deming

Mikki Naranjo, In Her Father’s Name

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Mikki Naranjo, In Her Father’s Name Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/24/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Eugene Naranjo painted under the name Shadow Wind. A longtime executive officer for the Southern Ute Indian Tribe, he was also an artist whose stained glass portrait of Chief Buckskin Charley sits in the Colorado State Capitol.

Today, the name Shadow Wind hangs over a small ranch in La Plata County, where Eugene’s daughter, Mikki Naranjo, runs a horse boarding business.

“[Shadow Wind] really takes care of the horses personally. Our horses do not become another number. They become family when they’re here at our facility”

But the name is only part of the family story. Her love for horses stemmed from her grandparent’s ranch, and her drive to keep learning came from her mother, who earned a masters in teaching. Shadow Wind is where all of these pieces came together.

Getting there took time. Naranjo spent years in tribal finance and set aside an earlier business idea along the way. The Rural Colorado Workshop Series helped her find her way back to the entrepreneurial goals she'd set long before.

Specialization is Key

Shadow Wind gives horse owners a place to keep their animals when they don’t have the land to do so themselves. Boarders pay for daily feeding and care, and they can ride in the indoor and outdoor arenas while they’re there.

The business started from a mix of desire and chance. When Naranjo and her husband drove by the property, with arenas and paddocks already in place, they remembered how they had wanted a ranch of their own. So they purchased it, which quickly became a return to how she grew up, where she spent most of her time on her grandparents’ ranch with a Shetland pony.

The previous property owner had also been boarding horses, and still had two clients who needed somewhere to go. When she was asked to take them in, she instantly jumped at the chance.

"I thought about it, and I said, yeah, let me try it."

Immediately, she leaned on her accounting background to handle the setup, registering the business with the state and applying for a federal tax ID. From there, she researched competitor pricing to help set their own. All in all, the goal for her first year was to come out with a profit, and she did just that, capitalizing on their low-cost business model, and high expertise and care. The physical work is a family effort, with her husband and two sons handling all the daily operations.

She credits her family for the business's success, specifically her husband, Gary Methvin, and sons Jerid and Seth, along with her son Kai, daughter Alexandria and son-in-law Kyle, who help when needed. The day-to-day operations would not be carried out without them.

What sets Shadow Wind above the other facilities, aren’t the fancy amenities, but the sheer attention and care each horse gets.

"I really love taking care of horses because they have a soul. They can't tell us when they're hungry. They can't tell us, 'Help me,' or 'I'm not feeling good.' It's just something I've really come to love, being able to take care of God's creatures."

A Sign, and a Turning Point

The Rural Colorado Workshop Series, instructed by Eric Bruno and Executive Director of the Deming Center Erick Mueller, brings entrepreneurial training to rural Colorado communities, specifically in collaboration with the Southern Ute Indian Tribe.

Naranjo had her eye on it for years. Her first business idea was a coffee shop she planned with her sister. They made it as far as a proposal and market research before setting it aside after her mother's passing. Naranjo returned to the tribe’s finance department, and a busy career kept the workshop out of reach.

When the series came back around after she semi-retired, she didn't hesitate. She walked in with a clear goal. As a former grants manager, she already knew how to search for funding online. What she wanted was to learn what was available closer to home.

The two-day workshop walked participants through starting a business and keeping it growing once it's up and running. The sessions also pushed participants to think creatively. In one exercise, each group was handed an orange and asked to build a business around it. Naranjo had the name ready. Her last name traces back to "naranja," the word for orange.

The bigger takeaway was momentum. The workshop connected Naranjo with local resources like Region 9 and gave her the push to start using them.

"It just helped me get motivated, put a little fire under me to start utilizing the different resources in the area.”

An Empowering Future

Naranjo doesn't plan to turn Shadow Wind into a large operation, but she isn't sitting on her heels either.

Her husband is preparing to attend farrier school to learn hoof care, which will give the ranch another service to offer boarders. The ranch is also about to get busier. Naranjo is adopting five rescue horses from the U.S. Forest Service, and one of her boarders is returning with two horses of her own.

More horses mean more upgrades. The paddocks need work, and a new barn tops her list. Rather than keep funding the business herself, Naranjo plans to pursue grants to make it happen.

Beyond all the planning, the operations, and the goals, the drive has always remained the same for her.

"You gotta always love what you're doing... or else you're not going to be wanting to do it. Entrepreneurship to me is powerful. It's having your own destiny, to do what you want to do. It's exciting to be your own boss."

Shadow Wind began as her father's name. Now, it's where Naranjo is shaping her own.

Shadow Wind was the name Eugene Naranjo painted under, and today it hangs over a La Plata County horse ranch run by his daughter, Mikki. After years in tribal finance, Mikki Naranjo found her way back to entrepreneurship through the Deming Center's Rural Colorado Workshop Series, and turned a chance drive past a property into a boarding business where every horse is treated like family. Read how she's building on her father's name to shape her own.

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'Lead by Listening'

Jane Majkiewicz — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 22:08:42 +0000

'Lead by Listening' Jane Majkiewicz Wed, 09/23/2026 - 16:08

Jane Majkiewicz

It turns out that a boardroom discussion and a jazz performance have more in common than you might think.

That was the premise behind “The Sound of Success: Listen Your Way to the Top,” a Sept. 23 interactive presentation hosted by the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship as part of its Startups & Sandwiches series. The interdisciplinary session brought together Annie Booth, assistant professor of jazz studies at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� College of Music, and Visda Carson, associate teaching professor of strategy, entrepreneurship and operations at Leeds. They were joined by four musicians: Andy Carson (sax), Milo Lewon (piano), JJ Mazza (drums) and Mateo Perez (bass).

Deming Center Executive Director Erick Mueller started the presentation by noting that listening is consistently listed as a top skill sought by employers.

“Recruiters look for listening,” said Carson. The key thing they seek is candidates who demonstrate curiosity, she added.

