We think we're so hot; Colorado likes to believe we're Silicon Valley II. Not according to the...

Colorado likes to believe we're Silicon Valley II. Not according to the national media.

In November 1993, USA Today proclaimed the Denver metro area the "capital of high-tech, interactive TV."

In August 1998, The New York Times dubbed Dallas "the hub of the telecommunications

In July 1994, Boulder and Denver were a hotbed of Internet activity, third in commercial domain name registrations behind the San Francisco Bay Area and Silicon Valley.

In November 1998, no Colorado city made Newsweek's list of hot high-tech cities.

We Coloradans think we're so hot, so high-tech. We like to believe we're Silicon Valley II. But a ColoradoBiz survey of national media shows that, to the rest of the high-tech world, we don't even rank as road-kill; at some point, it seems, Colorado slid off the radar screen.

Why?

There are several reasons:

* Few national business writers are based here. If you want to find high-tech business writers, the two places to look are New York (e.g., Dow Jones, Bloomberg) and San Francisco (The Red Herring, The Industry Standard, Wired).

The Wall Street Journal has mining reporter Bob Ortega here.

"I don't cover high-tech, so I don't think about it or worry about it," he said. "You have to understand how the journal works. Although we have bureaus all over the country, we also break down coverage by industry. For example, although TCI is based in Denver, cable is covered from New York."

But when Colorado can lure reporters here, even just for a visit, we have lots to show them.

"I thought of it as a very cool scene when I was out there," said Jake Ward, a reporter for The Industry Standard who wrote an article about Front Range telecom companies in August 1998. "I met a lot of smart folks. There's definitely no shortage of smart, savvy people out there."

Colorado's capital resources impressed Ward. "What I think will make Denver interesting is that Qwest, Level 3, US West all have really big plans that require an incredible amount of money to implement," he said. "That's where you have an advantage over Boston or Dallas, which have interesting concepts and a fair amount of venture capital, but not as much."

So did the state's leg up on the Internet.

"As far as the plumbing, the backbone of the Internet, you've got Verio, which is now the world's largest ISP, and Qwest, Level 3 and US West," Ward noted. "If the next step is to go to really high bandwidth, Denver has the necessary physical infrastructure, which puts it in position to be at ground zero."

But when reporters don't make it to Colorado, they never know what they're missing.

Janet Stites wrote The New York Times article cited above. She also is publisher of AlleyCat News, a newsletter focusing on venture capital in Manhattan's Silicon Alley.

Hearing that Denver considers itself among the telecom capitals of the country, maybe the capital, Stites said, "Really? I used to work for a telecommunications magazine, and I never went to Denver."

Nor does Colorado receive a steady stream of venture capital coverage. In fourth quarter 1998 alone, four high-tech categories accounted for $112.8 million of the $126.8 million in Colorado venture capital investments, according to PricewaterhouseCoopers' "Money Tree Survey." Communications drew $39.1 million; Healthcare, $35.9 million; Software & Information, $30.5 million; and Biotechnology, $7.4 million. But not everyone is impressed.

Red Herring reporter Alex Gove, who wrote a story on Colorado high-tech start-ups in 1997, noted that, "Silicon Valley VCs have formed very strong partnerships with Colorado-based venture capitalists, and there are a couple of venture firms that are real standouts: The Centennial Funds and Telecom Partners are major forces in VC telecom investment. Still, Colorado is not Silicon Valley and never will be. Venture capitalists here have more deals than they can handle. Even though flying to Denver is easy, it's an all-day affair."

Asked to speculate on Colorado's national financial media coverage or lack of it, Gove said, "Perhaps Colorado's expectations were too high."

* Poor geographical definition. To the outsider looking in, Colorado doesn't seem to be a high-tech "community." Colorado's high-tech companies are not collected in one central location; the state doesn't have easily identified gathering spots where deals are done over breakfast; and we don't have a catchy name.

Stites mused over the concept that Denver might be high-tech, saying: "You always think of Englewood, which I think of as separate from Denver. When you talk to Verio, they say they are based in Englewood. I didn't get the sense they were affiliated with Denver. They don't seem to say Denver. I don't know if it's even intentional. I used to live in Scottsdale and we never said Phoenix. It wasn't conscious."

Similarly Steven Levy, the senior editor at Newsweek who wrote the article on hot high-tech cities, noted, "There's stuff going on all over all Colorado now, which decentralizes it and spreads it out. Silicon Valley is moderately spread out, too, but there are landmarks, places to see and be seen."

* Economic diversity. According to David Solin, director of Colorado's Office of Economic Development, "We're the third most diversified economy in the country, according to the Federal Reserve Bank, behind California and Illinois."

This is good, of course, and will go a long way toward ending the state's history of boom and bust cycles. But, as Solin points out, "When you think of Colorado's dominant industry, it's really hard to come up with one which is head and shoulders above the others," the primary reason no Colorado cities made it on Newsweek's list of hot high-tech cities.

According to Levy, "We didn't just look at whether there is a lot of activity within an area, but is it at a point where you first think of that area as high tech? Is high tech a really significant part of what that region is known for or is getting to be known for? Colorado has a significant number of other stuff going on, such as the tourism industry. I'm sure you have more companies in your area than, say, Boise [which made the list], but in Boise it is a significant part of their economy now."

Maybe Colorado has taken the point. Gov. Bill Owens has designated a cabinet-level office to promote the state's high-tech sector. Said Marc Holtzman, director of Colorado's Office of Innovation & Technology and Colorado's International Trade Office, "Colorado's economy is the stealth fighter of America's economy. It's high-tech industries have emerged so quickly, the media's radar has not yet picked up on the opportunities (and) power of capabilities of Colorado's high-tech economy."