Good news—your business works. You’ve found the right customers, established your concept, and learned a lot since those scrappy days when your business was little more than an idea. Now, you’re ready to ramp things up.
West Slope Startup Week is for founders at every stage of business, including those who have entered the growth stage. The schedule is packed with sessions for founders ready for more customers and more revenue, and possibly more employees and more complexity. If this sounds like you, we’ve pulled together some sessions to help you scale smarter and faster.
Your Session Toolkit
Growing a business has a funny way of creating more questions, not fewer. How do you reach more customers? Is it time to seek outside funding? What systems are needed before hiring? And…how do you do all of that without driving yourself into the ground?!
West Slope Startup Week has got you covered! Here are some recommendations for founders ready to grow:
Climate
- How you can access Colorado Circular Communities, learn how the C3 program can help your growing business reduce waste, build circularity into your operations, and access funding to make it happen. You’ll also connect with other Colorado businesses exploring ways to create new value from materials that might otherwise go to waste.
- Can Your Business Drive Climate Action?, explore how founders, local governments, and community leaders can work together to build climate resilience and more sustainable communities.
Comms
- Winning Visibility in the Age of AI Search, discover the shift from SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to GEO (Generative Engine Optimization) and what it means for your business. Learn how AI systems find and recommend businesses, why brand authority and trust matter more than ever, and what you can do today to get cited and recommended in AI-generated answers.
- Does Your Brand Reek of Machine Breath?, a practical guide to using AI throughout your brand-building workflow without letting it run the show or compromising customer trust.
- Advertising to Gen Z, what actually works when advertising to Gen Z, including why AI-generated marketing tends to backfire with this audience and what to do instead. You’ll leave with a new lens for creating content that engages younger customers and scripts you can put to use immediately.
Creatives
- Product Photography: Creating Images that Sell, learn how to create high-quality product photos using simple lighting, composition, and styling techniques that build customer trust and help your products stand out.
- Protecting Creative Work in the AI Era, discuss what artists and makers actually own, what happens when creative work is copied, and how AI is changing the landscape. Learn your options for protecting your work, responding to infringement, and deciding when enforcement is worth the time and cost.
Money
- The Colorado Funding You Don’t Know About, a look at Colorado-specific funding opportunities that could make a meaningful difference for your business, how to find the ones that fit, and what it takes to apply. If you’re not ready to apply just yet, you’ll also learn about technical resources that can help you get there.
- Keep More of the Money You Make, how to make sure your business is actually paying you. Learn how to apply the pay-yourself-first principle to your business and keep more of the revenue you work so hard to earn.
- Keep It Local: The Employee Ownership Option, explore employee ownership as a path for succession or exit that keeps businesses rooted in their communities. Learn about cooperatives, Employee Stock Ownership Plans, profit sharing, and other models that give employees a stake in the future.
People
- The ROI of Investing in Your People, explores what happens when founders invest in leadership development for their teams and themselves. You’ll hear examples, review data on return on investment, and leave with practical ideas for strengthening your team and preparing for growth.
- How Founders Stay Centered Under Pressure, an experiential workshop on mindfulness for founders that tackles stress and time management during the startup grind and gives you hands-on experience with techniques you can use immediately.
- Community Over Competition: Growing Together in a Small Town, a panel discussion exploring how cross-promotion, shared resources, partnerships, and community-first decision making can help businesses grow while strengthening the local economy around them.
Tech
- Why Organizations Struggle to Operationalize Innovation in the Age of AI, a conversation about bringing AI into every facet of business, including implementation risk, operational fit, workforce adoption, infrastructure readiness, and long-term sustainability.
- Protect Your Investment: IT Security in the age of AI, a straightforward, no-jargon session covering what you need to know to protect your business, your data, and your customers in an era when AI is making threats more sophisticated and more frequent.
Toolbox
- Build the System Before the Business Breaks, a hands-on session for entrepreneurs and growing companies ready to build the systems, workflows, and operational structure they need before growth turns into chaos. Because the system that worked when you had five customers might not work when you have 500.
- Before You Hit the Wall: Tools to Beat Burnout and Stay Sharp, backed by clinical science and field-tested experience, this interactive workshop gives WSSW founders practical ways to manage stress, reclaim focus, and protect their energy.
This list barely scratches the surface of sessions that can support your next stage of business growth. Let it be your starting point for building your most impactful week in Durango.
Explore the full October schedule here. If you’re registered, login to Whova to map out your week (or, register for free today!). And, leave a little room for something unexpected. The session that may not seem directly related to your business could be the one that brings you to your next milestone.
Download the WSSW app to get organized before the event even begins. You can find it for Android and Apple here.
