exact

[00:52:59] type of people that if you're in the high end professional services, cater to tech, you should be all over that. I mean, it's like a relationship building mecca over like the five days where I'm the Founders Experience. You're going to walk out of there with so many of the most interesting relationships. Yet some of these professional services firms, it's like, now I see why you're going to see why you're not in marketing. I see why you're not in sales because you can't see something. You talk about return on investment.

[00:53:24] There was one in particular where the guy was almost choosing to lecture me about why they don't do stuff like that. They do stuff only if it's blah, blah, blah. I'm like, oh my gosh, you should ask a few more questions as opposed to want to lecture. But the ones who are taking advantage of the opportunity are getting a lot of benefit from it because personally, they, like we, get benefit about being around kind of really interesting people, whether it be the other board members, whether it be the Endeavor entrepreneurs,

[00:53:54] whether it be the funnel of Endeavor companies that are aspiring to. It's just satisfying to be around kind of that vibrant group of people. But from a professional services firm standpoint, you get that added benefit of, hey, these are people we want to have relations with because they need lawyers and they need accountants and they need, you know, tax help and they need, you know, all kinds of other stuff that is in the professional services category.

[00:54:18] And you would think that more of them would be catching on at a much more rapid pace. They are right now, but, you know, it's always been a little bit interesting to me to see how at times they can get really tight with their money when it comes to such a big opportunity like this. Yeah. I mean, the dinner with J.P. Morgan there tonight, I think if you add up the amount of capital raised by the group at the table, there's 12 or 14 of us at the table. And I've obviously never raised capital. So, I mean, I think it's $3 billion.

[00:54:47] $3 billion with your capital raised or without yours? With my capital raised. Or both. Yeah. So, like, you know, 10 founders, that's average of $300 million a founder at one dinner table. Yeah. And we sent all the invites out. We got the entree selection, got the venue. All the hard work is done. And they got to show up and, you know, interact with these founders in a very safe space. It's friendly where these founders would be really willing to share their information and get connected. Yeah. And I would say the same thing with the investors.

[00:55:16] You know, we have a ton of tech investors around here and we invite them to the events. They participate in some of them. But very few have really stepped forward and kind of written checks so that they're in the inner circle. And that's been, I think that's going to change quickly. But I think they're seeing the value and, you know, they like getting the benefit of the value. But, you know, some of them have struggled with doing the financial contributions. And that's financially dynamic to watch as well.

[00:55:46] So let's talk about the, well, before we skip over it, let's talk a little bit more about the Endeavor entrepreneurs in Colorado that have been around the table for a while. Now, we've got, you mentioned a couple by name quickly, but who are these companies? You mentioned a guy by the name of Mark Frank and you mentioned a few of the others. Like who are our embedded base of Endeavor entrepreneurs that were around, you know, prior to the last year or year and a half? Yeah.

[00:56:16] So Mark Frank from Sondermine was our first ever Endeavor entrepreneur, unicorn founder. I think his revenue is 12x, I was looking, since he started Endeavor. And he's now operating, you know, with telehealth, with therapists in all 50 U.S. states. He was only 12 states when he was selected. So rapidly expanded there. Mario from Quantum Metric, you know, another unicorn, over 100 million AR business, Jump Cloud, Raj and Greg.

[00:56:44] We have Lee Mayer from Havenly, Liz from Suna, Matthew and Jerica from Plume, Radia, Mark Lundstrom, working on building the world's largest airplane. He's really great at using the global network for that. We should have Blake from Boom, who we're an investor in. So I love Blake. But Blake was not, not gotten involved with Endeavor. He's very busy.

[00:57:10] He's got a lot going on, so I understand it, but I've always at the same time thought, man, you know, Boom Supersonic should be front and center in what we're doing here at Endeavor. So I think we can get him in. He's speaking at the Deep Tech Summit in a few weeks. Blake, I hope you're listening to this. You've been twice on the podcast here and that pivot story of his is like epic. And if those who are listening to this, if you haven't listened to the Boom Supersonic,

[00:57:37] there's a part one and part two, I think you go straight to part two if you want. But the part two is just an epic story of an entrepreneur gritty and a firm that stuck with it and hit major adversity. And both, you know, got a lucky break, but it's the story of how those who tend to get lucky breaks tend to earn their lucky breaks. They tend to see them. They tend to seize on them. And it comes with the persistence and grit of being a true entrepreneur.