Carson explained that there are three levels of active listening. At first, we hear but don’t necessarily listen because our minds may be distracted. The next level involves greater attention but still may be more self-focused than speaker-focused. At the highest level, attention shifts to full engagement.

Bridging Coltrane and conversation

By pairing musical examples with interactive exercises, the presentation showcased how active listening involves both ears and eyes, fostering a cohesive give-and-take that demonstrates presence and interest.

Active listeners bring curiosity and empathy to a conversation, tuning in to nonverbal cues and their surroundings to build connection and contextual understanding.

Four student musicians demonstrated the concept by playing three versions of John Coltrane’s composition “Mr. P.C.” The first time, each musician focused largely on their own part, creating a chaotic, discordant sound. The next version was improved, but it lacked synchronicity in tempo and had a disjointed feel.

Finally, the third version—representing the highest level of active listening—came together in a harmonious, cohesive whole, much the same way a successful conversation flows.

Booth explained how certain musical techniques are useful metaphors for conversations. The musicians demonstrated “comping,” a jazz term for “accompanying,” showing how they listened and looked to one another for cues while supporting the music as a whole. They also demonstrated “call and response”—a kind of musical conversation in which one musician played something that another responded to in either a matching or complementary way.

Jazzing things up

The beauty of jazz is that it is improvisational, but it still relies on structure and framework, much like a conversation, Booth explained.

Tips for Active Listening

Prepare for the conversation (Get in the right mindset and clear your mind.)
Be present and focused on the speaker.
Listen with your ears and your eyes.
Tune in to nonverbal cues: body language, tone and pace.
Engage all senses. Use intuition to pick up on subtle cues and sense the environment (such as dynamics in the room).
Empathize by acknowledging what the speaker is saying and feeling: Play back what you heard and clarify when needed.
Ask open-ended questions.

“You can go anywhere in the world—and I think this is about music more broadly—and not be able to speak the same language as someone else but frequently come to consensus about a shared repertoire and the shared language of jazz … and communicate in real-time.”

Ultimately, active listening is all about how we show up for one another, said Carson.

“How has studying music made you a better businessperson?” Mueller asked Mateo Perez (BusAna, Mus’28), a double music and business major and bass player.

“One of the biggest things I’ve used as a jazz person coming into the business school and as a transfer is reading the room and first listening to what other people have to say,” Perez said.

��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� music student and drummer JJ Mazza (Mus’28) emphasized the same point, summing it up this way: “Lead by listening.”

Hitting all the right notes, ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� professors Annie Booth and Visda Carson partnered with four ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� musicians to demonstrate active listening through jazz during a Startups & Sandwiches presentation.

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How Ore Porat Turned a Broken System into a Business

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Ore Porat Turned a Broken System into a Business Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/17/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Originally from Los Angeles, Ore Porat got to ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� with a company already running. As a first-year student in the College of Engineering, he was drawn to Boulder through its beauty, and endless resources to help him grow. Above all, however, was something more specific than that.

“It feels like a small school within a bigger university. I have that community in engineering, but I can also explore clubs and resources across CU, including Leeds and the Deming Center.”

His instinct to build something specific and useful, then utilizing his network and resources, is exactly how he ended up running a company before he ever set foot on campus.

A School Requirement Turned Startup

Beyop is a community service tracking system. Porat originally built it due to a school-wide community service requirement, which fixed his high school's clunky, outdated version. He started it as a first-year project, and it turned into a business by the time he was a senior.

Porat taught himself to code starting in elementary school from scratch with his dad's guidance. It took him about four or five months, starting in November of his first year and finishing that February. Once it was done, his whole high school started using it.

He continued building and expanding upon it throughout high school, and by his second semester of senior year, his assistant principal pulled him aside. What he had built for the school, she told him, was good enough to sell to other schools that were dealing with the same problem. So over the summer before starting at CU, Porat and a friend turned the platform he built for his high school into an actual business, cold emailing schools across California with plans to expand into Colorado next.

A Deal Made in Elementary School

It's rare for someone to have the kind of technical experience Porat had at that age. While plenty of it was self-taught he also gives his dad credit for getting him there. In elementary school, his dad introduced him to W3Schools and made a deal out of it.

No screen time, unless it was spent learning to code.

Porat took the deal and ran. By high school, he was building websites for local businesses and hosting them on AWS, charging a flat rate instead of the recurring monthly fees that platforms like Wix and Weebly build their business on.

“I reached out to a lot of local businesses and eventually landed three clients over the course of high school.”

That pricing experience carried over to Beyop. Most of the company's competitors charge schools per student, anywhere from a dollar fifty to seven and a half dollars a head, with bigger schools getting a lower rate. Porat and his partner realized that Beyop’s setup on AWS doesn't get meaningfully more expensive as more students use it, so instead of copying that model, they built simple, flat pricing by school size. No initiation fees, no support fees, no fine print.

Turning Cold Outreach Into a Client List

Beyop is used today by Agoura High School and Malibu High School. Additionally, they recently closed a third with North High School in Torrance, California, and five more schools currently have demos booked for next semester.

Agoura's relationship has turned into something bigger than a typical client, too. The school doesn't use Beyop for community service hours at all. It runs its roughly 300-student sports medicine program through the platform instead, tracking internship hours with nearby physicians.

That relationship led to an invitation to speak at a conference hosted at Agoura in early November, in front of fifteen to twenty other schools. A second, much larger conference in Sacramento next April will put Beyop in front of over a hundred schools, though this one comes with a price tag the company is still trying to figure out how to cover.

Marketing has largely come down to relationships instead of ads, since a lot of the platforms Beyop would normally advertise on are banned in the classrooms it's trying to reach. So Porat and his partner, Cooper Rose at UC Berkeley, have leaned on cold outreach and their status as students to get in the door. This is something Porat has started applying at CU too, whether it's reaching out to alumni on LinkedIn or getting to know professors outside his own department.

