Do More Faster India. Brad Feld

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About Techstars

Techstars started as an idea in 2006, when David Cohen sent an email to David Brown about a novel way to help entrepreneurs accelerate their businesses. Since then it has grown into the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. In a little over a decade, Techstars accelerators have funded more than 1,700 companies in more than 30 locations in 13 countries.¹ About 80% of these companies are successful: they have become profitable, have been bought by notable companies such as Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, and they have gone on to raise more than $7 billion in venture capital and angel investors.

      We believe that Techstars represents something special. We’re often told that it feels like an entrepreneurial revival. What’s the secret to Techstars’ rapid growth and success rate of companies going through accelerator programs? The reasons can be distilled into three unique ingredients: practicing the principles of Do More Faster, integrating mentorship deeply within the accelerators, and promoting community by giving first.

      At Techstars, we practice the principles outlined in this book. We run intensive, three‐month programs for startup entrepreneurs—not a full year, not six months, and definitely not 9‐to‐5. Our accelerators remove all the distractions and force the entrepreneurs to focus solely on their startup. We do this once a year in each location that we run an accelerator. We bring together 10 startups (from between 500 and 1,000 applicants) with around 100 local mentors, who are top entrepreneurs and investors, for each three‐month program, then focus intensive mentorship on them and tie them into our global network. After 13 weeks, the program culminates with a series of events during which the startups pitch their ideas to hundreds of investors.

Another key ingredient is mentorship. You’ll often hear us describe Techstars as “mentorship driven.” We carefully select people who are interested in deeply engaging with entrepreneurs—not simply to get the inside track on investing or give high‐level feedback or tell biographical stories. Our mentors are selected because they want to help entrepreneurs avoid roadblocks that will prevent them from getting their idea to the market. Each of the 10,000 mentors who participates in Techstars accelerators or community programs is asked to focus on a single company or, if she has a great deal of free time, at most two. We carefully avoid fly‐by mentorship in which someone successful or famous stops by an accelerator to impart some generic wisdom and give shallow feedback on each company. At Techstars, we’re only interested in deep and engaged mentorship, where mentors want to develop a relationship with an entrepreneur and be involved for the long haul. Our approach results in around five mentors working closely with each company. This is the magic of Techstars—a focused group of amazing mentors paired with each company to help them excel and accelerate.

      Techstars is also about community. When we started Techstars, one of our primary goals was to connect and improve our local startup community in Boulder. We wanted more passionate and skilled businesspeople in Boulder, engaged local angel investors, and entrepreneurs. We wanted Boulder to be known to the world as a credible place for talented entrepreneurs. We wanted the best, brightest, and most experienced entrepreneurs to become mentors and work together on new and exciting startups. Fundamentally, we wanted our community to be better. Our mentors help for the same reasons.

      We believe that a culture of sustained mentorship is the secret weapon of successful startup communities. Because of Techstars, we’ve noticed that mentorship and community eventually come full circle. The founders of early Techstars companies are now mentors to the founders of newer ones. Some of the founders who have been through Techstars are starting their second, third, or fourth company. Alumni of the accelerators have started making their own angel investments, and several venture capital funds have now been started by alumni. The life‐changing value of highly engaged mentorship is now ingrained into the very fabric of who they are. In turn, they give back every day.

Today, more than a decade after founding Techstars, we are on the path to achieving its vision as the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. We work with corporate partners like Target, Ford, Barclays, Amazon, and over 50 others to supercharge growth by accelerating innovation and cultural transformation. Startup Week, Startup Weekend, and Startup Accelerators have helped to create tens of billions of dollars in value and tens of thousands of jobs. We currently provide our Startup Weekend in 630 cities in 110 countries with over 70,000 attendees annually. Startup Week takes place in 147 cities in 16 countries with over 100,000 participants annually. And our three‐month Startup Accelerators have helped more than 1,700 companies.

      In 2019 we launched a new initiative called Techstars Studio, which will allow Techstars to source new company concepts from Techstars alumni founders, СКАЧАТЬ