[00:58:06] And their good fortune was because they were forced to build their own engine because Rolls-Royce not only pulled the plug on them, but Rolls-Royce did it really publicly, which put them in a really difficult situation to raise money. And, you know, they had to fight through it. They had to go through a pretty significant down round as part of that. But coming out of that down round, they discovered that the engines that they were building for

[00:58:32] their supersonic plane were ideal to be the turbines for these big AI data centers. So now they're pivoting to focusing most of their attention on building out these turbines for AI data centers. And that, you know, customer-generated revenue is going to be what, you know, funds the further development of the world's first supersonic passenger plane since the Concorde.

[00:58:59] So it's just one of those just, you know, stories that me as an entrepreneur, and I guess me as investor in this case too, just kind of find so fascinating and so fulfilling. And what's cool about that too is they've also partnered with the Colorado company, Crusoe, for their first kind of sales into the market. Yep. And Crusoe, which is not spelled like my Crusoe, but it's spelled like Robinson Crusoe. That's another just great story. Just fantastic story.

[00:59:27] So they started out by building kind of, you know, servers that would mine for Bitcoin and kind of power, you know, abundant spots, you know, way off the beaten path. And they did that for a while, but then they were able to use kind of their know-how, their technology to get in front of AI data centers.

[00:59:51] And now they're one of the biggest and baddest builders of like the large data centers and campuses for what's going on with AI. So both the raw infrastructure, but also in many cases, the, you know, the NVIDIA and other equipment as well being deployed within the data center. So a fantastic story.

[01:00:15] A company that is going to knock me off my, the throne that only I recognize, which is the largest IPO in Colorado, at least in a long time. And I think if Crusoe turns out to go public, I think they'll like leave me in the dust. Yeah. It's very interesting. At least they got my name. Yeah. Yeah. They'll give you a little bit of credit for that. But yeah, it's a fascinating story. And, you know, both the founders went to high school here together in Denver. In Boulder. Or in Denver, I think. Kent High School maybe?

[01:00:45] You're right. But yeah, and Cully's still based here. And, you know, I actually emailed him just yesterday for Landon at Peak Energy. So there's more collaboration we can do between Colorado companies. And he's going to hop on a call with Landon. So it's really cool that, you know, we're able to connect Colorado founders who are doing really fascinating things. Gotcha. And you mentioned Landon and you mentioned Peak, but you didn't really talk much about them. Who is Landon and what is Peak? And maybe the experience we had together when we met them.

[01:01:12] Because a lot of times when we're meeting these companies, I think a lot of times it's, you know, we're going in there both from a Crucible Venture standpoint and we're going in there from an Endeavor standpoint. And we kind of, you know, are able to choose ourselves together as we discover these really interesting entrepreneurs and the companies. So Peak Energy was, I think, a prime example of that, right? Yeah, believe it or not, when you email the founders and ask for an introduction, they easily respond. Yeah, every once in a while they pay attention to me.

[01:01:40] I'm not the been there, done that, has been like most people think of me as. Yeah. And so, yeah, we went, it must have been December, we went to their facility in Broomfield and kind of looked at their kind of cell technology that they're engineering there for sodium ion batteries. It's kind of a contrast to lithium ion. Lithium ion needs a lot of cooling and fans and pumps. And with sodium ion, while it's denser and heavier, there's basically no maintenance.

