Why rural Colorado venture capital punches above its weight
Key points
Key takeaways from a YouTube interview with Howdy Partners Managing Partner Cory Finney (September 2026):
Agile Space Industries is scaling fast. The Durango maker of additive-manufactured thrusters — used to manoeuvre satellites and help landers reach and lift off the moon — has grown from roughly 11 employees when Howdy invested in 2019 to about 180 today, around 140 of them in Durango, and just cut the ribbon on a further facility.
Oklahoma won Agile's expansion. Agile's two La Plata County test facilities are at capacity, and Oklahoma — the state, the city of Tulsa and local high-net-worth backers — assembled the package that won the company's new rocket-engine test centre, with two test facilities now planned for Oklahoma.
Rural jobs punch above their weight. Using Colorado's own county-level data, 140 jobs in La Plata County carry the same economic impact as a 2,500-person company in Denver County.
Why rural matters. The map of where venture capital flows almost exactly matches where half of US GDP is produced, yet 80% of VC concentrates in five metro markets while rural economies lean on single industries such as agriculture, resource extraction and tourism.
Howdy Partners' mandate. Rebranded from Greater Colorado Venture Fund, Howdy won Colorado's 2017 state RFP to manage the rural venture fund, backing founders across 54 of 64 counties — everything outside the Fort Collins–Colorado Springs corridor, mostly counties of under 150,000 people.
Colorado risks losing the jobs it has. Finney cites Agile's Oklahoma move as a case where Colorado, ranking 49th of 50 states on housing affordability, must compete harder to retain and attract fast-growing employers instead of losing them to Texas, Florida and Utah.
What rural Colorado is building. The pipeline ranges from autonomous tractors built in La Junta and Florence to farmers in Sterling pitching Howdy on their day-to-day use of AI.
An ecosystem finding its feet. Colorado's venture landscape has grown from roughly 13 funds in 2015 to 80–90 today, and Finney describes a collaborative, deliberately non-competitive culture across the state.
Read more: YouTube · Howdy Partners · Agile Space Industries