Problem Solving as a Mindset

Two weeks into his first semester, Porat is still sorting out which clubs and communities fit him at CU. In the meantime, he's found his way onto a few tennis courts and out to the golf course, and the space between the engineering building and Leeds has already become a regular stop in his schedule.

Although he may be a first-year student, he still has more entrepreneurial experience than most, paired with a fantastic mindset.

“To me, entrepreneurship starts with finding a problem and building a solution that someone finds valuable. Then it’s figuring out how to turn that value into a business.”

The mindset traces straight back to his dad, whose own business is built on the same logic in digital marketing, charging clients only for the leads he actually generates instead of for ad space nobody's guaranteed to see. Watching that model work growing up is part of why Porat sees entrepreneurship the way he does now, as something closer to problem solving than anything else.

He's only a few weeks into a four year runway at CU, but he's going to keep Beyop moving, while cold emailing schools and prepping for the November conference between classes.

It’s the same instinct that built the company now just as at home exploring everything else CU has to offer.

Ore Porat built a community service tracking tool for his high school as a freshman project, and it's since grown into Beyop, a company now serving three schools with five more demos booked for next semester. He priced it to undercut competitors who charge per student, a lesson he picked up from watching his dad build a business the same way. Read how a platform he created for his school turned into a startup.

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As It Turned Out for Pannonica Maruna

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 10 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

As It Turned Out for Pannonica Maruna Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/10/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

When Pannonica Z Maruna arrived at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� as a freshman, she knew from the start that her experience would not be traditional. Having grown up attending creative schools, she was taught to ask questions, challenge the status quo.

Maruna approached college as an opportunity to explore her interests and create a path that felt true to her. As the first person in her immediate family to pursue a four-year degree, she entered CU ready to take advantage of new experiences, even without knowing exactly where they might lead.

One of those experiences came through a Designing Your Leeds assignment that required her to interview a business professional. She enjoyed the conversation so much that, when she later told her dad about it, he suggested she continue interviewing people and turn the idea into a podcast.

"He said, 'Why don't you just record it, do it again, edit it, and make it a podcast?' And I said, 'I can't start a podcast. I'm just a freshman. That's crazy.' And then I went to sleep, and I woke up the next morning and thought, well, maybe I could just try it."

That moment became the beginning of her podcast, As It Turned Out, and a college experience shaped by her willingness to create opportunities rather than wait for them.

Building Her Own Path

Growing up in Portland, Maruna attended small, creative schools that encouraged her to question traditional approaches and explore new ideas. That environment helped shape both her mindset and her future ambitions.

She took on leadership roles early, founding her high school's Women in Business Club and serving as captain of her dance team. Those experiences influenced her interests in college, where she studies business management and leadership while pursuing a minor in dance.

When choosing a college, Maruna knew she wanted an education that extended beyond tests and lectures. She was looking for hands-on experiences that felt connected to real-world work.

Leeds stood out immediately because of its practical, collaborative approach to business education. Courses such as BASE became some of her favorites because of their focus on projects and presentations. Boulder also gave her opportunities to continue dancing with her minor, explore skiing, and build a community that supported both her personal and professional growth.

Turning Conversations Into Opportunities

As Maruna developed her podcast, her professional network and opportunities expanded alongside it. As It Turned Out features people whose careers demonstrate that success is rarely linear. Through each interview, Maruna explores the unexpected experiences that shape a person's path.

"There's not one way to do life. There's not one way to be successful. And success can look different to every single person, and the path to it especially does."

The guest list has grown far beyond that first conversation. Maruna has interviewed professors, military professionals, CEOs, entrepreneurs, and massage therapists, all connected by the idea that there is no single definition of success.

Guest outreach has become one of her favorite parts of the process. She researches CU alumni and professionals on LinkedIn, identifies people whose stories align with the podcast's mission, and creates personalized outreach for each potential guest. She also asks guests whom she should speak with next, allowing each relationship to lead to new connections.

That strategy has produced a guest-booking rate of approximately 24 percent, an accomplishment Maruna is especially proud of because she has built the podcast's audience primarily through word of mouth and her own outreach.

Starting the podcast has also shown her how strongly its message resonates with students. She often hears from friends who worry that missing one internship or opportunity has permanently changed their futures. Through the podcast, she hopes to remind them that one setback does not determine an entire career.

Expanding the show's audience among CU students is now one of her biggest goals.

Looking Beyond Graduation

Because Maruna is completing college in three years, graduation is approaching faster than it does for many students. Through her podcast, she has had the opportunity to learn directly from professionals across a wide range of careers and industries. One of the most valuable pieces of advice she has received is to build meaningful professional experience before pursuing a master's degree.

Maruna is currently exploring opportunities in technology and luxury sales. She is drawn to fast-paced, relationship-focused work and the opportunity to apply the communication and outreach skills she has developed through her podcast. She is also considering moving to a larger city after graduation, with New York and San Francisco among the possibilities.

She plans to keep the podcast going after graduation too. Although it is not currently monetized, the podcast has already created value through the relationships and community it has helped her build. Most importantly, it remains a project she created independently and continues to shape with purpose.

The podcast began with a single assignment and a simple decision to try something new. It has since become an important part of Maruna's college experience and professional identity.

But it all started not because someone told her to create it, but because she was willing to see where an unexpected idea could lead.

Pannonica Maruna didn't wait for permission to start something new. What began as a class assignment turned into As It Turned Out, a podcast built around the idea that there's no single path to success. Through conversations with professors, CEOs, and everyone in between, she's proving that nonlinear doesn't mean off track.

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New Faces, New Focus for Deming's 2026 Student Ambassadors

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 03 Sep 2026 11:30:00 +0000

New Faces, New Focus for Deming's 2026 Student Ambassadors Colton Sontrop Thu, 09/03/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Fourth-year and second-year students Chaya O’Grady and Linh Le are the new faces of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship. With their heavy student involvement and enthusiastic personalities, they’re looking to help influence a brighter future for the center.

