Timnath Software Developer Leads Two Chambers For Free

The question on every local’s mind isn’t whether a chamber of commerce is necessary. It’s why a guy who sells software out of his living room is suddenly the president of two towns’ business associations for free.

Dustin Peyser didn’t plan to become a civic leader. He planned to sell houses. After moving from California to Colorado in 2021, he settled in Timnath, a bedroom community on the southern edge of Fort Collins. By 2024, he had launched Timnath’s first-ever chamber. He did it because the town was growing — population had nearly doubled since his arrival — but the local business infrastructure hadn’t kept pace. The businesses ranged from national chains to home-based bakers shipping bread out of their garages, and most lacked the basic networking structures that help small enterprises survive.

Peyser wrote in The Colorado Sun that he made a "personal decision not to use my chamber position as a way to compete with other members who are Realtors or generate real estate business for myself." He kept his real estate license but stepped back from active sales, relying instead on Appxecutive, his technology and software-development business. The chamber grew to 100 members, housed literally in Peyser’s computer.

Then Severance, the town next door, asked him to help build theirs. Now Peyser serves as president of both chambers. He isn’t making a penny for either role.

That matters because it strips away the usual suspicion that local business groups are just clubs for people who want to sell something. Terri Hayes, president and CEO of the Tri Lakes Chamber of Commerce in Monument and chair of the Colorado Chamber Alliance, pushed back against the idea that chambers are relics. "In our world," Hayes told The Colorado Sun, "when you’ve met one chamber, you’ve met one chamber, because each one molds itself around its community differently."

Colorado has roughly 140 chambers. Some serve tiny towns like Del Norte; others handle large cities like Thornton. Some focus on economic development, others on visitor services. All rely on events and education to fund their missions and bring people together. In Timnath, that meant monthly happy hours where a baker could meet a tech developer, and a new resident could find out who to call when their septic system acted up.

Peyser’s approach was scrappy. There was no office, no staff, no budget to speak of. Just a guy with a laptop and a belief that local businesses needed a place to talk to each other. The success was immediate enough that Severance, watching from the border, realized they needed the same thing. They didn’t hire a professional chamber director. They hired Peyser.

It’s an unusual arrangement, but it fits the scale of these communities. A full-time executive director makes sense for a chamber representing 500 businesses in a city of 100,000. It makes less sense for a chamber representing 100 businesses in a town where the mayor knows every member by name. Peyser’s dual role is part-time, volunteer-driven, and entirely local. He knows the people in both towns because he lives in one of them.

The chamber’s work isn’t glamorous. It’s not about lobbying state legislators or hosting galas with champagne towers. It’s about making sure the new coffee shop on Main Street knows who their neighbors are, and that those neighbors know what’s coming. It’s about the quiet infrastructure of trust that keeps a small town from becoming just a place where people sleep.

Stand there long enough at one of those monthly happy hours, and you’ll see it working. Not as a policy statement, but as people actually talking to each other across the table.