[01:02:08] So what they're building with these battery packs for gigawatt storage, think of like people like Jupiter Power would use that. They have a $500 million contract with Jupiter to deploy energy. And really their first grid scale sodium ion battery provider here in the US. And so where they come from, how did Landon and crew learn how to do batteries of this type? Yeah. If you were to look at their founding team and C-suite, every major logo you can think

[01:02:37] of, especially like Tesla and North vault, things like that are on the table. Zipline. A few of the co-founders have done $3 billion in revenue at some other energy companies. So an amazing founding team. And really they just understand how to not just take the science, but also make it at scale. And they really jumped to that and raised a lot of capital and working on some more. And hopefully he's our next endeavor entrepreneur three or four weeks from now. Yeah. And several of them, several of them, in addition to the other companies, but several of them

[01:03:07] were Tesla engineers. So they did it together at scale at Tesla and are taking that to build. So these are battery storage facilities that are ideally suited for AI data centers. So between what they're doing, what Boom is doing, which is building the turbines that feed into those batteries. And what Caruso is doing with the data centers, those three firms hopefully develop a really good relationship.

[01:03:34] And I actually was able to introduce Landon to Boom, to Blake at Boom. You introduced, or maybe we both introduced, I think maybe I did initially, introducing Caruso and Peak as well. So the three of those firms are kind of an example of how Colorado plays an outsized role in my former industry, which is digital infrastructure. You know, I don't, I think that's one of the segments that Colorado doesn't fully appreciate

[01:04:01] how big of a role we play here in Colorado and in the world. Certainly with the two companies that I was part of founding, Level 3 that is now branded as Lumen and Zale, the company that I started, are still to this day the largest fiber bandwidth providers, certainly in North America, but in Zale's case, still in Europe as well. And then you have multiple data center companies, including Vantage, which is surreal.

[01:04:28] Chatsky, who was a colleague of mine as an executive team at Level 3, and multiple more data center companies, including Caruso, that are headquartered here. And now you have the energy companies that are feeding into that. And then, you know, Blake's wild play with the turbines. You add all that together, you know, there are a couple dozen significant, including some other former Zale people on the fiber side.

[01:04:56] You have Matt Erickson, and he's building Vero networks. You got Chris Morley, who's building out LightPath here in Colorado, and several other examples of that. So digital infrastructure, AI infrastructure is another example on top of, we mentioned quantum, we mentioned space tech. And, you know, touching on kind of advanced energy, you know, those are four kind of segments that, you know, Colorado plays a really significant role on a global scale.

[01:05:26] Yeah, and I think, you know, Landon, prior to living in Colorado, he lived in Singapore, he lived in Sweden. He always said, if I ever build my own business, I want to live where I want. And he picked Colorado because either him or his wife's family is from Colorado, but also it's very central. Like, he can go one direction, be in San Francisco for meetings. You can go the other direction, be in New York. And so I think it's another... You can go the other direction, be in Texas? Yeah, yeah. And like, I think it's like the seventh busiest airport in the world nowadays, Denver. Like, I flew directly from Tokyo to Denver, went directly to Istanbul, Turkey last year

[01:05:55] for an Endeavor retreat from Denver. So it's a very central location to get to a lot of parts of the world for business. Yep. So, Zeb Rockstar, why are you doing this? I mean, why are you working at Endeavor? What makes that be... I mean, you're, you know, in the early part of the prime of your career, what do you get out of it? Oh, I think I have the best job in the world, for one. I think when I was going through my MBA, my friends were like, wait a minute, how do you

[01:06:25] know the CEO of this company? How do you know the CEO of that company? I'm like, oh, it's with my job. And I think for me, it's... I've always been drawn to impact. And I think every day I get to see the impact we're making when revenues go up or connections made with two founders or getting to work with colleagues in every part of the world. Like last year, I went to Africa, Europe, and Asia, all with Endeavor. I mean, how cool is that? And I think for me, I have some entrepreneurial aspirations at some point. And right now, it's... I have a front row seat to innovation.

[01:06:53] I can learn what to do and what not to do if I ever become a founder. So I think just that access. And then people like you, I mean, you and everybody on the board, our mentors, have done so much. And you're all an inspiration to me. And if I ever have success, I want to give back like you all do currently. But just an incredible opportunity to learn. I mean, I couldn't be surrounded by a stronger network of people at this stage of my career. And you mentioned if you have a chance to give back.

