Seastrom takes New Frontier to top of banking list

GREELEY - As the Northern Colorado Business Report staff was preparing for the very first Bravo! Entrepreneur Awards in 1998, Larry Seastrom was preparing an application for a brand-new bank in Greeley.

It was to be called Rocky Mountain Bank, but when the charter came before the Colorado Division of Banking, that had been changed to New Frontier Bank. Bankers at some of the 22 other Greeley institutions predicted Seastrom, his 180 investors and seven employees would have a hard time attracting customers, even with $6 million capitalization.

Then the market boomed along with the state economy, national banks bought up a number of local competitors, and New Frontier appeared for the first time on the 's Mercury 100 list of the region's fastest growing companies in 2001. Its revenues grew 242 percent between 1999 and 2000 and its employees to 49.

Now the latest figures from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. show that, as of June 30, New Frontier's three branches held the largest share of the deposit market in Larimer and Weld counties - $1.36 billion - up 75 percent over 2006.

For presiding over this phenomenal growth, Seastrom has been named the Bravo! Entrepreneur for Greeley this year. How did he do it?

"It's no secret,"