Between the two of them, they already bring experience to the table. O’Grady has been heavily involved with the entrepreneurship space in Boulder through a co-founding role with Get Seed Funding, an Innovation and Entrepreneurship initiative, and a marketing leadership position on a Techstars-backed accessibility startup.

Le has spent her time at Leeds getting just as immersed, pursuing a dual emphasis in finance and business analytics alongside a minor in writing and public engagement. She's stayed active on campus too, with her work in community council and on the university's Mock Trial team, where she's taken on cases as an attorney conducting direct and cross examinations. She's also served as a Journey Leader, guiding incoming first-year students through orientation and connecting them with campus resources.

Now, as ambassadors, they're bringing that mix of business and startup fluency back to a center that feels like a community.

Chaya O’Grady

O’Grady is heading into her final year with more than a full plate. Studying finance, business analytics, and entrepreneurship, it’s a course load that traces back years to her curly hair brand. That idea never turned into a company, but it gave her a first taste of building something from scratch, and it stuck.

Since then, she's built a real resume in the startup world. As VP of marketing for a startup building assistive technology for blind and low vision users, she helped the company make it to Techstars and the Consumer Electronics Show, where she pitched to Stevie Wonder. The team also placed second for the Coolest Thing in Colorado award along the way. She was also a founding member of Get Seed Funding, working alongside fellow students to help launch the program from the ground up.

O'Grady found her way to the Deming Center almost by accident, sitting in on a presentation from Erick Mueller, Executive Director of the Deming Center, during a DYL (Design Your Leeds) session and walking away determined to learn more. But what kept her coming back was the culture and her “give first” mentality.

"To be an entrepreneur is to be innovative, to try and solve a problem that nobody else has solved before. To try and give back to your community. Give first is so instrumental to being an entrepreneur. You just give because that's the right thing to do, and it always comes back around."

Linh Le

As a second-year student in Leeds, Le has already hit the ground running. She's studying finance with an eye toward adding a second emphasis in marketing or business analytics, plus a minor in writing and public engagement, all on a three-year plan. Originally from Aurora, she was born in Vietnam and has lived in Colorado since she was four, making her a first-generation immigrant.

Her introduction to entrepreneurship came from home. Her parents immigrated to the United States, built their own business, and her father later taught himself day trading. Le never ran a company herself, but growing up around that kind of self-direction shaped how she thinks about work and independence.

She found the Deming Center almost by chance, through a Spark application email that linked over to the Deming Ambassador one. What sold her was how the application was written. The Deming Center takes pride in fun and engaging applications, with questions like “If you had a million dollars, what would you do with it?” It stood out from every other listing she'd filled out, and it was enough to pull her in.

"Entrepreneurship is autonomy to take your life and your business and the things that you do and do what you want with it. It's not just about when you start a company or start anything, it comes from you, it's coming from your passions, your goals, and your experiences that craft it."

Charting Deming's Next Move

Both O'Grady and Le are walking into their roles with clear ideas of what they want to build, even if their focus points look different.

For O'Grady, the goal comes straight out of her own startup experience. Having worked alongside engineers throughout her time building assistive technology, she's seen firsthand how much stronger a startup gets when business minds and technical minds are in the same room early. This year, she wants to make those connections easier to find, linking entrepreneurship students with engineers across campus so ideas stop stalling out.

"What excites me the most is meeting all of the entrepreneurship community, all of the new entrepreneurs that are coming in going, what's going on here? That's really exciting for me, to help them, give them the resources, and help them build their company and their ideas and help them innovate."

Le's focus is more about the role she wants to play inside the community itself. She sees herself as a liaison of sorts, someone who helps other students find their footing in entrepreneurship the same way she's still finding her own. With an eye toward a marketing emphasis, she's also hoping to help the Deming Center gain more traction around campus, especially among students who, like her, didn't know it existed until someone pointed them toward it.

Building the Center's Next Chapter

O'Grady and Le are part of a growing list of students shaping what the Deming Center looks like this year. Together, they also capture something bigger about where the center is headed.

A senior with startup experience and a sophomore just beginning to find her footing both chose to spend their time here, not because they had to, but because the community pulled them in. One brings the lessons of pitching at CES and building a team from scratch. The other brings the curiosity of someone still figuring out what entrepreneurship even means to her, and the drive to chase that answer down.

If that's any indication, the center's next chapter is going to be built by students who show up not just to learn entrepreneurship, but to live inside it.

Meet the two new faces of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship this year. Chaya O'Grady and Linh Le bring wildly different backgrounds to the role, one a seasoned founder with a CES pitch under her belt, the other a first-generation immigrant just beginning to find her place in the entrepreneurial world. Read on to see what drew them to Deming and what they're hoping to build during their time as ambassadors.

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How Chris Randall Built a Career on Adaptability

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 27 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Chris Randall Built a Career on Adaptability Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/27/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

While he was an undergraduate at ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ��, Chris Randall never set out to be a founder, nor be in business in general.

“I was studying Anthropology and I thought I was going to be like Indiana Jones. That didn’t happen.”

But he built a career in business anyway. Now, Randall is founder and chairman of SMI Aware, a digital intelligence company that has spent 15 years helping legal and corporate clients make sense of publicly available online information.

Randall never had a perfect plan, and little people do. What he had was a willingness to notice when something wasn’t working and change course before it became a bigger problem. That instinct carried him from a factory floor, to a founder and CEO.

Building the Instincts First

Randall came to CU in 1996 from Pittsburgh, drawn in by the mountains and the college-town energy of Boulder in the late nineties. He calls it a special place to be, for the school itself, and everything around it.

Post under-grad, Randall began building a career in manufacturing, learning how things actually get built and fixed. His early career centered on continuous improvement and quality control, first through Six Sigma, where he achieved a black belt certification, then through the Toyota Production System and Alcoa Business System.