[01:07:21] A lot of what we do at Endeavor, and I'm talking about Endeavor Global, people in roles like I'm in, part of what we're hoping to do is inspire those who are going through their journeys now, have kind of role model examples where once you have the benefit of success, hard-earned success, but success, what do you do with it? How do you give back?

[01:07:46] We're trying to be kind of role models to inspire them to look around them as they're having their success and say, how could I help others? And during their journeys, they can help others just by showing up. And then they're busy. They got families. They're growing their businesses. But when they're able to carve out time to be there at one of those dinner conversations where there's three or four others sitting there who want to be them, boy, the impact that they're having. And then as they're getting toward their exits and they start having liquidity, looking

[01:08:14] around saying, how do I give back to the community to inspire and support and help others who are building that next generation of companies? So a big part of the flywheel is inspiring kind of that mentality. And even like our board members give, even if it's 30 minutes a quarter, like that 30 minutes can really move the needle for some of these founders or just give them confidence that they're going in the right way and just keep marching that direction. So a little help here and there goes a long way for these founders. Yeah, no doubt.

[01:08:43] I mean, and some of the board members and some of the sponsors and some of the endeavor entrepreneurs, they don't give 30 minutes. They give lots of time. I mean, they make themselves very available. And I think our job is to make sure that their time, the time that they do give is rewarding to the person giving the time as well. I think the more we make it kind of a two-way exchange that, you know, everyone feels like they're getting value out of it. That just is what keeps people motivated and interested.

[01:09:14] Yeah. And we even, with our selection process, you know, we talk about how we kind of went through a kind of dry spell. We really changed the name to Selection as a Service. And really, I think that's really allowed us to... What does that mean? So I think historically we said, oh, there's all these steps of selection, all these meetings. And you tell that to a founder who already has too much on their plate and three kids at home, right? I don't want any more work on my plate. Now it's like, if we're meeting with them, they're getting value out of it. It's really, it's helping them with a go-to-market strategy. It's helping them with raising capital.

[01:09:43] It's helping them figure out how to be unstuck with something you're dealing with. And so instead of them just pitching their business and having these silly meetings, it's all about, you know, really getting value out of it, meeting really interesting people. And so they're more apt to go through the selection process with us because it really is Selection as a Service. They're getting value out of every stage of the selection journey all the way up through the ISP, where it's amazing to have these, you know, globally relevant people, you know, evaluating their business, learning about it, giving them feedback, saying, hey, I

[01:10:12] had to watch out for this, or I think you're doing right on this. And so it's really changed the way that we want to bring companies through the selection process. Yep. So you mentioned raising capital. What is Endeavor Catalyst? Yeah. So we have a rules-based fund. And who's we? Is it Colorado? Endeavor Global. Endeavor Global. It's a shared fund. We are currently raising our fifth fund at the moment, which will be $300 million, hard cap to $350.

[01:10:39] We've already crossed $300 million to that as of a few weeks ago. So that's a huge milestone. So we'll have about $850 million of asset center management. And we only invest in Endeavor entrepreneurs. So a company has to go all the way through our selection process, be selected, and then we'll invest following the rules. So we do max of $3 million check size, no more than 10% of the round. It has to be led by institutional investor. Yeah. Yeah.

[01:11:05] And it becomes a self-funding mechanism for Endeavor, the nonprofit. So tell us how it works as kind of a sustainable funding source for Endeavor. Yeah, absolutely. So all of the LPs of the fund, this new fund, I think will have 500 people that are LPs of the fund. Of the profit that we get from the companies, they give back 50%. And so of that 50% that's given back to Endeavor, that split between Endeavor Global,

[01:11:34] which is headquartered in New York, and then the local office. So we have LPs like yourself. By profit, you mean if there's a gain on the investment. So if Endeavor, in its rules-based approach, ends up investing in one of the companies, like for example, I think there's some local companies here that have been part of the Endeavor Catalyst portfolio.

