The idea to turn Queenstown into a mountain tech town might seem ambitious — because it is — but it’s not without parallel or precedent. In the US, two mountain communities — Boulder, Colorado and Bend, Oregon — are forging successful paths, each in their own way but with some common characteristics.

Boulder, Colorado

Boulder, with a population of 108,000, saw 20% growth in high tech jobs between 2015 and 2020, with the tech sector now accounting for a quarter of all employment, according to The Center Square. And those jobs are paying well — with the average salary exceeding US$145,000. 

Boulder has a long history in engineering and applied research, so it wasn’t a greenfields site. However, the father of the modern start-up ecosystem in Boulder was undoubtedly venture capitalist Brad Feld, founder of venture capital firm Foundry and co-founder of one of the world’s largest (and perhaps the most famous) tech accelerators, TechStars. Brad is a legendary figure whose best-selling books Start-up Communities and the Start-up Community Way are must-reads if you’re into this stuff.

Brad’s partner in Foundry, Ryan McIntyre, is an Edmond Hillary Fellow, which means he has close links to New Zealand (and even hung out there during the pandemic). Ryan was massively helpful on a recent trip to Boulder to get to understand the ecosystem.

These days Boulder is home to many successful software companies — some of which are local heroes, and some of which came to town to join the party. Take Google, whose growth to ~2,000 FTEs in Boulder was led by Scott Green. His experience parallels the rise of Boulder as a tech hub. He first moved from Iowa in 1998 to join Email Publishing — a start-up later acquired by DoubleClick. In 2003 he joined SketchUp, which butted heads against Autodesk and used web-based sales to disrupt its market. SketchUp teamed up with Keyhole, which in 2001 had launched Earth Viewer, and in 2004 Google bought Keyhole to launch Google Earth. Then in 2006 Google acquired SketchUp.

Colorado companies were critical to the success of Google Earth. In turn, Microsoft acquired Boulder-based Vexcel to advance its mapping efforts, making Vexcel its local office.

Under Scott’s leadership in Boulder, Google developed and supported products locally, including Drive, Play, Pay, Cloud, Search, G Suite, YouTube, Chrome, Assistant, and more. In 2017 Google opened its campus in Pearl Place. Other companies such as Salesforce, Amazon, Agilent, Apple and Cisco are active in the area.  

Scott identifies several core enablers of Boulder’s success: a local tech cluster, access to talent (and the kind of quality of life that attracts and retains talent), and a community culture of collaboration.

Bend, Oregon

Bend, with its closer proximity to Silicon Valley, is also doing well. Tech employment there surged by 65 percent between 2015 and 2020, making it the fastest-growing high-tech community in the US, according to The Center Square.

Situated a ten hour drive from the Valley (or a 70-minute commuter flight) the mountain community offers a respite from the traffic snarls, extravagant rents and the often-serious work-life imbalance for Valley residents. Where a one-bedroom flat in San Francisco will set you back US$3400 per month, the outlay in Bend is a parsimonious $1100 by comparison.

These days Bend has a diversified economy, full employment, fast population growth, good schooling, medical resources, and a university — but it wasn’t always like this. The community fell into hard times in the ’80s when lumber turned down, with unemployment hitting 20 percent. It diversified into tourism, which worked well until the GFC forced another rethink.

Venture capitalist Dino Vendetti wrote the playbook on building Bend into a tech hub. When he moved there from Silicon Valley in 2012, Dino launched Seven Peaks Ventures, and catalysed the establishment of Oregon State University’s Cascades campus in Bend. Like Ryan McIntyre in Boulder, Dino is an Edmond Hilary fellow, and has close links to New Zealand. He is an informed supporter of our plan to transform Queenstown’s economy. 

Meanwhile, Dan Hobin moved to Bend for its quality of life, and founded software outfit G5 in 2004. Importantly, his success demonstrated to other entrepreneurs that you could build and exit a scalable tech business from Bend. He was also the catalyst behind the Bend Venture Conference, which helped put Bend on the technology map. 

The Conference plays a vital role in pulling people together, providing entrepreneurs with pitching opportunities, mentoring and funding. There’s so much curation and filtering before the event that only quality prospects get to the final pitch.

Hobin also has a clear-headed view of the cost of success on a community like Bend. His view is that mountain towns risk losing their lustre as people swarm in, but don’t join the community. And therein lies the challenge.

Remote workers, for instance, are often not as well-connected locally, which isn’t great for the community. They tend to keep proven business connections in other cities, making it hard to build up the local skill base, he says. Further, post-COVID, many locals now work for Bay Area companies at higher salaries — which has affected local tech wages by around 30 per cent. And while they haven’t yet hit San Francisco levels, real estate prices have risen rapidly.

The Catch

Be careful what you wish for. People moved to Bend for quality of life, not to live in a large city. It’s a tough balance to maintain — the entrepreneurs looking to replicate Bend’s success in places like Queenstown should be constantly thinking about enhancing the region, not exploiting it.