It was systems-driven, challenging work that was a world away from the fast, improvisational image most people have of startups in today's world. But that industry changed after the 2008 financial crisis that reshaped manufacturing overnight. Randall left Alcoa, and began independent consulting around Pittsburgh, where he started talking to people in the startup world.

As Randall moved deeper into entrepreneurship, he also recognized gaps in his formal business education. A two-week executive education program at the University of Pittsburgh eventually led him to Harvard Business School’s Program for Leadership Development.

It was a prime example of how opening one door can lead to many others, and the program, offered to working professionals already deep into their careers, gave him the necessary tools to launch his own business. It gave him a network of people he could call when something went wrong, and professors willing to dig into the specifics of a business he was actively building.

Wrong Market, Right Idea

SMI Aware was founded by Randall in 2011, where they focused on pre-employment background screening through social media and the web. The idea came at a time when social media was still young and questions around how online information should be used in employment screening were still evolving.

Randall and his co-founder largely bootstrapped the company, supplemented by seed funding and one angel investor. The two spent close to a year building the product before launch, and found footing quickly by generating cash within the first month.

However, the market itself was a problem due to the commoditization and price sensitivity of pre-employment screening. Randall and his team had built something real, just for the wrong customer.

But the realization wasn’t immediate, and it took until lawyers and corporate security professionals kept calling. They didn’t want to curate their own reports, rather, the finished product handed to them, contrary to what investors were looking for. For a while, SMI Aware tried to serve both worlds at once.

“We’ve got to ask the girl to the prom who wants to go with us.”

That’s how Randall describes the moment his team finally accepted where the business belonged. By 2016, the shift was complete. Randall's own analysts ran the platform now, and clients got a finished report instead of a login.

The pivot paid off, turning a low-margin commoditized product into a higher value service built on trust and accuracy. It also meant walking away from the customer they’d originally set out to serve, a decision that took years to fully commit to.

The Discipline Behind the Adaptability

While the pivot was taking place, Randall made the strategic decision to buy out the other partner and take over as CEO. Early partnerships rarely account for a pivot that changes the whole direction of a business, and Randall admits they got lucky navigating it without more friction than they did.

What carried the company through those early years was cash discipline. Randall didn't take a salary for the first several years, paying his small team before he paid himself. He didn’t know what cash flow meant, or what an accounts receivable was. All he knew was that if the cash wasn’t coming in, he couldn’t make payroll.

"I didn't need a business degree to figure that out. I'm looking at the bank account every day.”

That instinct shaped how the business grew. He never took on big outside money, so no one was pushing him for faster growth or bigger numbers. Eventually, they were able to pay back their seed funding from Innovation Works, and their angel investor. It grew slower than it might have with more cash behind it, but it grew in his way.

By the time the company had real cash saved up, that discipline had become second nature. Randall still checks a dashboard he built himself every day, the same habits from those early years, just with a nicer interface.

The Final Adjustment

At the end of 2023, Randall made one of the hardest calls of his career, stepping down from his CEO role into founder and chairman. He recognized that the skills required to build the company from scratch were not necessarily the same skills it would need for its next stage of growth. He also wanted to create more space for his family and other interests.

Letting go of control was harder than the decision itself, but it’s an underrated yet important trait of a founder. For thirteen years, every problem had come to Randall, but it was time to hand over the reins.

"Early on, when I found myself sometimes grabbing the steering wheel again, right from the passenger seat, that doesn't always help. Sometimes that creates more problems."

Randall had to learn to sit back and let someone else drive, even when that meant watching the new CEO, Josh Janow, make decisions differently than he would have. He still shows up when needed, still talks to Janow regularly as an active board member, but the instinct to control every outcome is one he had to unlearn deliberately.

That instinct, wanting to be the one steering, the one taking the risk, is the same one that built the company in the first place.

"It's about wanting the ball. You want the decisions to stop with you. You want to take the risk and you want to take control."

Today, Randall is focused on becoming a better chairman, strengthening SMI Aware’s governance and building a board that can support Janow and the management team as the company continues to grow.

Randall never planned to become a founder. He built a company anyway, pivoted it when the market demanded it, and eventually learned the hard lesson to hand the ball to someone else.

But learning from the hard lessons is how he built his adaptive career in the first place.

Chris Randall never planned to be a founder. A background in manufacturing and quality control led him into entrepreneurship almost by accident, and a business he built for one market ended up thriving in an entirely different one. Fifteen years later, his story is a lesson in staying adaptable and listening to what the market actually wants.

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How Hayden Forbes Keeps Moving Forward

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 20 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

How Hayden Forbes Keeps Moving Forward Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/20/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year.

This past summer, Forbes interned at RSM, a large consulting and accounting firm. There, he found value and resources that come with working inside an established organization. It also clarified for him that he thrives most in environments with room to move.

“Startups are huge for my skillset. You end up doing a little bit of everything, which is different from the more focused role you'd have at a big company.”

From a young age, Forbes has been drawn to building things of his own, mowing lawns and reselling sports cards on eBay as a kid. That instinct followed him to CU, where it's only sharpened.

What makes Forbes interesting are the patterns beneath all of his startup projects. A willingness to keep starting over, to walk away from something that isn't working and try again anyway. That pattern has taken him through startup projects and one of CU's most ambitious climate programs, and it's still shaping what he builds next.

Learning by Building

Before any class taught him the fundamentals, Forbes learned entrepreneurship firsthand, through building a product with a friend from the ground up.

During his sophomore year, he met Elkan Bruha, a computer science student at CU, and together they built a small device that could sit above a business's doorway and track foot traffic in real time. They aimed it at bars, giving students a way to check how crowded a spot was before heading out.

By junior year, the device was live in more than 25 locations around Boulder. Investors took notice, but when Forbes and Elkan tested whether retail stores would actually pay for the tool long term, the demand wasn't there. They turned down the investment interest and Elkan has continued running CrowdCount as a passion project.

