Everybody loves an entrepreneur. They're creative, full of energy. And best of all, they stimulate the economy, creating jobs and turning investment into enterprise. We tend to think of entrepreneurship as something for city folk. But the data tell another story, and a growing movement is encouraging more new businesses in rural areas.

Sarah Berkeley is riding that wave. On a recent Wednesday evening, the entrepreneur from Leadville took the stage in an auditorium on the campus of Northeastern Junior College in Sterling, Colorado to make the case for her fledgling business as a participant in Startup Colorado’s second rural pitch competition.

“My name's Sarah Berkeley. I'm founder of Symbiosis Gear,” she greeted the audience. “We make backpacking gear for people with boobs.”

If you’ve never experienced a pitch competition, they make for good entertainment: giddy founders publicly vying for investment. It’s entrepreneurship as spectacle, and a growing trend in the buzzy startup world.

Of course, the hard numbers are important: sales, margins and projections. Berkeley went over all the typical business stats in her pitch deck, projected on a large screen behind her. But up on the stage, it’s compelling storytelling that captures imaginations and investment dollars.

Berkeley’s presentation began with a selfie, taken in the woods. In the picture, she’s engulfed in a thick-strapped black backpack and looks exhausted from long days on the trail.

“I was hiking the Pacific Crest Trail when I took this photo, with this particular backpack squishing my boobs,” she said, to titters from the audience. “And that motivated me to do something about this problem.”

Next thing you know, she was designing better backpacking gear for fem bodies. The straps on her signature line are narrow and S-shaped, solving that chest-squishing issue. It’s designed to be highly adjustable.

“It accommodates a really wide range of body shapes and sizes,” Berkeley said.

The nonprofit Startup Colorado, with its mission to cultivate rural entrepreneurship, launched this rural pitch competition last year to tap into small town ingenuity like Berkeley’s.

“Entrepreneurship is not just for metro areas,” said executive director Brittany Romano. “In rural (areas) we innovate out of necessity. So, rural is a great landscape for finding great founders and great ideas and great companies.”

Romano and her team invited four finalists from far-flung parts of Colorado to pitch their ideas in front of a panel of judges with expertise in rural economic development.

“The pitch competition demonstrates that you can find local capital,” Romano said. “You can accomplish your business goals within the region that your business operates.”

In Colorado, startups and small businesses make up more than 99% of all enterprises, employing nearly half the workforce. That's why rural communities here are pouring resources into new entrepreneurs. According to Romano, it’s a strategy to build more resilient local economies.

The last contestant of the night was James Mataczynski, founder of Craft Crate LLC, a startup in the small Park County town of Bailey. At this point, Mataczynski is still developing the prototype for his invention: a bag that keeps beer keg-fresh for months at a time. 

“As the liquid is dispensed, the packaging collapses, so it actually will stay carbonated, start to finish,” he said. “So, you get draft quality beer at your house.”

Eventually, he dreams of expanding to other beverages, cosmetics, even medical supplies.

He wants to “put Bailey on the map, really boost the local economy there,” he said. “And build Craft Crate to be a global powerhouse of not just beer distribution, but all liquid distribution.”

You can forget the cities; rural areas are the true hotbeds of entrepreneurship, according to Colorado State University economist Stephan Weiler. 

“In rural areas there are more entrepreneurs,” Weiler said. “And they tend to be more successful than their urban counterparts.”

More successful meaning they survive longer.  

And while rural entrepreneurs face more challenges — smaller local markets and less access to capital — Weiler said they also have advantages, like tight-knit, supportive communities, that give them a better shot for the long haul. 

“In rural areas by and large, if you want a job, you have to create your own,” Weiler said.

That’s not to say that rural entrepreneurs don’t face significant challenges. Smaller local markets and workforces, and less access to capital and investors, are a common rural struggle.

“The economy is in pretty uncertain shape right now,” Weiler said. “I'd like to believe that rural entrepreneurs can be a bright spot in pulling us out of a potential downturn.”

At the Colorado competition Sarah Berkeley and her boob-friendly backpacks are the big winners, with a $5,000 zero-interest loan.

“I'm so excited,” Berkeley said. “It sounds like there's gonna be a lot of support.”

She’ll bring the money back home to rural Leadville to design a couple new backpack models and expand her product line.