“We really like the innovation that happens when some goofball from Nederland talks to a restaurateur that talks to a coder that talks to a politico, and then you put an idea or concept in the middle, and you can get a fresh aggregate of opinion on what you could do to build that concept,” says CU alumnus Ryan Ferrero. Photo: iStockphoto.
Ryan Ferrero is a rarity in Boulder; he’s a native. Having established his entrepreneurial prowess in several bold business endeavors, Ferrero now leads a group that incubates promising businesses.
Boulder, he says, is the perfect place for this. He calls it a hub of innovation.
Ferrero’s family ran a car dealership, which he describes as a “scrappy,” customer-centric business integrated with community organizations like the Rotary Club and Chamber of Commerce.
The family was also aligned with the University of Colorado Boulder. His parents, brother and wife all went to CU-Boulder. He is a 1992 graduate whose distributed-studies major was psycho-social-economic behavior.
“As I grew up, I realized I loved the entrepreneurial spirit of the car-dealership world. You could make decisions in the morning and get instant feedback and see how they affect your staff, your clients and your bottom line very quickly.”
Though he was successful, “I realized that I was just not a car dealer.”
After graduating from CU-Boulder, he began buying and selling car franchises and dealerships. In 2007, his Chrysler dealership became the number-one volume store in Colorado.
But he got the sense that the market, particularly for Chrysler, Jeep and Dodge, was shaky. He got out of the car-selling game and launched a new endeavor.
Casting an eye on the car-maintenance and repair field, Ferrero said, “What if we started fresh and created a new brand?”
His idea was “a Whole Foods meets Meineke,” the car-care company. Soon, he had investors, and they launched Green Garage, described as “disrupting the car-care market through cost-reducing sustainable technologies.”
Crispin Porter + Bogusky invited Ferrero to become its “entrepreneur in residence,” where he began studying early stage companies. “I started saying ‘yes’ to other entrepreneurs to see how I could help them.”
He became convinced that Boulder was “maturing”—progressing from “the days of Mork and Mindy,” rapid growth and the tech boom.
“We’re in version 3.0 right now of entrepreneurship. I was intrigued by five different efforts to systemize startups.” They were business accelerators, incubators, co-working spaces, foundations and institutes.
He was not fully enamored of any one approach to helping young businesses grow. But he viewed elements of each as effective.
From this effort was born the Ignyte Lab, a “sector-agnostic management company.” Ferrero is CEO and executive chairman.
“We really like the innovation that happens when some goofball from Nederland talks to a restaurateur that talks to a coder that talks to a politico, and then you put an idea or concept in the middle, and you can get a fresh aggregate of opinion on what you could do to build that concept.”
Ignyte Lab likes to work with “seasoned entrepreneurs,” those who have some gray hair, “the scar tissue that comes from having successes and failures,” but with “plenty of fuel in the tank to do it again.”
Ignyte Lab is “sector-agnostic,” it gravitates toward “in-revenue or near-revenue companies.”
Also, Ignyte works with “fun people, cool people that are nutritious to be around, that you can laugh and joke with, that take business very, very seriously but don’t take themselves too seriously.”
With Ferrero, the Ignyte team comprises Andrew Eiss, founding partner and chief corporate development officer; Tate Behning, founding partner and VP of ops; and Lawrence Hunton, founding partner and operations director.
When Ignyte takes on a client, it often takes over the operational governance of the company. “Talk about vested interest,” Ferrero says.
On an interim basis, Ignyte navigates market strategies, financing, brand positioning and brand messaging. “With those companies that may be lacking some of many of these components, we find there’s a real appetite for this.”
More than 100 companies have approached Ignyte this year. Four have been selected.
A couple years ago, a student from CU-Boulder wanted to work with Ignyte. He was a foreign student afraid he was not ready for the business world. He wanted a mentor.
Ferrero agreed, a calculated risk that paid off. That internship drew more student interest and fueled Boulder Creatives, the student group that Ferrero mentors each Tuesday night, featuring cross-campus entrepreneurship with an emphasis on marketing:
He suggests that the university embrace and leverage the fact that “Boulder is a hotbed of entrepreneurialism.”
“A lot of the students choose CU because they know what the Boulder community represents,” Ferrero says. The university’s faculty are also becoming more entrepreneurial, he says, citing the new business minor, available to any student at the university.
“I just think there’s more and more of that which faculty, deans and students are looking for, and I know the startups around here are looking to build those bridges more and more,” he adds.
Boulder, he says, is becoming a “world power in innovation.” That makes sense, given the university’s long, synergistic history with the likes of IBM, Ball Aerospace, tech satellite offices and biotech spinoffs.
The marketing and advertising industry has responded. Crispin Porter + Bogusky has 400 jobs and its headquarters in Boulder
CP+B employs about 1,000 people worldwide with offices in London, Miami, Sweden, South America, Los Angeles and Hong Kong. The agency moved its headquarters from Miami to Boulder in 2006. This spawned multiple new ad agencies around Boulder, now totaling 19.
It doesn’t hurt that Boulder is a great place to live.
Founding partner Eiss mirrors Ferrero’s enthusiasm: “I like working with three- and four-year old companies that then become high-school graduates and then go off to college.” Then it’s time to let the companies succeed on their own, Eiss suggests.
“The Ignyte model is perfect for that. … These aren’t ideas that are just sparkling in somebody’s eyes. These are actually businesses that have been started, that have momentum, that often have revenue and are poised to move forward but maybe missing a key component or two that Ignyte can plug into.”
Founding partner Behning, who earned his MBA from CU-Boulder in 2011, emphasized that Ignyte has not reinvented the business-accelerator wheel, but rather strives to make it more efficient.
“You look at the full gamut of the support network for startups and early stage businesses, and we saw both a market opportunity that wasn’t being met and a collection of combined strengths that could meet that opportunity in this area.”
For more information about Ignyte, click.
Clint Talbottis director of communications and external relations manager for the College of Arts and Sciences and editor of theCollege of Arts and Sciences Magazine.
Related Articles
Student broadens insight into piñon-juniper lands
Sleep deficits linked to chronic cannabis use