What stuck with Forbes wasn't the outcome, it was the process. Without any real structure to lean on, he learned firsthand how valuable a plan can be. More than anything, going through the full arc from idea to product proved invaluable.

“It was cool to see that you can actually build something from start to finish. Going from ideation to go-to-market strategy was awesome.”

That kind of hands-on immersion, he says, taught him more than anything else could. It's also what sent him looking for more structured ways to sharpen the instincts he'd already built on his own.

A Different Kind of Classroom

That structure arrived through Boulder Climate Ventures, a two-part program that pairs classroom rigor with real-world mentorship. Forbes joined in the fall, where graduate and undergraduate students sat in on a speaker series featuring experts across climate industries.

In the spring course, funded by Breakthrough Energy, students focused on implementing their knowledge through ideation and pitching. For Forbes, it was when he teamed up with a graduate student named Alex Kendall to build Herd Insurance, a concept for insuring entire neighborhoods against wildfire risk rather than individual homes.

“There was a lot of structure, which I think is helpful, especially early on when building your first or second company.”

The experience reinforced Forbes belief that entrepreneurship is a skill set you build in layers, first through trial and error, then through mentorship and structure that turns instinct into method.

An Underrated Ecosystem

Through all of his experiences, what Forbes is most grateful for is where they happened. Right here in Boulder.

“There's quite a startup community here, even though it's much smaller than other startup hubs. It's a cool spot. Especially for aerospace, and for climate tech. This might be the best place to do it.”

Despite everything Boulder has to offer, Forbes thinks most students don't realize it's there. He points to the sheer density of resources on campus, from the Deming Center's events to niche opportunities most students never hear about. One example is the Campus Founders Fund, a Denver-based group that writes checks directly to student founders.

For Forbes, the value came from chances to sit across from investors and founders who took his ideas seriously, long before he had anything close to a finished product. He urges others to show up. Go to the events, ask questions, take the meetings that may seem small at the time. Because while Boulder might not be Silicon Valley just yet, this smaller yet growing community gives students a better opportunity to be seen.

The Long Game

Forbes doesn't have a clean answer for what comes next. He's not entirely sure what he'll do after graduation, whether that's another startup, consulting, or something he hasn't found yet. What he does know is how he'll get there.

Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year. He could be mounting a counter above a bar door or turning a stack of secondhand books into notebooks, but none of it has to work perfectly. It just has to teach him something for the next attempt.

For Forbes, that's the real lesson underneath his startup projects, BCV, and everything he's built at CU. Entrepreneurship was never about getting it right the first time. It was about staying willing to try again.

Hayden Forbes has already built companies, walked away from them, and built again, all pre-graduation. Read about his journey through startups and Boulder Climate Ventures, and the mindset that keeps him trying even when things don't work out. Learn how failure became his greatest teacher, and that Boulder's startup scene deserves more attention than it gets.

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A New Era for Spark CU

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 06 Aug 2026 11:30:00 +0000

A New Era for Spark CU Colton Sontrop Thu, 08/06/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Year 2 of Spark CU is here, and with a brand new energy.

Spark CU is an incubator that takes aspiring entrepreneurs and turns them into real time founders. Through weekly workshops and preparation for programs like New Venture Challenge, all six founders last year saw their business idea come to life.

That inaugural class was run by founding Managing Director Sam Benton, who's now handing off the reins. This time, however, it's to two managing directors, Rom Erez and Yigit Sarac.

Now the program is ready for more. With multiple directors at the helm, Spark CU aims to expand its outreach while making its workshops and programming more thorough.

Meet the Team

Both Sarac and Erez bring deep experience in Leeds and CU's broader campus community, making them well suited to lead Spark CU into its second year. They’re bringing their backgrounds and enthusiasm to elevate the incubator.

Yigit Sarac

Sarac studies finance, accounting, quantitative finance, Italian and economics at Leeds. Beyond his studies, he has served as a course assistant for multiple classes, works as a Peer2Peer mentor, and is a member of the CU Investment Banking Club. He has tapped into his roots by becoming the Founder and current President of the ��Ҵ�ý�ƽ�� Turkish Student Association.

His ties to entrepreneurship lie within his family, where his grandfather started a machinery business that his mother's side of the family still runs. Sarac sees Spark CU as a great "demo" for his future. Its project based nature is a variation of what he's used to in traditional finance and consulting tracks. He's looking forward to expanding the program's reach and setting the right atmosphere for the cohort's growth this year.

Rom Erez

Studying finance and data analytics in the Leeds School of Business and part of the Dean’s Leadership Fellows, Erez has the perfect blend of entrepreneurship, technical, and soft skills. Growing up in Silicon Valley, he put those skills to use by starting his own online business in high school, and has later experienced working in global venture backed technology companies, most recently at an AI startup in New York.

Erez is the current president of TAMID at Boulder, a global club which connects business students with the startup ecosystem, and is also a Peer2Peer mentor at Leeds. He's looking forward to building and supporting a tight-knit cohort where founders help each other while driving success in the New Venture Challenge.

New Era, New Perspectives

Beyond their resumes, Sarac and Erez share a clear vision for what makes an incubator work. Both are looking for founders who are genuinely committed, and who see this as a passion.

"Whether they're able to commit, I think even being able to say that is really important," said Sarac. "It's at least a short term promise that you hear during an interview, and it's one of the first indicators we get from applicants."

Although each founder will be focused on building their own business, they'll be doing it in an environment built on collaboration. The two MDs emphasize that the incubator will only be as successful as the founders' willingness to work with each other.

"I want them to have a very tight-knit community where they're able to rely on each other and get help from each other, and hopefully become friends," said Erez.

This semester, both MDs are focused on growing Spark CU's reach. Applications opened August 1, and the pair plan to promote the program through multiple tabling events at Leedsapalooza to bring in a wider applicant pool. Sarac and Erez are also launching LinkedIn and Instagram accounts for Spark CU, giving the program a social media presence it didn't have in its first year.

