Guerrilla Gravity, makers of highly refined mountain bikes custom built in Denver, CO, for each rider, was chosen from a pool of 30,000 applicants to receive a $100,000 grant from Chase Bank’s Mission Main Street Grant program.
Guerrilla President Will Montague and Chief Engineer Matt Giaraffa are beyond stoked, as the funding will help the shop meet the growing demand for high-performance, hand-built MTBs.
“Getting the call from Chase on a random Tuesday morning will go down as a life changing moment,” said Montague.
Photo Credit: Guerrilla Gravity
Montague and Giaraffa hope to grow the company to be the best of its kind, while supporting the Colorado community and building participation in mountain biking via group rides, rider clinics, maintenance classes, and rider education. Guerrilla Gravity’s Co-Founder Kristy Anderson also plans to lead an effort to facilitate a non-intimidating environment for more women to get into the sport. She calls it “Ride It Grrrl.” They also plan to invest in new machinery and hire three employees to add to its close-knit staff of five.
Photo Credit: Guerrilla Gravity
Also bundled with being awarded the Mission Main Street Grant, LinkedIn, a premier sponsor of the Chase grant, will be flying two representatives from each of the grant recipient businesses to Mountain View, CA, for a Small Business Boot Camp at its headquarters in late 2015. Attendees will learn about topics such as leveraging LinkedIn and other digital content strategies to grow small businesses.
“We spend endless hours as business owners thinking about all of the possibilities of growth. To actually have the resources to begin to implement these ideas and grow in the direction of our dreams is such a game changer,” said Montague.
The team at Guerrilla Gravity
Guerrilla Gravity was the only Colorado-based small business selected by Chase this year, and is the second Denver-based manufacturer to ever receive the grant (the first being Kota Longboards).
In addition to Mission Main Street Grants, Chase is the national presenting sponsor of Startup Weeks and launched Small Business Forward in 2014.
