Denver Small Business Project

A future of human flourishing requires a revival of social capital, a return to each other and a recognition that the solution to so many of the tensions in our modern era is not in ourselves, or our screens, but in one another.

Small businesses are the lifeblood of that revival. They are local, human, and irreplaceable: the owner who knows your name, the shop that anchors the block, the restaurant where the city actually meets itself. These are not just economic units; small businesses are the connective tissue of our neighborhoods.

Mary Long and I are on a quest. In 2026 we are interviewing 100 Denver small business owners. We are letting curiosity lead; we don’t know what we’ll discover. We are prioritizing the local, the sustainable, the small. We believe that 100 conversations will begin to reveal something true about what it means to build something human in this city, and how we can help foster and sustain that in our own town.