As we laid out last month, entrepreneurial activity in Colorado is in the middle of a renaissance. While the national corporate recession hits the headlines and gas and food prices reach for the sky, our local startup scene is rocking.

David Cohen, one of Boulder’s celebrity VCs, announces two new fundings today at his blog, ColoradoStartups.com:

Symplified recently raised $6M from Granite Ventures and Allegis Capital.

Rally Software just raised $16.8M from Mohr Davidow Ventures (MDV) and existing investors Vista Ventures, Boulder Ventures, and Mobius Venture Capital.

I was at Rally today, talking with their CTO, Ryan Martens, about how smaller companies (the core of the Colorado economy) measure (and ultimately improve) their operations to become more sustainable. He talks in software terms, about ‘expanding the scope’ of business operations to include externalities and bring more costs and benefits on the balance sheet.Our discussion crossed a wide range of topics, and landed on an interesting observation. Ryan pointed out, “most sustainability consultants can’t help us. Unless you know how computer hardware is built, how firmware works, and how software is developed, you can’t help me reduce my emissions any better than a junior at CU (Jack, who happened to be sitting in the room).”

What’s the nuance?

Ryan has connected the core values of agile software development to their operations, and is working on becoming a zero waste company. For Rally, it’s not about employee bus passes and cf lights — he’s about altering the core of his business so that his clients, their clients and the data centers that business ecology supports are wasting less and reducing their electrical needs.

Three years ago, Ryan would get fired for wasting time thinking about how not to waste electrons. Today he’s on the forefront of a major shift in thinking that will power entrepreneurism into the next decade.

In Colorado today, there is not only a strong network of tech companies, but a diverse community that spans energy (alternative and traditional), aerospace, clean tech, sustainability and more. As these companies cross traditional boundaries and make bold leaps into new territory, collaboration is creating new forms of wealth.