[01:12:00] When those companies exit and provide returns to their investors, Endeavor's returns, part of it goes back to those who participate in the fund. I've been a participant in multiple of the Endeavor Catalyst funds. So we'll get our capital back and we'll get half of the return. The other half stays within Endeavor. And the other half gets split between supporting Endeavor Global and the other half, the office

[01:12:27] of the person who made the investment, whatever office they chose. In my case, it's Colorado. So over a longer period of time, it's highly likely that these Endeavor Catalyst funds are going to do really well. The early ones already have. And that becomes a great source of funding for the Endeavor office to grow and meet its budget. Yeah.

[01:12:54] And also, as we think about Endeavor as a pay-it-forward platform of Fund 5, which we're almost finished raising, over a third of the LPs are Endeavor entrepreneurs themselves. So it just kind of speaks to the value that they've gotten out of the network over their time. And they're putting their money back into Endeavor as investors in the fund, which is pretty neat. And with the Endeavor platform as a whole, so think about the Endeavor Global platform, how

[01:13:20] do those who want to invest in tech, how do they, I'll say, how do they participate in the platform? And by participate, it's both giving value, because everyone who participates needs to give value, but they're also getting value as well. So give examples of companies who are investors, who hover around Endeavor in order to help themselves as investors be successful.

[01:13:50] Yeah. So I think even like you think about our Endeavor Polish office, a company called Eleven Labs just came out of there. I think it raised at a $15 billion valuation recently. We're co-investors with A16Z, Sequoia Capital on that. And I think people have realized that Endeavor can find these amazing companies in elsewhere markets where most of the time these people aren't looking past Sand Hill Road in California. And because of Endeavor Cattles, they're like, whoa, shit, there's amazing tech companies being built.

[01:14:18] We just added a company based in London to Endeavor months ago, and they were $75 billion valuation, fintech companies. So I think people have come to realize we co-invest with some of the top firms around the world, but Endeavor is the one that can find these hidden gems in places like Peru or Malaysia that might often be overlooked. Yeah, that's the way I like to think about it is you mentioned Endeavor Global.

[01:14:44] If you had all the employees of both global and the local offices, you mentioned number 650 people. And then on top of that, there's the boards and stuff. Well, if you think of those groups as kind of being your ones who are sniffing out the deals. So their job, if you're in your shoes, Zeb and your team shoes, your job is to find the

[01:15:12] most compelling entrepreneurs in Colorado, the most compelling companies that are scaling up in Colorado. And your job is to find them before they're truly candidates to be Endeavor entrepreneurs. You want to get ahead of that. So you want to find the ones who are going to grow into that. So you want to find them when they're maybe just getting into the Series A stage or approaching Series A and then stay with them so that when they're starting to really get to that full scale up, you've already had a long relationship.

[01:15:40] So you and your counterparts across the world are really working kind of the deal funnel. You know, you're getting old entrepreneurs, you're identifying the best deals, and then you're also helping them. You're also kind of working with them as portfolio companies to help them be successful in their journey. So I think a lot of very sophisticated investors have realized, you know, yeah, I want to be helpful to the Endeavor companies in general.

[01:16:08] I want to be around these kind of people. But I also want to get access to this, you know, pipeline of deals that, you know, might be appropriate for us to invest in. And, you know, I've always described this to people. You know, you want to be around this network. And as long as you're giving value, it's not, you know, it's, you know, very appropriate for you to be getting value as well because, you know, what are most of these companies looking for? They're looking for capital.

[01:16:35] So being sources of capital for the Endeavor companies is the goodness. It's not a conflict. It's part of what we're trying to help them with is, you know, find the right capital for whatever their circumstances are. So great opportunity for investors, local or non-local, to get really close to you, Zeb and your team and our board because that's what gives them access to the most compelling companies. Yeah.

[01:17:01] And I think our team's got a pretty darn good pulse on the ecosystem along with Crusoe Ventures. There's a few companies that slide through here and there, but, you know, I think we probably have the strongest database of what's happening in Colorado from already starting at the seed stage all the way through companies IPO and both normally were via SPAC. And not just database, but personal relationships with the most interesting entrepreneurs, the most interesting companies. Yeah.

