One of our internal mantras at TechStars is to “publish your data.” We encourage every team to do this starting very early in their life. To this day, I still get daily performance reports (I refer to them as TPS reports) from many of the companies that have gone through the program.
Last week, David Cohen published all of the historical TechStars data. 39 companies have gone through the program to date (30 through Boulder and 9 through Boston). The data that David published covers a lot of ground, including status by individual company. Some of the pertinent summary data follows:
At the same time, Shawn Broderick, who runs the TechStars Boston program, just published the age demographics for the newest class of 10 companies that started the program at the beginning of March. The numbers may surprise you as being higher than you might expect:
Our plan is to continue to update this data on a regular basis as we think it helps people better understand the TechStars program. If there is additional data that you’d like to see, please feel free to suggest it.
Applications for the TechStars Boulder 2010 program are still open until March 22, 2010 at 11:59:59 PM Mountain Time. If you haven’t applied but are thinking about it, apply now (it’ll only take a few minutes.)
Whenever a TechStars company is acquired, they get a yellow shirt with their number on the back. Last month Fitrbox, a TechStars Boulder 2007 company, was acquired by Jive Software. The yellow shirt presentation is in the short video below:
FiltrBox #4 TechStars Company to be Acquired from TechStars on Vimeo.
On Tuesday, February 9th at the Denver Athletic Club (1325 Glenarm in Denver) Filtrbox’s founders Ari Newman and Tom Chikoore are going to do a presentation titled Filtrbox – A Case Study from Start-up to Exit on the story of Filtrbox. I expect this will include everything from the very start of the company, to their experience with TechStars, to their first financing, through launching a product, seeing early customer growth, and ultimately being acquired by Jive Software.
This event is being hosted by the Rockies Venture Club and the discussion will be facilitated by Mark Weakley from HRO who was Filtrbox’s outside counsel and involved from the beginning. Ari and Tom have a great story that’s instructive for any early stage entrepreneur – I encourage you to attend.
Today is the last day to apply for the TechStars Boston 2010 program. If you want a flavor for where the program is held, Bill Warner (one of the founders of TechStars Boston) has a fun post up titled Lifestyles of The Future Rich and Future Famous: A Look Inside the TechStars Boston (Actually Cambridge) Penthouse.
I lived in Boston from 1983 to 1995 (actually Cambridge from 1983 – 1987 but I consider Boston and Cambridge to be inexorably linked.) During the time I was in Boston there was a thriving entrepreneurial community around software and – in the early to mid-1990’s – Internet. While there was plenty of activity around Route 128 and 495, I always felt like the heart of it was in Cambridge in Kendall Square (near MIT) and Central Square (between MIT and Harvard). At least that’s where I hung out – Main Street, Mass Ave, Rogers Street, Binney Street, First, and Third Street. So – when we started TechStars Boston, it was inevitable that it would be in the heart of Cambridge.
Recently, a number of the Boston-area VC firms started migrating to Cambridge. When I was in Boston, most were located in downtown Boston, near Rt. 128, or in Cambridge. Over the years many of these firms decamped to Mount Money in Waltham which was very disconnected from where all the “young people lived.” While downtown Boston wasn’t the heart of Cambridge, at least it was only a 15 minute ride by T. Waltham – well – that could have been Mars as far as a recent MIT grad starting a new company concerned.
Apparently a bunch of Boston-area VC firms agree. Bessemer Venture Partners is now hunting for space in Cambridge (relocating from Wellesley), Greylock recently announced they were moving to Harvard Square and will be near General Catalyst who moved there a while ago, and Polaris’ Dogpatch Labs opened in Cambridge last year just down the street from Venrock and Avalon. And there continue to be plenty of VC firms a short T ride away in Boston, such as Spark Capital and Flybridge.
There is an entrepreneurial renaissance happening in Boston (and Cambridge). If you are starting a software or Internet company, spend 15 minutes applying to the TechStars Boston program. In addition to being in the heart of Cambridge, you’ll be surrounded by some incredible mentors as you work to get your business off the ground.
