I was born in Mountain View - my dad was an engineer in the semiconductor biz starting in the late 60s. I've been coding since 5th grade, and after bailing out on college I worked at a couple of valley startups in the mid to late 90s (one of which changed the world) and then I jumped to Denver, CO.

Back then, Denver was just around 400K people and had a very laid back vibe. Its downtown was underwhelming, mostly parking lots and old skyscrapers - the Rockies park and the Pepsi Center were new with some sports bars around them. The food scene was a minefield - you really had to seek out decent places. Some of my worst meals were at places in Denver back then (the Mexican food was a huge letdown compared to CA). The Denver software scene was a lot of corporate IT work, DoD stuff to do south (multiple military/defense sites and there are huge downlinks in the area), and a tiny dose of startups. Housing was relatively cheap in the city center neighborhoods, which Californians were swooping in and buying much to the surprise of the natives ("Really? That area used to be full of drug dealers and rotting old houses!"). There was a ton of new housing being built out on the prairie. Now Denver feels pretty different - faster paced, a lot more people around, and awareness of things outside Colorado. To me, Denver's downtown and city center neighborhoods are shockingly different. The city developed a huge area behind its downtown train depot into a brand new neighborhood with tall buildings. And I think they've tying that into the downtown and surrounding neighborhoods pretty well. Close in neighborhoods like Highlands, Baker, Five Points, Ballpark, River North, etc. are all very hip and relatively expensive. The food, music, and art scene has gotten way better. A buddy of mine in the new home construction biz says most of the housing demand is in the closer in developed areas, that brand new housing developments way out on the metro area limits has ok demand but not crushing. Homes in my neighborhood sell before hitting the MLS with multiple offers that usually go over asking...

My first Denver gig was a valley backed startup with the eng group in Denver and the marketing/biz dev/sales in Mountain View. It was an amazing team and we grew to a decent valuation, but didn't exit in time for the dot com crash. After the dot com crash, the tech scene in Denver was bleak. A lot of folks left town, left software, or jumped onto DoD stuff. There just wasn't much VC money or many established local software companies. I bounced around at a few places that kept going under and managed to hook on to a small software company in downtown. By 2005-ish things had picked up in the Denver tech scene - money was coming in, startups were growing and exiting pretty well. At one point I was at a startup that was just about to go public, S-1 filed and did the roadshow, but Lehman Brothers bit the big one and the US economy tanked. However, by that point, the Denver tech scene was strong enough that even with the economy in the toilet, finding good/fun/well paying software jobs was easy. And finding, much less hiring, good engineers was pretty tough.

Then Colorado made weed legal and holy shit did this place blow up. The number of people moving here is crazy. The amount of construction in the downtown area is nuts - cranes all over the place. Since I've been here, the Denver area has always been one of the fastest growing in the country and with lots of people moving in, so lots of things change quickly.

The current Denver tech scene seems pretty strong to me. There are a ton of fun/cool startups all over the place. The city has bet big on software - encouraging tech with partnerships, working to provide workspaces/housing, parks, public transportation, etc. There are lots of meet ups and I think a strong sense of a Denver tech community . Denver definitely has a competitive thing going on with Boulder (about 45 minutes from Denver) - Boulder has the marquee university and highly visible R&D centers for big names like Google, Twitter, etc. Denver is desperate for a big name like that and every once in a while a rumor flies around that a big name is going to start an eng facility in Denver. Last year it was Facebook looking at property in RiNo, now it's Apple looking along the 16th Street Mall. Boulder picked up a big name for itself in the startup world because of Tech Stars and Brad Feld, which Denver doesn't seem to have just yet. Personally, I prefer Denver over Boulder because Denver is a big old messy, ugly city with lots of crazy stuff that's good and bad, along with scars from its boom and bust history (some of the architecture and city planning from the 'bust' periods are painful) - but it has all that and is trying to work it to make things better. Boulder is stunningly beautiful and has quick access to unreal outdoor space, but to me feels too uniform of thought - too small and claustrophobic (I lived in Santa Cruz for a bit and hated it - pretty, but everyone's the same).

So, Denver's tech scene is great but it's nothing compared to the SF Bay Area. Folks don't move here to change the world or make millions - people are generally here to put in the time at their job and enjoy life. I had a buddy who pitched a16z, who laughed him out of the room because "they wouldn't fund those lazy ski bums in Denver - move to Palo Alto and we'll talk." It's kind of a true stereotype - I interviewed at a small Denver software company a few years ago whose CEO told me "Priorities here are: health, family, and then the job." It's generally very family friendly, employers are cool about schedule changes for kids stuff or taking care of sick kids, etc. Wintertime has a lot last minute "Ski Day" emails come in. But after growing up in the SF Bay Area, I didn't want to raise kids there (where $ wins over family), so we moved to Denver to start a family and it's been awesome - I wouldn't change a thing.