A new era of CU Boulder’s entrepreneurial community is here. Experienced startup founder and mentor Julie Penner is the new Director of theInnovation & Entrepreneurship Initiativeat CU Boulder. With her rich background, she’s more than ready to lead an initiative that connects campus to one of the country’s most vibrant startup cities.
“While I was still a student, I was making connections to the community. And then I went out into the community and I worked for 16 years, and now I’m back on campus. But I bring all those network community connections with me.”
It starts with a simple flip. Instead of asking “why”, Penner asks, “why not?”. She learned that lesson building her first startup as an undergrad, and saw it againduring her five-year tenure coaching founders at Techstars.
Now, she’s looking to spread the mindset to the entire CU Boulder community, including the students who would never call themselves entrepreneurs, at least for now.
Building Bridges
Penner’s new position represents a full-circle moment for her, closing a loop that started nearly 20 years ago. She came to Boulder for graduate school, earning her JD and MBA here, making an outward effort to connect herself to everyone at CU and beyond. This eventually led to a career in Boulder’s startup scene, including five years coaching and mentoring early-stage founders at Techstars.
Now, she wants to connect that network back to students. Rather than adding more programs to an already saturated list, she wants to build bridges to existing programs, helping students find the right resource at the right time.
“The idea is to amplify and stitch together everything that’s already happening rather than creating a lot of new things.”
That means building bridges between programs that have long been running side by side. The Entrepreneurship Law Clinic, for example, is now holding office hours at the Leeds School of Business. In collaboration with the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship, Penner also plans to leverage the Innovation Workshop Series, a free event open to anyone, to enhance programming for the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Initiative’s New Venture Challenge (NVC).
“Instead of doing a whole bunch of NVC events and a whole bunch of innovation workshop events, we’re going to, as much as possible, overlap the two, so that we’restrengthening existing programs and adding even more value.”
Her bridges extend beyond the edge of campus. Penner co-organizes Boulder’s New Tech Meetup, which meets most months on the second Thursday, along with the Women’s Venture Challenge. To her, events like these are where students can get noticed, just like she did.
Strong Ideas, Loosely Held
Penner’s why not mindset originated from her first startup, when as an undergrad, she and a group of classmates entered a business plan competition with an idea for a consumer sleep tracking device.
The idea would become Zeo. It was ahead of its time, coming before the iPhone and years before anyone wore or even knew what a Fitbit or an Oura Ring was.
“We were not scared of doing something that sounded hard or that we hadn’t seen before. Instead of asking why, asking why not and flipping that default can be very helpful.”
Penner sees that same fearlessness in students today. They haven’t run into a business problem firsthand yet, so they aren’t afraid of it.
Zeo also taught her the other side of that lesson. Early on, mentors asked the team whether the device had to be a headband. Could it go on the wrist instead? The team said no. Sleep labs put electrodes on your head, so that’s where the best data came from.
“What tripped us up really in the end was our belief that it had the best data was the most important thing to the product. And that’s not true.”
Looking back, Penner calls it a case for “strong ideas loosely held.” The team questioned why hardware had to be hard, but never questioned its own assumptions.
The experience stuck with everyone involved. Every founder from that team went on to build a career in entrepreneurship, including the current Vice President of Product at MagicSchool.
Just Show Up
So where should a student with an idea actually start? Penner admits the answer isn’t obvious. Although CU has a plethora of programs, it can sometimes be unclear where to be directed, as advice can depend on whose office they walk into.
Her fail-safe is simple. Any student can email innovate@colorado.edu, and her team will plug them in.
From there, she points toGet Seed Funding. Students pitch an idea to their peers for a $500 grant, and all they need is the idea and a plan for the money.
“Even if they don’t get the funding, they will receive feedback on good next steps to take. So I think it’s helpful to anyone, no matter where they are in their entrepreneurial journey.”
For students ready to test their idea,Starting Blocks Customer Discovery Workshopoffers free training in the commercialization process. It’s three hours a week for three weeks, runs several times a year and is open to anyone on campus.
However, her biggest piece of advice reaches beyond campus. When Penner interviewed at Techstars, she told them she already knew a third of their mentors, previously connecting with them at events she went to as a student.
“If you are a student and you show up… there are so few students who do it, you will be noticed. The ones that show up are also the ones that are most motivated. And so those students are the ones that get hired.”
More than a Buzzword
If there’s one idea that keeps Penner up at night, it’s the idea that the word “entrepreneurship” or phrase “being an entrepreneur” gets a bad rap. Not everyone who’s an entrepreneur is strictly focused on profits and personal gain, and not everyone who’s an entrepreneur necessarily even starts a business.
She points to people like CU football player DeAndre Moore, who turned his NIL money into a turkey food truck called Jive Turkey. She also points to a CU senior whose dream is to run his own regenerative farm.
“When you can control your own destiny, when you get to call all the shots, when you decide on how to make your dreams into a reality, you are an entrepreneur.”
That path is open to anyone. They can start a nonprofit, or open an art gallery. It might even mean doing it with less, now that new tools can take on the parts of building a business that once felt intimidating.
For students still on the fence, Penner’s advice comes back to that simple flip.
Instead of asking “why”, ask “why not?”