If you are thinking about applying to the TechStars Boston 2010 program, take 15 minutes and do it now. Tomorrow (Tuesday 1/5) is TechStars for a Day in Cambridge, MA. You’ll only get an invitation if you have applied by today. You’ll get to spend the day learning about TechStars and hanging out with TechStars mentors like Shawn Broderick, David Cohen, Bill Warner, Bijan Sabet along with some of founders from TechStars Boston 2009 companies, such as AccelGolf, AmpIdea, Localytics, and TempMine.
If you are thinking about starting a company and wonder why you’d bother with TechStars, take a look at the great post that Tom Monaghan, the co-founder of TempMine, wrote today titled Mentorship-driven or Why I applied to TechStars.
And, as a special bonus late breaking news item, Graphic.ly (formerly named Take Comics, one of the TechStars Boulder 2009 companies) announced that it has raised a $1.2m financing led by DFJ Mercury with participation from Starz Media and some well known angels. My good friend Micah Baldwin has joined as CEO. Psyched for them.
Come out and play. Entrepreneurship is fun.
We’ve run TechStars in Boulder for three years. So far each year at least one of the teams ends up with a runaway success on a bootstrapped business. In year one it was J-Squared with their Facebook (and now MySpace) apps. The bootstrapper of year two is Occipital with their awesome RedLaser iPhone app.
RedLaser has been at the top of the iPhone App Store paids apps listing for over three months. Rather than review the app here, I’ll just point you to a recent TechCrunch article about it reaching over 750k downloads and a recent WSJ article about Price Checking: Finding Deals With a Phone. Or just download RedLaser – it’s only $1.99 and you’ll love it.
When Jeff Powers and Vikas Reddy, the founders of Occipital, were accepted to TechStars, we chose them not because of their great idea (I thought the original idea was stupid), but because of their incredible technical talent. As David Cohen and I went through their application and saw the demos they had done, our immediate reaction was “these guys are great – they’ll do something amazing if they land on a good idea.” So – we accepted them into TechStars.
On day one we told them we hated their idea and encouraged them to think hard about other things before going deep on building something. They resisted for a few days, but listened as they heard this from a number of other mentors. They quickly discarded their original idea and started working on something else that leveraged their skills. During the program, they built some cool demos and started making progress on their new big idea. They reinforced their position as “super smart software engineers” but as the summer ended they struggled to get investors excited.
Shortly after the summer ended, they found themselves with a very ambitious technical project, some demo code, and no funding. I worried about them a little because I knew how much talent they had. True to character, they regrouped and started hacking on the iPhone. They also – in their words – developed a “huge chip on their shoulder” since they hadn’t been able to raise money. They decided “we don’t need no stinking investors” and went after bootstrapping the business.
The first product they shipped was an iPhone app called ClearCam. It was popular and sold enough copies that all of a sudden Occipital had some cash coming in. A few months later they released their next iPhone app – RedLaser – and had a monster hit on their hands.
Obviously, I’m super proud of Occipital. And I’m carefully watching the TechStars 2009 class – both in Boulder and Boston – for who is going to be the bootstrapper of year three.
If you are interested, applications for the TechStars Boston 2010 program (which runs in the spring of 2010) are currently open until January 11th, 2010 at 11:59:59 PM Eastern Time. There is plenty of room for bootstrappers, as well as folks that want to raise angel or VC financing, in the program.
Yesterday, TechStars announced that it is a launching a new program in Seattle. This will be the third program that TechStars runs – with the other two being in Boulder over the summer and Boston in the spring (we are currently accepting applications for the Boston program.) The Seattle program will be run this fall.
There’s been some great initial press on this including TechCrunch, ReadWriteWeb, PEHub, and Seattle’s TechFlash. Greg Huang – who writes for Xconomy (which has also done a great job of covering TechStars Boston) covered the launch well and had a nice follow up post linking the Boston and Seattle programs origins. It’s really satisfying to read the articles as pretty much everyone gets that a key part of TechStars are the mentors – and the Seattle mentors are just awesome.