[01:17:28] And even just like next week's Boulder Startup Week, we're part of three panels, you know, kind of six amazing entrepreneurs. What are the panels? So I'll be on a philanthropy panel talking about the platform Endeavor and how we are successful given we're set up as a 501c3 nonprofit. And then I'll be leading a biotech panel with Trey from Watchmaker Genomics, Nick from Ambrosia. They just raised $100 million over subscribed series B a few weeks ago.

[01:17:56] And then the CTO of Enveta, which is already a billion dollar business. They raised about $400 million at a kind of 1.2 post-money valuation. Yeah. So those are three companies. You know, we mentioned these other sectors. We didn't really hone in on biotech as a sector, healthcare in general. And I would even say wellness, you know, if you extend it a little bit further. But those are three companies you mentioned that are all thriving and they are biotech. And at least two of them are here in Boulder.

[01:18:24] Where is the other one based? They're all three here in Boulder. They're all three in Boulder. So a lot of people forget that this was a thriving ecosystem for biotech. And it's, I would go as far as to say because of those three companies, it's perhaps reestablishing itself. We are reestablishing ourselves as a hotbed for biotech. Yeah. I was doing a little research just to make sure I'm prepared for my panel next week. And just life sciences biotech as a category raised $3.2 billion last year for Colorado companies. Wow.

[01:18:54] Pretty impressive. It was actually the largest sector in Colorado last year in capital raising, which makes sense. They are very capital intensive businesses getting to through clinical trials, but $3.2 billion, which is the largest year ever for biotech companies here in Colorado. Yep. And we have at least a couple of people on our board with, you know, with backgrounds that are applicable to that, which is awesome.

[01:19:13] And I think for others who are in the life sciences area, you know, they should be hovering around Endeavor as well because we can really help bring awareness to how that ecosystem is thriving here. And then help, you know, feed, you know, other companies to get going here as well in that sector. Yeah. And then we do have the big companies here with AstraZeneca, Nova Nordisk, Eli Lilly all have border offices just kind of two miles away as the crow flies. Yeah. Very cool.

[01:19:42] So what have you personally learned through this journey? Like you've seen, you were part of Endeavor Colorado when it was struggling and trying to find its way and trying to establish momentum. You were central to establishing momentum. Now you're in the seat where you're kind of the most popular kid in school. Everyone in the tech crowd, you know, is starting to know who you are and the value you bring to the table.

[01:20:12] So if I, at least once or twice a week, I hear people say, man, is Zeb doing a great job. And these are people you want to say that about you. So what have you learned through your journey over the last few years? Yeah. I think earlier I mentioned like, I luckily had the opportunity to really like listen in and be curious, you know, for a while. And I'm still very curious. And I think for one thing, like when I speak with the Dill Magic School, he's like, you believed in me.

[01:20:38] He's like, I could tell like, he's like, I get so many emails, people trying to get me to do this dinner or that event. He goes, I could tell you generally cared. And so I've tried just to show that I'm extremely passionate about what we do. And I think the founders we work with and our partners, they understand that like I'm 101% committed to this. I believe in it. I think about all the time. I remember even last fall, I was like tired. We've been working really hard for a while. And it was Thanksgiving morning. I'm like, ah, I'm going to drink my coffee, read The Economist on my iPad.

[01:21:07] Raj from JumpCloud calls me, 7.45 a.m. Thanksgiving morning. He's like, hey, can you hop on a Zoom? We're trying to close this deal with an Endeavor company in Egypt, this guy named Moose. And I'd been with Moose in London, you know, a few months prior. And, you know, when we say we're entrepreneurial first at Endeavor. So Thanksgiving morning, me and Raj are on Zoom, trying to help him figure out how to get connected to Moose from this company called Breadfast in Egypt. And we got things done. But I think the founders just know that, you know, I'm extension of their team.

