The roster at TechStars continues to grow with awesome people. In the past month, TechStars has announced Mark Solon as a general partner, Luke Beatty as managing director for Boulder and Ari Newman as Network Catalyst. I’m proud to claim all three as close colleagues.
Mark is a long time friend – we’ve invested in a number of companies together over the years including SendGrid, Orbotix, and Lijit. He’s been involved as a mentor to TechStars since the beginning and his endless positive energy and attitude was a huge inspiration for my Boulder Thesis. When he announced that he wasn’t raising another fund at Highway 12 Ventures, David Cohen started talking to him about taking a more active role with TechStars. Voila!
Luke Beatty was the founder of Associated Content (sold to Yahoo in 2010) and has mentored the Boulder program for years. I fondly remember a long conversation at one of the first events we were at together at a number of years ago where I keynoted some Colorado industry event either right before or right after Tim Armstrong. Luke brings an enormous amount of entrepreneurial experience, as well as mentor experience, to the TechStars Boulder program.
Ari was a part of the first TechStars program all the way back in 2007 and his company, Filtrbox, was acquired by Jive Software several years ago. They were the fourth TechStars company to have a positive exit (of 18 to date now). Ari is perfectly positioned to make introductions and facilitate action across our growing group of alumni.
We’ve got a lot of things planned for 2013, including more “powered by TechStars” programs like the one we just announced with Nike, additional TechStars cities, and a few completely new things we are going to try.
For everyone who had been involved in some way along the journey since we started TechStars in 2006, thank you. You are dynamite. And welcome Mark, Luke, and Ari to the full-time team!
Jon Hansen from PI Window on Business had so much fun with me a few weeks ago that he asked me to do another interview – this time on the dynamics around foreign investments. We covered plenty of ground, including what country, state, and local governments do to slow down investments, along with a bunch of my own philosophy around why I only make VC investments in the US and Canada. Buried deep in the interview is my track record making VC investments in European companies (hint: not pretty).
Entrepreneur Magazine made a swing through Boulder recently and did short interview videos with a bunch of the Boulder entrepreneurs. If you aren’t exhausted after listening to an hour of me (or if you punted), take a quick two minute tour with Ari Newman of Filtrbox.
Ari finishes strong with a great line – “If you aren’t doing something you love, life’s too short – there’s an opportunity cost.” As a special bonus, Matt Galligan – the man who manages to be everywhere – is hanging out over Ari’s left shoulder.