After year two of the Boulder program, David Cohen (the founder of TechStars) and I spent a bunch of time in various venues – at bars and restaurants in Boulder, in the Bunker, in our conference room at Foundry Group, on a vacation in Italy together, and even in the presence of our wives (much to their annoyance) – talking about David’s long term vision for TechStars and how best to operationalize it.
TechStars Boston – which I wrote about when we launched it in February 2009 – was the first expansion. TechStars Seattle is the second. One decision that we made when we thought through a third city was timing and we decided to stagger the timing of the programs. So Boston is spring, Boulder is summer, and Seattle is fall. For those that are skilled at reading between the lines, that leaves winter open – for now.
It’s also super exciting to welcome Andy Sack to the TechStars leadership team. Andy will run the TechStars Seattle program while Shawn Broderick runs the TechStars Boston program. I’ve known and worked with Andy for around 15 years (and Shawn for about 20) – back when we were all first time entrepreneurs – so it’s really satisfying to be working together on TechStars.
And a huge thank you to the Seattle entrepreneurial community. I’ve spent a lot of time there the past few years and I’ve got several investments there, including Gist and Smith & Tinker (via Foundry Group), Impinj (via Mobius Venture Capital), and AdReady (via Intensity Ventures). Seattle is perfect for a program like TechStars and the response from everyone we’ve talked to about it has been dynamite.
We are doing another TechStars 2009 Demo Day, this time in Seattle on 11/4/09. It’s part of a two day TechStars mini-reunion across all three TechStars years – part retreat, part spend time with a bunch of Seattle colleagues, and part party – TechStars style. The agenda for the Investor part of the event on the after of 11/4 follows:
2:30 PM – Investor Panel – You’ll hear from some of the top angel investors and venture capitalists in the country, including Brad Feld (Foundry Group), Greg Gottesman (Madrona), David Cohen (TechStars), Andy Sack (Founders Co-Op), Stephen Hall (Vulcan Capital) and many more. They’ll discuss their investment philosophies, emerging trends, and innovation.
3:30 PM – State of TechStars – David Cohen and Brad Feld will talk about TechStars past and future. This is your chance to learn a little bit about the first three years of the program and how we’re thinking about the future.
4:00 PM – TechStars Demo Day. Each year after the TechStars summer program ends, we do an investor/demo event. This year, we’re bringing the event on the road. You’ll hear 10-12 companies describe their businesses in fun, entertaining 8 minute pitches. Many of these companies are still raising capital, so it’s a great chance to look at some of the best opportunities from TechStars companies.
6:00 PM – The Mixer. Stick around and meet the companies, share a beer and a snack, and catch up with friends old and new.
If you are an accredited angel investor or VC in the Seattle area or if you know someone who might like to attend on November 4th, just drop me a note and I’ll be sure to get you an invitation to the event. I hope to see you there – it should be a great day.
If you’ve been watching the TechStars Founders video series, you’ll love the Behind the Scene (aka “bloopers”) episode that just came out.
The Founders | Behind the Scenes from Megan Leigh Sweeney on Vimeo.
Watch otherwise chatty people be speechless, learn more about the use of the word “fuck”, try to figure out which one is Nate and which one is Natty, see Canadians sing and learn what happens when they get nervous, and go on a rocket ship. Great stuff Megan (and TechStars).
If you’ve enjoyed the TechStars video series, this one is a really fun one. It focuses on the TechStars Bay Area Demo Day which happened at the end of September. Among the beautiful and inspiring scenes of the bay area are a bunch of super capable entrepreneurs from Boulder and Boston who grew an enormous amount in the last three months (yes – I’m very proud of them.) As a special bonus, you find out that the Everlater guys can “give as good as they get” (after getting punked by David Cohen in Episode 8: Your Best Friend.)
As a special bonus, David had a great article today in the Huffington Post Denver Edition titled TechStars: It’s About Community. And then it was way past my bed time. Goodnight.