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Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year.

This past summer, Forbes interned at RSM, a large consulting and accounting firm. There, he found value and resources that come with working inside an established organization. It also clarified for him that he thrives most in environments with room to move.

“Startups are huge for my skillset. You end up doing a little bit of everything, which is different from the more focused role you'd have at a big company.”

From a young age, Forbes has been drawn to building things of his own, mowing lawns and reselling sports cards on eBay as a kid. That instinct followed him to CU, where it's only sharpened.��

What makes Forbes interesting are the patterns beneath all of his startup projects. A willingness to keep starting over, to walk away from something that isn't working and try again anyway. That pattern has taken him through startup projects and one of CU's most ambitious climate programs, and it's still shaping what he builds next.

Learning by Building

Before any class taught him the fundamentals, Forbes learned entrepreneurship firsthand, through building a product with a friend from the ground up.

During his sophomore year, he met Elkan Bruha, a computer science student at CU, and together they built a small device that could sit above a business's doorway and track foot traffic in real time. They aimed it at bars, giving students a way to check how crowded a spot was before heading out.

By junior year, the device was live in more than 25 locations around Boulder. Investors took notice, but when Forbes and Elkan tested whether retail stores would actually pay for the tool long term, the demand wasn't there. They turned down the investment interest and Elkan has continued running CrowdCount as a passion project.��

What stuck with Forbes wasn't the outcome, it was the process. Without any real structure to lean on, he learned firsthand how valuable a plan can be. More than anything, going through the full arc from idea to product proved invaluable.

“It was cool to see that you can actually build something from start to finish. Going from ideation to go-to-market strategy was awesome.”

That kind of hands-on immersion, he says, taught him more than anything else could. It's also what sent him looking for more structured ways to sharpen the instincts he'd already built on his own.

A Different Kind of Classroom

That structure arrived through Boulder Climate Ventures, a two-part program that pairs classroom rigor with real-world mentorship. Forbes joined in the fall, where graduate and undergraduate students sat in on a speaker series featuring experts across climate industries.��

In the spring course, funded by Breakthrough Energy, students focused on implementing their knowledge through ideation and pitching. For Forbes, it was when he teamed up with a graduate student named Alex Kendall to build Herd Insurance, a concept for insuring entire neighborhoods against wildfire risk rather than individual homes.��

“There was a lot of structure, which I think is helpful, especially early on when building your first or second company.”

The experience reinforced Forbes belief that entrepreneurship is a skill set you build in layers, first through trial and error, then through mentorship and structure that turns instinct into method.

An Underrated Ecosystem

Through all of his experiences, what Forbes is most grateful for is where they happened. Right here in Boulder.��

“There's quite a startup community here, even though it's much smaller than other startup hubs. It's a cool spot. Especially for aerospace, and for climate tech. This might be the best place to do it.”

Despite everything Boulder has to offer, Forbes thinks most students don't realize it's there. He points to the sheer density of resources on campus, from the Deming Center's events to niche opportunities most students never hear about. One example is the Campus Founders Fund, a Denver-based group that writes checks directly to student founders.

For Forbes, the value came from chances to sit across from investors and founders who took his ideas seriously, long before he had anything close to a finished product. He urges others to show up. Go to the events, ask questions, take the meetings that may seem small at the time. Because while Boulder might not be Silicon Valley just yet, this smaller yet growing community gives students a better opportunity to be seen.

The Long Game

Forbes doesn't have a clean answer for what comes next. He's not entirely sure what he'll do after graduation, whether that's another startup, consulting, or something he hasn't found yet. What he does know is how he'll get there.

Trying and failing forward is how Forbes describes entrepreneurship, but it’s also how he's approached nearly everything since sophomore year. He could be mounting a counter above a bar door or turning a stack of secondhand books into notebooks, but none of it has to work perfectly. It just has to teach him something for the next attempt.

For Forbes, that's the real lesson underneath his startup projects, BCV, and everything he's built at CU. Entrepreneurship was never about getting it right the first time. It was about staying willing to try again.