There’s not much about Colorado’s economy that Blair Richardson isn’t able to discuss.

As chairman of the board at Colorado Concern, Richardson leads the alliance of more than 100 of the state’s top executives, who work to advance the interests of the business community.

And he is excited about the state of Colorado’s economy.

“I think it’s very good and getting better,” Richardson told The Colorado Statesman this week.

A key indicator, he said, is the influx of millennials from around the country who are starting new businesses in Colorado.

“We’re the 22nd largest state, but we have the sixth most active business formation, and I find it very exciting,” he said, adding many of those start-ups are in the service industry. “Service businesses are the most exciting because service businesses don’t take as much capitol, they’re not generally manufacturing plants and steel mills and other things.”

Over the next decade, he predicted, there might be be more American companies going into bankruptcy than in the previous 50 years, but there will be twice that number of new companies starting up.

People in their late 20s and early 30s are finding Colorado’s labor force to be very attractive, and they are moving to the state in droves, he said.

Richardson is a managing partner of Bow River Capital Partners. He’s worked in private equity and securities for 25 years.

“I get calls all the time, most of them, I must admit, from the East Coast, where people have come to Colorado from a holiday point of view or have travelled through,” he said. “It’s not just the beauty, but the excitement. They can figure out that people on the streets of Denver and Fort Collins and Pueblo are young, and they’re movers. So it’s exciting.”

Looking at the state’s economy, he said his biggest is a void in science, technology, engineering and math education. Several fast-growing companies are looking for engineers and employees with technology backgrounds.

“Colorado doesn’t educate enough people who have STEM backgrounds,” he said “We are a net importer from other states. If we want to continue to grow this economy, we want to spend more focus on STEM education.”

Richardson’s wife, Kristin, serves on the board of the Smithsonian Institution, working with its education program. She’s working with Colorado’s public schools to bring the Smithsonian’s STEM research to students.

“They have the best science in America,” Richardson said. “I really believe that education and STEM education is very important. I want it to be cool to be an engineer; I want it to be cool to be a scientist; I want it to be cool to be a mathematician.”

Richardson, who has lived in Asia, said STEM education is essential if America wants to compete with countries that already have a deep focus on that type of education.

“So much of this education is family-based,” he said. “I would like to have mothers and fathers say to their kids, ‘Technology, engineering, science is really where you want to focus.’ So that it starts at a very early level, and it becomes sexy and cool to follow paths of STEM.”

Education reform is a top priority for Colorado Concern.

Each fall, the group polls its 116 members about what issues they feel the organization should focus on for the upcoming year.

“One of the things I like about Colorado Concern is there’s 15 of us on the board, and about half of us are Democrats and half of Republicans,” he said.

During the 2015 legislative session, the organization support construction defects and transparency legislation and stayed “on guard” against any legislation restricting the oil and gas industry.

“We got two of the three accomplished,” Richardson said. “I think we’re on the right side of construction defects. I feel very strongly about it.”

Part of the reason rents for the young millennials coming into the Denver metro area are so high is there are no condos for sale, and there haven’t been any large condo projects built since 2007, he noted.

“Part of that is clearly the economy,” he said. “But part of it is, builders are not going to take on risk that has a seven-year look back on it. It’s just not logical.”

Richardson said he hopes that construction defects reform returns as one of the issues for Colorado Concern to focus on in the next legislative session.

Another issue he predicts will be on the organization’s agenda in 2016 is state constitutional reform, including term limits, disclosure and, potentially, the Taxpayer Bill of Rights.

Richardson spoke with The Statesman as the New York Stock Exchange was recovering from a technical glitch that shut down trading for several hours. While the event wasn’t thought to be the result of a malicious attack, Richardson said that cybersecurity is a serious concern.

“Things that sort of keep me up at night, I would say those two things are the top of my list,” he said, pointing to the data breaches to Target’s credit card system and the IRS. “You’ve got a lot of very smart people with a lot of time on their hands with criminal intent. That’s a bad combination.”

American consumers need to accept that this type of crime is “as serious as going to a 7-Eleven with gun, Richardson said.

“I think prosecution — and active global prosecution — of people who violate these banks, stock exchanges, I think is going to be more and more common,” he said. “It’s just a form of white collar crime. I think it should be treated very severely.”

— rachel@coloradostatesman.com