This Week in Startups episode #47 featured Niel Robertson, who is the Founder and CEO of Boulder based Trada.  Props to @Jason and the crew for a nice website redesign.

Trada, which launched a couple of weeks ago, has developed the 1st PPC (Pay Per Click) marketplace for agencies, advertisers and PPC experts.  According to the Trada website advertisers create a new paid search campaign, PPC Experts within the Trada marketplace join the campaign, ads begin running on the Google, Yahoo and Bing ad netwroks, click and conversions are generated, and PPC Experts earn money.

Trada recently received $2.2M in Series A funding.

During the interview the conversation turns to the Boulder / Denver tech scene at roughly the 53:00 mark.  There is specific dialog about the benefits of being in a 2nd tier startup city.  You can advance the playhead on the video player above to skip to that point or any point in the video. 

Silicon-Flatirons hosted the annual Mile High Tech Entrepreneurship Conference which focused on "The Role of Place: Entrepreneurial Immigration, Iteration and Innovation.  More details about the conference can be found here - http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/events.php?id=790

The first panel discussion was on the topic of Entrepreneurial Immigration Policy.  The panel was moderated by Clare Huntington and included Brad Feld, Lance Nagel, and Vivek Wadhwa.

click here to download the mp3

After a 15-minute break the Entrepreneurial Impact Award was given to Julie Penner, a Student at the Leeds School of Business School of Law University of Colorado.  The second half included two panels.  The first was moderated by Brad Bernthal and discussed Place and Iteration: Lessons From Storage.  The panel included Jesse Aweida, Kyle Lefkoff, James Linfield, and John Spiers,  The final panel discussed Innovation and The Architecture of Geography.  John Barbour moderated this panel which included Meredith Banasiak, Sharon Matusik, Bill Mooz and Joe Zell.

click here to download the mp3

There was  multi-camera video being streamed within the campus building, and we were told that it will be available as an archive.  We will update this post if video surfaces.

Tyler Tysdal, Managing Director of Mantucket Capital, joined Brad Feld and Brad Bernthal at CU's Atlas building for Entrepreneurs Unplugged, an ongoing Silicon-Flatirons event.  Tyler talked about his past experiences which started with investment banking firm Alex. Brown & Sons.  The storytelling gets very interesting when Tyler explains how he learned the process of due diligence from his business partners who embezzled several million dollars and committed bank fraud.  This lead to Tyler's 100% entrepreneur stage i.e. wear all the hats - do everything, where he started five health care companies, Sports Shares, a fractional luxury suite club, various real estate investments and other "alternative investing".

We had some technical difficulties with our recording and only managed to get the first half off the event, which is unfortunate since there was much more great information flowing from both Tyler and Brad Feld.  We felt it was worth posting the roughly 30-minutes of audio that did turn out.

Click here to download the mp3

The presenting companies for the 2010 Winter Venture Capital in the Rockies conference were split into two tracks - one featuring Clean Tech companies and the other featuring Technology companies.  Due to some technical difficulties we were unable to come away from the conference with suitable video, but we did make sure to record audio for most of the presentations.  You can listen to the presentations on this page or download the mp3 for listening on your portable device or computer.

BioVantage Resources, Inc. - Sue Kunz, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

PureEnergy Solutions, Inc. - Dennis Grant, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Alces Technology, Inc. - David Bloom, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Zettasun - Paul Berberian, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

CradlePoint, Inc. - Chris Bounds, CFO

Click here to download the mp3

Eco-Products, Inc. - Bob King, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Mangia Technologies - Hal Widlansky, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

VanDyne SuperTurbo, Inc. - Ed VanDyne, Founder & CEO

Click here to download the mp3

TruEffect, Inc. - Ron Hill, Co-Founder & CEO

Click here to download the mp3

TopSchool, Inc. - Matthew Schnittman, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Clementine Art, Inc. - John F. Maggio, CEO & President

Click here to download the mp3

Green Garage - Ryan Ferrero, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

DiCom grid - Mike Wall, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Cool Energy, Inc. - Sam Weaver, CEO

Click here to download the mp3

Seth Levine, Foundry Group and VCIR Winter Co-Chair, introduces the Technology Showcase and Jason Kintzler presents PitchEngine. PitchEngine is a next generation PR platform that enables companies to create and distribute social PR content to better collaborate with media, consumers and other influencers.

Here is the audio

Click here to download the mp3

Venture Capital in the Rockies Winter 2010 Conference Keynote Speaker

Dan Caruso is the Co-Founder, President and CEO of Zayo Group and has 22 years of experience in the telecommunications and Internet industries.  In his keynote, Dan talks about one hit wonders, entrepreneurs gone bad and the special breed of great serial entrepreneurs.

Here is the full audio Click here to download the mp3

Crash Course: How to Build a Company - Jason Mendelson at the Wolf Law Building, CU Campus, Boulder Colorado - Wednesday, January 13, 2010.  This talk was a Silicon Flatirons event - www.silicon-flatirons.org  More about the event here - http://www.silicon-flatirons.org/events.php?id=787

Here is the video playlist of Jason's presentation:

http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=F8C6CD03A87D0D09

Here is the audio:

click here to download the mp3