The Bear Roars

Loud Bear Productions

The Bear Roars is hosted by three-time decacorn entrepreneur and venture investor Dan Caruso. Colorado Innovators, the Bandwidth revolution (associated with Dan's book), and DeepTech are areas of focus. The purpose is to celebrate innovators, inspire listeners, and spark conversations within the innovation community.

  1. 2h ago

    Colorado's Graduated Income Tax and Housing Crisis | Jarvis Caldwell

    Jarvis Caldwell is the House Minority Leader in the Colorado House of Representatives, and he got there in his first term. He grew up in a trailer, went into the medical field the day after high school, then joined the Air Force and kept fighter jets flying out of Bagram. In 2010, in a bunker during a rocket attack, two airmen next to him argued over whether it was the Taliban or Al-Qaeda firing at them. Jarvis realized he didn't know the answer, and decided he had better start paying attention. Dan opens with a confession: lots of people assume he's a Republican. He isn't. From there, the two find more common ground than either party's loudest voices would predict. Jarvis's case against the graduated income tax runs through Deion Sanders: a top recruit choosing between Texas, with no state income tax, and a higher bracket in Colorado has an easy decision. Dan's addition is that pro sports has a salary cap and business doesn't, so every great founder can go play for Texas. Site selectors, Jarvis says, find Colorado the easy sell. It's the policy and the rhetoric that scare them off. They agree housing is a supply problem, and that faster permitting isn't a Republican idea or a Democrat idea. They don't agree on everything. When Jarvis describes the view he grew up with, that government mostly shows up with its hand out, Dan makes the case for safety nets. Plus, why young voters are drawn to democratic socialism, how to get college students into a real conversation, and how a freshman legislator who says he isn't overly ambitious ended up leading his caucus. Learn more about Representative Caldwell and his work in the Colorado House: https://leg.colorado.gov/legislators/jarvis-caldwell Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  2. 6d ago

    Rural Venture Capital in Colorado — with Cory Finney

    Cory Finney is Managing Partner of Howdy Partners, the rural Colorado venture fund formerly known as Greater Colorado Venture Fund. He and Dan are both investors in Agile Space Industries, which builds spacecraft thrusters in Durango. When Agile went looking for a home for its new rocket engine test center, Oklahoma competed hard for it, and won. Cory's answer to the question he gets asked most, why rural, starts with a map: the places venture capital flows line up almost exactly with the places that produce half the country's GDP. By his math, Agile's roughly 140 employees mean as much to La Plata County as a 2,500-person company would mean to Denver. Dan's argument is that Colorado can't take advantages like that for granted while other states work hard to take them. The conversation covers what rural Colorado is building right now, from autonomous tractors made in La Junta and Florence to farmers in Sterling who pitched Cory on how they use AI day to day. Plus, also in this one: Dan's case that Colorado's housing problem is supply, not land, and when Agile becomes a unicorn. Learn more about Howdy Partners and the rural Colorado founders it backs: https://www.howdy.vc Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  3. Sep 25

    David Linde: Why Sundance Film Festival Left Park City for Boulder

    Recorded live in front of an audience at Tulagi Music Festival, Dan sits down with David Linde, the CEO of the Sundance Institute, in one of the first interviews he's given since taking the job. His own first Sundance was 1992, when a call sent him racing to a small Park City theater to watch Reservoir Dogs premiere from the front row, with Quentin Tarantino standing up afterward to talk about it. Now he's bringing that festival to Colorado, and he quotes its director, Eugene Hernandez, on what the move actually is: they aren't relocating Sundance, they're growing it. Eleven screening venues, three of them on the CU Boulder campus, and Macky Auditorium alone getting 245 speakers in its ceiling. The governor told him it wouldn't be his Egyptian, it would be his Carnegie Hall. What he's most interested in isn't the eleven days. A conversation about what Sundance could do for Colorado turned into a conversation about jobs for the 6,000 CU graduates every year, and it's now a workforce panel he wants running in Boulder all year. Plus, two questions from the live podcast audience; how 16,000 submissions become 150 films, and what happens to the artists who can no longer afford to live here in Boulder. Learn more about the Sundance Institute and the 2027 Festival in Boulder: https://www.sundance.org Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  4. Sep 15

    Trey Foskett on Genomics, Gene Editing, and Boulder's Life Sciences Comeback

    Trey Foskett is the co-founder and CEO of Watchmaker Genomics in Boulder. Sequencing the first human genome took ten years and $3 billion. Twenty-five years later, that cost has fallen roughly 100,000-fold: a drop that outpaced Moore's Law, and one most people outside the field never noticed. Watchmaker doesn't sequence DNA. It makes the enzymes that sequencing companies use to do it. Cheaper, more precise testing means more testing, and more demand for what Watchmaker makes. It also moves genomics out of the research lab and into routine cancer detection. Trey and Dan also get into gene editing, designer genes, and what changes when genetics becomes something money can buy. Tom Cech won a Nobel at CU Boulder, and life sciences companies grew up along the Front Range, until larger pharmaceutical companies bought them and the work left with the buyers. Trey is rebuilding it here. Plus: why life is written in exactly four letters, and whether its ingredients arrived from somewhere else. Learn more about Trey's work in genomics: https://watchmakergenomics.com Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  5. Sep 11

    Governor Jared Polis on Quantum, Aerospace, and What Colorado Is Leaving on the Table