[01:21:36] You know, we believe in what they're building. And we're kind of their kind of concierge service to make things happen. And I think because I believe in them, they believe in us now. And, you know, I think a lot of this work we do is high level of trust. And they know that I'm not going to give out their contact or put them in a meeting that's not going to be viable to them. So I think we've come a long way just kind of building that trust with one another. Yeah, you have come a long ways and you're doing a great job on that. So let's talk about the future of Endeavor Colorado.

[01:22:04] And you mentioned something very early on the podcast that seemed to be kind of, you know, indicating you want to talk a little bit about a couple things there. Yeah, so we really started this hub model just over the last two or three years at Endeavor. It started with London, now Singapore, Dubai, and then New York naturally because that's what HQ is in San Francisco because our fund is based there. And there's a lot of diaspora founders in San Francisco.

[01:22:32] But as Linda and I have spoken, when we look at our, you know, more recent portfolio with genomics, space tech, quantum, when I look at our pipeline of, you know, the next, you know, 10, 15 companies we want to bring to an ISP, Colorado is batting way above average when it comes to deep tech. And I think there's just this huge critical mass of founders across those industries right now. And not only that here in Colorado, but there's a company called D-Orbit. They're one of our Endeavor Italy companies. Their main office is right here in Boulder.

[01:23:02] Oh, I did not know that. Yeah. So they are based here in Boulder. Mike Cassidy is the CEO now. He's based in San Francisco, but the whole team's based here. And then just at the Singapore ISP, which was in February, a company called Zupel, spelled with an X, of our Endeavor Spain office, got selected. Linda was WhatsAppting me some selfies from an event in California a few days ago. She's like, you won't believe that they just signed a lease in Boulder. Wow. Tagged me in with the CEO founder of that company. Linda used to tag me on this stuff. Now she just goes directly to you. Linda, what's up?

[01:23:33] And they just signed a lease on Canyon Boulevard. I could probably walk there from our Boulder Pearl Street office. And so not only are our founders here in Colorado building amazing businesses, but I think a lot of these companies, even Energy Dome, which I mentioned was selected yesterday from the Endeavor Italy office. They're in Colorado right now doing business development because they realized that this is one of the places for deep tech growth. And just it's a good place to be based.

[01:23:59] So with that being said, you know, we'll see what Linda wants to do. But I think we could become a huge global hub for deep tech and really catalyze and support the founders here, but also support these entrepreneurs from around the world that want to have a U.S. presence and have it be based right here, Denver Boulder Corridor.

[01:24:19] And another thing unique with U.S. when it comes to Endeavor is Endeavor by intention did not see itself and does not see itself as supporting kind of tech entrepreneurs who are from Silicon Valley, from New York. Those ecosystems were plenty well developed. This is really about supporting them elsewhere. And originally it was elsewhere from, you know, from the U.S. in totality.

[01:24:47] And it was only in the last several years with Colorado being one of the earlier offices that we began to open up some offices in the U.S. But the U.S. is kind of a – the way it kind of originated and evolved means that there's pockets of coverage in the U.S. And there's lots of pockets of non-coverage way beyond just West Coast, East Coast.

[01:25:12] Like if you've got a really thriving company and you're headquartered in Arizona or in New Mexico or even Salt Lake City, there's not really an Endeavor kind of office that is lined up with you. And, you know, that geography model is something that we've been grappling with. Like how do you do that? Because you certainly don't want to have a bunch of Endeavor offices in, you know, 20, 25 different geographies across U.S. But you also don't want to have these big gaps in coverage.

[01:25:42] And I don't think there's like an answer to that question yet, but that's a question that begs to be answered. Yeah, and I even like went to Utah Tech Week back in February to kind of understand what's happening in Salt Lake and the broader Utah Tech scene and lots of great stuff going on there. They actually have been leaning in a lot to deep tech as well with some battery energy stuff. And, you know, they just launched a big quantum initiative as well there. We do have an office in Chicago.

[01:26:10] We did compete against them for the quantum government funding a few years ago. So we're glad to – Where's Chicago again? I don't even know. But our Endeavor Great Lakes office, they cover from Detroit to Chicago and do some great stuff. But they're, you know, they do see a lot of quantum companies coming out of Chicago. And we've actually been connecting them with our local founders as well. And even the founder of Vergetti Computers is now in InArmor, Michigan, kind of launching his next venture. And our office there is trying to get connected with him. Yeah, so, you know, good stuff.

