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Newsletter — Issue 35 — Tuesday, August 4, 2026
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This newsletter has been published by Engage Colorado.
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A Four-Part Recap · Part 1 of 4
The Coalition Behind Engage Colorado
This Engage Colorado Newsletter reflects the personal opinions of Dan Caruso, written with the support of the Caruso Ventures team. The Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future Coalition did not review and has not endorsed this Engage Colorado Newsletter.
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Where We Are
Over the next four days, this Engage Colorado series will recap what we have covered so far — before continuing on to the last three factors of The Honest Assessment, including the one where Colorado scores worst in the entire twelve-factor framework.
The four parts:
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Part 1 (today) — The Open Letter coalition, now 542 signatories.
Part 2 (tomorrow) — The Honest Assessment: the diagnostic behind this series.
Part 3 (Thursday) — The Innovation Vision for Colorado, and the Colorado voices weighing in through The Bear Roars podcast.
Part 4 (next Tuesday) — Where Colorado stands after nine factors, and what comes next.
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Part 1 of 4
Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future — Now 542 Signatories
The roots of Engage Colorado are in The Open Letter — Ensuring Colorado's Innovation Future — a bipartisan letter from Colorado's tech and business community, addressed to Governor Polis, Senators Bennet and Hickenlooper, Attorney General Weiser, Denver Mayor Johnston, and other Colorado political leaders. The letter names what has gone wrong with Colorado's innovation trajectory — and asks Colorado's political leadership to change course. It was delivered on Thursday, April 9, 2026 — released jointly with Governor Polis, who himself signed the letter — with more than 210 founding signatories.
Since then, the Signatories list has grown:
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542
Signatories
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212 current or former CEOs — including CEOs of 8 publicly-traded companies
238 founders and 79 co-founders
91 partners across 20+ venture capital and investment firms
22 board chairs
Representation from six Colorado IPOs
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Governor Polis Has Leaned Into the Message
In addition to signing the Open Letter itself, he took concrete actions in the weeks and months that followed.
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May 14, 2026
Signed SB26-189, which significantly scaled back Colorado's AI Act (SB24-205) — the law that had driven Palantir's headquarters move to Miami — and delayed its effective date to January 1, 2027.
June 3, 2026
Vetoed SB26-134, the payment card network fees bill — a bill Engage Colorado had publicly called on him to veto.
July 22, 2026
Spearheaded the formation of the Governor's Competitiveness Council — a public-private partnership bringing business, government, and community leaders together to shape a long-term vision for Colorado's economic competitiveness.
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But the June 30 Primary Sent a Very Different Signal
Since the Open Letter was delivered on April 9, Colorado's Democratic primary produced three consequential outcomes:
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Attorney General Phil Weiser — positioned to the left of Senator Bennet — won the Democratic gubernatorial primary and is now the presumptive next Governor of Colorado.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold — endorsed by the Bernie Sanders-aligned Progressive Democrats of America, and whose attorney-general campaign was framed around her track record of pushing back against the Trump administration — won a four-way Democratic primary and is now the presumptive next Attorney General.
Melat Kiros, a 29-year-old democratic socialist, unseated 15-term incumbent Diana DeGette in Colorado's 1st Congressional District — a nationally reported upset that drew comparisons to the leftward shift in New York City politics.
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The Colorado electorate signaled — three times, in one day — that the state's political direction may deepen, not moderate.
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Colorado's two U.S. Senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper — along with Attorney General (and presumptive next Governor) Weiser — have not meaningfully modified their rhetoric or their agenda in the four months since the letter was delivered. They have not indicated they are hearing the concerns being raised, or that they are committed to significantly changing the direction Colorado is on. To the contrary, they continue to repeat the political rhetoric that is the underlying driver of Colorado's negative trajectory.
This is precisely why Engage Colorado has focused most of the newsletters to date on articulating the challenge Colorado faces.
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Add Your Name to the Open Letter
If you would like to add your signature, visit Ensuring Colorado, click “Add Your Name,” and fill in first name, last name, email, title, and company. Your name will appear on the site as your virtual signature.
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A Personal Note
I identify as a true independent. At times, I find myself supporting policies that are more aligned with the Democratic party and at other times more aligned with the Republican party — the label matters less to me than what I think is best for Colorado, America, and humans in general.
I have known Governor Polis, Senator Bennet, Senator Hickenlooper, and Attorney General Weiser for a long time, and I view each of them as an intelligent, caring friend. I am not writing these newsletters out of political opposition.
I am writing them out of my love for Colorado — and out of my belief that a vibrant ecosystem of innovation anchored by tech is critical to Colorado's future, and to the shared prosperity of every Coloradan.
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Tomorrow — Part 2 of 4
Part 2 of 4 turns to The Honest Assessment — the diagnostic report behind this series. What it evaluates, what it does not do, and why the twelve-factor framework matters.
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