    Colorado Governor Jared Polis has five months left in office, and Dan didn't want a retrospective. Polis leads with the win he's proudest of: Colorado went from 27th in the country for preschool enrollment to 3rd, and #1 in the nation for education — funded by a ballot measure that passed with more than two-thirds of the vote, in Republican counties and Democratic ones alike. From there it's a builder's conversation. Why Americans pay two to four times what France or Japan pays for the identical drug, and why closing half that gap would take 8% off every employer's premiums. Why housing is a supply problem, and what gets taken away from a generation when the $300,000 starter home no longer exists. Then Dan puts the hard question on the table: Colorado has every right to be the world's best innovation ecosystem, so why are the people leaving California looking somewhere else? Polis's answer is that investors can love a founder in Colorado and still not want to put money into Colorado. Two different problems, and Colorado has been better at the first. Plus, the three-month sabbatical where he says no to everything, why he thinks the AI bubble will burst without taking AI down with it, and the Sundance he'll finally get to enjoy without his phone going off. Learn more about Governor Polis and his administration's work: https://www.colorado.gov/governor Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book Listen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretch Check out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallen To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  6. Sep 8

    Best in the Country for Education, and Closing Schools — with Aquiles La Grave, Part 2

    Aquiles La Grave is back on The Bear Roars, this time live in front of an audience at Tulagi Music Festival, three weeks into his campaign for mayor of Boulder. In July, U.S. News named Colorado the best state in the country for education. In August, Boulder Valley School District proposed closing four elementary schools.His case is that Boulder doesn't have a values problem, it has a delivery problem. He counted nineteen candidates on stage at the first forum of this year's race. They all love the town, he says, and almost none of them talked about how they would actually get anything done. Then there's the money. In November, Boulder votes on a $400 million bond that will cost about $650 million to pay off over twenty years, in a city that spends roughly $500 million a year. The city published a list of what the money would build, but it isn't required to stick to it.Dan pushes back throughout, including why the city council and city manager were the only people missing from the community gathering the night before. Also in this one: the rule Aquiles says he would impose on day one, and an audience member who wanted one specific thing that would make Boulder affordable.Learn More About Aquiles: https://boulder.vote/Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/bookListen to Dan’s song Stretch: https://distrokid.com/hyperfollow/dancaruso/stretchCheck out music by Jason Mendelson (Jace Allen): https://www.youtube.com/@jaceallenTo nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  7. Sep 1

    Two People, Three Years, and a $9 Billion IPO — with Ed Hallen

    In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan sits down with Ed Hallen — co-founder and Chief Strategy Officer of Klaviyo, the company he and Andrew Bialecki started in 2012 and took public in 2023. Before they had an idea, they had a rule: find a problem, solve it with software, and get someone to pay by credit card within two months, or move on. It took four or five tries. What they sold was email marketing. What they were actually building was the customer data underneath it. Ed's argument is that the constraint on AI isn't the models — it's that most companies still can't say what a customer or a lead actually is. His answer is "highly opinionated" data, where a purchase means a purchase at every brand and there's nothing left for anyone to debate. He and Andrew ran the company as just the two of them for three years, hit $250,000 in revenue in year two and a million in year three, and raised money they left sitting in the bank untouched. Ed came to Boulder in 2016 planning to stay two months, and bought a house four months later. A decade on, what keeps him here is that it's a place where people build real things instead of telling great stories about them. Plus his second company, Team Engine, why he thinks public markets make companies better, and his answer to Dan's most provocative question: did any of this actually do good in the world? Learn more about Ed's work: https://www.klaviyo.com Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

  8. Aug 25

    X Games Wasn't Broken. It Was Under-Imagined — with Jeremy Bloom

    In this episode of The Bear Roars, Dan sits down with Jeremy Bloom — CEO of X Games, two-time Olympic mogul skier, former NFL wide receiver, and the founder behind Integrate and Owl AI. Jeremy takes the seat as a fan first: the X Games launched in 1995, when he was 13 and skateboarding was still something you could get arrested for downtown. The heart of the conversation is what he's building now. For 30 years the X Games was one event a year — an extraordinary brand that, as he puts it, was bought with no bank account, no CRM and no customer data. He's turned it into a global co-ed league: eight clubs backed by private equity and family offices, athletes on salary with health insurance for the first time in action sports, and $500,000 to the winning team. This season's MVP was a 15-year-old skateboarder from Japan who outscored every man in the league. Then there's Owl AI, the Boulder company that started with a phone call to Sergey Brin about the blown call that cost the Saints a Super Bowl. Plus what a good AI judge turns out to also be, why he sued the NCAA at 19, and why he'd live nowhere but Boulder. Learn more about Jeremy's work: https://www.jeremybloom.com Order Dan's book — Bandwidth: The Untold Story of Ambition, Deception, and Innovation that Shaped the Internet Age and Dot-Com Boom: dan-caruso.com/book To nominate a founder or yourself as a future guest speaker, email: contact@loudbearproductions.com

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Ratings & Reviews

4.8
out of 5
16 Ratings

About

The Bear Roars is hosted by three-time decacorn entrepreneur and venture investor Dan Caruso. Colorado Innovators, the Bandwidth revolution (associated with Dan's book), and DeepTech are areas of focus. The purpose is to celebrate innovators, inspire listeners, and spark conversations within the innovation community.

Information

  • Creator
    Loud Bear Productions
  • Years Active
    2024 - 2026
  • Episodes
    114
  • Rating
    Explicit
  • Copyright
    © Loud Bear Productions
  • Show Website
    The Bear Roars

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