[01:26:39] And I know Linda, who's managing this across the world, she definitely has built a very direct relationship with you because she sees what you've been doing and the leadership and effectiveness you've been bringing to the table. So it's been with both pride and joy that I see how Endeavor Global, and Linda in particular, who I have a long relationship with,

[01:27:06] is getting value out of what we've been doing here in Colorado because of your leadership. Yeah. I'm lucky. It's a great foundation and there's still a lot we can do. Yeah, absolutely. So anything that we didn't cover that you were hoping to bring up? I think that's it. Your cycling background, why don't we end up with who Zeb was earlier in life? Oh, just, I went to college to run. Ended up having knee surgery.

[01:27:35] Found bikes to rehab my knee and was really good at riding bikes. So I went from Cat 5s, like beginner, to Category 1, which is pro. In like a year and a half, ended up racing professionally a little bit. Had a bad bike accident in college, which actually turned into some good stuff. After that, ended up being a luxury cycling guide in Europe for a few years. So I got to live abroad in Italy, mostly in Tuscany and Bormio, guiding these week-long luxury cycling trips.

[01:28:03] And then after that, really what brought me to Colorado, besides my next girlfriend, was cycling. The border is probably the Silicon Valley of cycling. You know, normally on Pearl Street, I might walk past two or three Olympians. And so when I'm not working on Endeavor things, I'm usually out riding mountain bikes on the trails or riding my gravel bike up to Gold Hill. And it kind of gives me the time to think and reflect on what we're doing at Endeavor.

[01:28:27] And as you've done that, you've also had numerous bike rides with people who are directly part of the Endeavor network. Maybe rattle off many of those names, because I think I hear you talk about, you know, 15, 20 different people who you either have done a bike ride or two with or you do regular bike rides with who are directly relevant to Endeavor Colorado. Yeah. So I think for years I thought if you get into business, you had to play golf. Luckily being Colorado, golf, cycling is the golf.

[01:28:58] I did buy some new golf clubs recently. But Robin Thurston's been a friend prior to Endeavor for years. He's a big fan of Specialized. We did some stuff with him years ago. Robin is outside. Robin also created, you know, one of the earliest. Matt Myrath. Yeah, Matt Myrath, one of the earliest apps on the App Store. And Robin's been a very strong supporter of what we're doing here at Endeavor. Board member, now mentor, ambassador, and he's been a great partner.

[01:29:27] Yeah, he's honestly been a good mentor just for me personally. And then Greg Keller. I've been riding bikes with Greg Keller for 10 years. I had no idea that he was part of JumpCloud. We always just talked about bikes and not business, which was great. Seth Sternberg from Honor Care, big cyclist. Taylor Brown from FiveTran, cyclist. So just a strong culture of cycling here. And, you know, it's nice to get out in the afternoon with one of these guys or gals and just kind of enjoy some of the beautiful, empty canyon roads we have here in Boulder.

[01:29:57] Yeah, no doubt. Very cool. Yeah. Well, Zeb, again, thank you. This has been one of the podcasts I was really looking forward to from the perspective of wanting to give you what you have earned, which is recognition for how much value that you're bringing to Colorado, to entrepreneurs, to our community in general, and just what a great guy you are and what a fantastic leader you've been. So thank you.

[01:30:25] And I hope by sharing this, we even are able to gain more momentum with Endeavor. Yeah. Thanks for all the support. You gave me a good foundation to build from. So it's been fun. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Bear Roars. Check out Stretch, the new song from Dan Caruso, with music by Jason Mendelsohn, available now on all streaming services. If you enjoyed the episode, please like and subscribe on your listening platform.

[01:30:51] This podcast was produced by Loud Bear Productions and edited by Natanya Chatfield, with support from Kendall Weinberg, Gibson Siegert, and Alex Kim.