Beyond recruitment, Sarac and Erez want to build on what worked in Spark CU's first year while continuing to push founders into the New Venture Challenge. They want to see them advance through each round and walk away with real funding and mentorship.

Ultimately, the two see Spark CU as a community they hope will outlast their own time as MDs. If they succeed, this year's founders will walk away with new entrepreneurial skills and a network built to carry them forward.

Building Something Lasting

As Spark CU heads into its second year, Sarac and Erez are stepping into their roles with a clear sense of what got them here in the first place. For both, entrepreneurship is something they've lived through their families and their own ventures long before they ever applied to lead the program.

"Entrepreneurship is having the drive," said Erez. "It takes a lot of drive, commitment and self-motivation. I think that's the most important trait for someone.”

Sarac echoed that sentiment, but pointed to what keeps someone going once the drive is there.

"Being able to see what you've created at the end is what keeps you going the whole way, even if it takes a very long time," said Sarac. "To know that you're leaving a legacy to something, to somewhere, is the most important thing to me.”

With applications now open and the first tabling events on the calendar, Sarac and Erez are ready to bring that same mindset to Spark CU's next class of founders, and to build something that lasts well beyond their own time as MDs.

Spark CU is entering its second year with a new leadership duo. Meet Rom Erez and Yigit Sarac, the incubator's new Managing Directors. Their backgrounds and personalities along with their ties to entrepreneurship spark a bright future for the program. Read about their plans for growth, and to foster a tight-knit founder community.

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Luke Hatton Proves the Value of a Generalist Mindset

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 02 Jul 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Luke Hatton Proves the Value of a Generalist Mindset Colton Sontrop Thu, 07/02/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

People pursue a higher education to specialize. You pick a lane, you earn the degree that proves it, and it becomes the thing you are.

Luke Hatton earned a degree like everyone else. His just refused to pick a lane. With a BSBA in finance and international business, paired with Latin American and Iberian studies, he covered as much ground as he could from the start.

It set the pattern. Hatton doesn’t specialize. He accumulates, and he lets whatever he's curious about pull him toward the next thing.

It was that instinct that initiated his pivot from finance, because he wanted to do more than analyze brands from the outside. He wanted in. So in 2019, he moved to Colorado with his sights set on the outdoor industry. He immediately took the first door that opened, which was a part-time job on the sales floor of a North Face store on Pearl Street.

However, moving up inside someone else's company was never quite the point. He wanted to build something of his own. The evening MBA program at The Leeds School of Business gave him the room to try, and when an entrepreneurship class asked him to pitch an idea, he already knew where to look.

The strongest ideas tend to start not with a gap in the market, but with a gap in your own life. That’s exactly where Hatton went.

Built for the Teen He Once Was

VUUR is a physician-formulated nutrition drink built for active teenagers. Hatton calls it a foundational fuel, which is closer to a meal rather than typical protein supplements. It sounds simple, until you realize almost no one was making it.

As a teenage athlete, sports were how he defined himself, and he could never quite stay fueled. He turned to whatever he could find, and none of it fit. The products were built for adults, sometimes for the elderly, and he ended up taking them mostly for the calories while the rest of the formula was meant for someone three times his age.

“There were products out there that were kind of what I was looking for, but they weren't designed for me. They were expensive. They had some of what I was looking for, but not all of it.”

It wasn't until years later, after working with a pediatric gastroenterologist, that he understood what had been going on. Adolescents carry nutritional needs unlike anyone else, especially athletes. Their bodies are growing fast, and for most of them it's the most active stretch of life they'll ever have.

That's why the formula was non-negotiable. In a category thick with misinformation, Hatton earned a sports nutrition certification to keep up with the science, then put medical doctors at the center of the work.

Each pouch carries 18 grams of protein and 220 calories, with the protein coming from real sources like nonfat milk, oat milk, and egg whites. That's not an isolate. That's a meal. He even chose to have VUUR regulated as a food rather than a supplement, so parents and teenagers could trust exactly what was in it. It was the harder path to take, but trust was the entire point. It is, in the end, the product he went looking for as a kid and never found.

Course Correction

For most of VUUR’s life, the idea was always solid. However, producing that idea proved to be much more difficult.

A few months before launch, Hatton had a purchase order in with a large manufacturer and a formula he thought was finished. Then he looked at the ingredient list as a whole and barely recognized it. The changes had come in quietly, one at a time.

"I woke up one day and looked at it and thought, wait, this has strayed pretty far from what we originally intended."

A supplier discontinued an ingredient here. The manufacturer pushed an in-house substitute there. Something got added to move the mix through the machinery faster. Each compromise was small enough to wave through on its own. Together they had pulled the product away from the thing he set out to make.

So he canceled the order. He went back to the doctors, kept the core of what worked, and reformulated until it met the standard he started with. Then he found a manufacturer in Denver willing to build the product his way rather than the way that was cheapest or easiest for them.

He only caught the drift because he understood the formula well enough to see it slipping. This is where the generalist pays off. Hatton didn't come from a nutrition background, but he made sure he understood his product better than anyone. So when it started to wander, he was the one who noticed.

He didn't do it alone, and he's quick to say so. Colorado’s support system of food talent, outdoor and fitness industries, and entrepreneurial ecosystem played dramatic roles in VUUR’s development. Across the street, the Deming Center and other campus entrepreneurial initiatives offered resources he admits he underused as a student. He came back to them once he was building for real, including the Entrepreneurial Law Clinic through Silicon Flatirons, which helped him handle the parts of a company that have nothing to do with the product itself.

Now the product is made, the logistics are ironed out, and after almost three years, VUUR is days from being something a person can actually buy.

The Only Lane He Needed

Hatton is about to find out what happens when the thing you spent three years building finally meets the people you built it for.

Throughout his career, he's never had a single emphasis. He kept expanding his knowledge, and all of it led him to his own company, where he has to understand every part of the business himself.

With the launch of VUUR, Hatton will be at the center of one of the top entrepreneurial ecosystems in the country. He’s got the knowledge, he’s got the resources, and now it’s time to execute.

When asked about what success looks like, revenue is not his first thought.

"Success for me — even if it's a small niche of customers — is that teenagers go out looking for a product and find VUUR and say, ‘wait, this is actually designed for me.’"

That’s the same sentence he spent his younger years wishing he could say. By solving an old problem with everything he'd taught himself along the way, he’s created something with the hopes of helping others.

People pursue higher education to specialize, but Hatton spent his career proving you don't have to. He never needed a single lane.

He just needed to keep building.

Most people build a career by specializing. Luke Hatton did the opposite, moving from finance to outdoor apparel to nutrition, collecting knowledge instead of narrowing it. Now he's launching VUUR , a physician-formulated drink built for the active teenager he once was. His story is a case for the generalist mindset, and proof that the best ideas often come from a gap in your own life.

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Why Luca Caniato Believes You Should Start Before You're Ready

Colton Sontrop — Thu, 04 Jun 2026 11:30:00 +0000

Why Luca Caniato Believes You Should Start Before You're Ready Colton Sontrop Thu, 06/04/2026 - 05:30

Colton Sontrop

Luca Caniato grew up chasing trout. From rivers in Montana and Wyoming to the streams of Colorado, fly fishing became the lens through which he saw the world. It also became the lens through which he started building. Now a freshman at Leeds, with multiple startups and an internship at one of the world’s largest fishing companies under his belt, he’s not slowing down anytime soon.

Coming to CU was a deliberate choice. Boulder offered mountains, fly fishing, and a business school with the resources to match his curiosity. Caniato enrolled as a Leeds Scholar, pursuing a double emphasis in strategy and entrepreneurship as well as management information systems, with a philosophy minor in the works. He is involved in the Leeds Consulting Group and the AI Club, and finds time to fish whenever he can.

If there is a through line connecting all of it, he is not particularly concerned with naming it. The pattern speaks for itself.

Building Something Before He Had a Name for It

The label of being an entrepreneur came naturally, and not something Caniato initially set out to be. What came first was taking on something new and running with it. From there, it was finding ways to make it better.

His senior year of high school, a fishing buddy connected him with the founders of Fairfield Fishing Camp, who were looking for someone to help launch a new branch in Westport, Connecticut. Caniato said yes before he had a plan, tapping into the true nature of entrepreneurship. He started by recruiting two friends as counselors and spending the spring promoting on social media and putting up flyers around town. By the time summer showed up, he was ready to run a camp.

It was a huge success, with 75 campers signing up in the first week. Throughout the summer, it was constantly full, and now, the organization is expanding to two more locations. Caniato is still helping with marketing.

It was the kind of experience that teaches you more than you expect. He went in because he liked fishing. He came out with a working understanding of how to launch something from scratch. By just saying yes to an opportunity, he turned it into a career-defining mindset. Just like that, he had built an entire branch of a camp, without any starting direction

Reading the Room at a Billion-Dollar Company

When Caniato arrived at CU, his first concern was beyond internships, and how his business education would prepare him to work in a world shaped by AI. In the first week of school, he reached out to Jeremiah Contreras, a Leeds accounting professor who has been at the forefront of integrating AI into business education at CU. Soon after, he showed up at his office with questions.

That conversation and connection led to Pure Fishing, the largest fishing tackle company in the world and a Sycamore Partners portfolio company. Contreras had worked with them before, and when a second round of internships opened up, Caniato applied and got it.

His team was primarily student-led, and tasked with solving a real operational bottleneck using AI. He didn't know the impact he would make at the time, but he soon would.

"It was really cool to have the C-suite wanting to know more about what we were working on. I think every CEO knows they should be using AI, but very few of them know what that means for their company."

The reason, he believes, comes down to a gap that exists inside many large organizations. Executives know they need to be using AI. Very few of them know what that means in practice.

"There's a lot of value that college students can provide. I think we know more than we think we know, and companies are genuinely looking for people they can trust to come in and help."

What executives want, he found, is someone they can trust to actually implement something. That distinction mattered to him.

The Gap Between Knowing and Doing

Caniato brings that same observation to his work in the Leeds AI Club and his broader thinking about how businesses approach emerging technology. One of the larger problems he’s noticed is a hesitancy to explore.

"Jeremiah always tells students to just go play. And I love that, because I think with AI and all these new tools, you don't have to be working toward something big. Just go mess around."

His photography business reflects the same instinct. It started because he was going to beautiful places in pursuit of trout and wanted to bring a camera. It grew because he started doing random work and saying yes to things, like headshots and specific events. There was no grand plan.

The connective tissue across all of it is motion. Acting before the path is fully clear. Learning by doing rather than waiting to feel ready.

Stop Looking for the Idea

Caniato has spent his freshman year collecting experiences that most students take four years to accumulate. What ties them together, he thinks, is attention. Paying attention to where things break down. To where people are stuck.

"An entrepreneur is someone who can identify problems, connect with people and understand people, and then solve them. Stop looking for the idea and start looking for the problem."

He is quick to add that it's a team sport. Going at it alone, in his experience, means going down the wrong path. Talking to customers, getting diverse perspectives, building with others: those are the valuable insights.

At 18, Caniato is still figuring out which problem he wants to spend the most time on. He is genuinely comfortable with that uncertainty.

"There's no such thing as wasted time as long as you're doing something and you're somewhat intentional about it. All experience, especially in your 20s, is good experience."

The fishing will continue. So will the building.

For Luca Caniato, entrepreneurship has never been about waiting for the right moment. From co-founding a fishing camp branch in high school to bringing AI solutions to one of the world's largest fishing companies as an intern, he has built a track record by simply showing up and doing things. He's just completed his first year at CU, and he's just getting started.

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