This year TechStars ran a program in Boston.  Shawn Broderick was the ring leader and everyone had an awesome time.  To get a feel for the scene, take a look at The Founders video on Bean Town.

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 13 | Bean Town from Andrew on Vimeo.

The other day I wrote about two TechStars companies (Occipital and DailyBurn) teaming up to create FoodScanner for the iPhone. That app is now in the top 65 in the app store. Occipital provided the underlying scanning technology which is based on the  RedLaser SDK.   Anyone can use that SDK to easily add magic bar code scanning to their own app.

As of right now, RedLaser itself is #2 on the top paid apps list in the app store. You can use it to scan any barcode to quickly check online pricing.  I love stuff that works like "magic" and RedLaser qualifies because it’s fast and effortless and uses nothing more than the built in camera to read the barcode, even on curved surfaces, and even without autofocus.

Here’s a Fox Business video interview from earlier this week featuring Occipital co-founder Jeff Powers talking about RedLaser and his experiences developing a top paid app.

In an intense environment like TechStars, filled with smart and extremely driven people, you might expect that things would get competitive among the teams. However, one of the most interesting things I’ve seen over the three years of the program has been the level of collaboration among the teams. I’ve seen them practice their pitches together, test product strategies, discuss approaches to getting investment, and share stories when things are going well and when they are not.

Two of the companies from TechStars 2008, DailyBurn and Occipital, have taken this collaboration even further and have formed a partnership to release FoodScanner  – the first food journal iPhone application that incorporates a barcode scanner to let users quickly input multiple variables of nutritional information.

DailyBurn is one of the fastest growing fitness sites with over 250,000 users and has been really innovating in the space of fitness tracking, including peer challenges and user-generated content.

FoodScanner pairs DailyBurn’s fitness, motivation, and nutrition expertise with Occipital’s powerful RedLaser barcode scanning technology. You just scan a food item’s barcode, and then tap the number of servings consumed. The information syncs with the your DailyBurn account or the app can serve as a standalone food journal.

Here’s a demo from DailyBurn’s CEO Andy Smith:

FoodScanner Demo from Andy Smith on Vimeo.

You can check out FoodScanner on the web or on the App Store.

I’ve written about entering fitness data before. The holy grail is when I don’t have to do anything at all to log my fitness data, but scanning a barcode is a nice step forward.

We’ve just wrapped up our third year of doing TechStars and not only do we have some interesting companies coming out of Boulder, we also have a bunch coming out of our new Boston program as well. In all, we had 19 companies go through the program this summer. I expect at least 14 of the 2009 companies will eventually close their seed rounds, which is similar to the ratio we’ve seen in past years.

Last year we brought some of the companies with the most progress out to Silicon Valley and it was a big hit.   So this year, we’re doing it again and we already have well over 100 investors registered to attend. We are taking about a dozen of this years brand new startups to Mountain View where we’ll be doing a demo day on September 30th. These are the companies who are currently raising money and that have substantial product and customer progress. We’ll also bring one or two companies from past years who are now raising follow on financing.

This isn’t your usual VC pitch event – these are fun eight minute pitches and attendees will get to see all the companies in the morning. We’ll wrap up with lunch and some networking.

If you are an accredited angel investor or VC, or if you know someone who might like to attend on the morning of September 30th, 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 fun day.

One of my favorite lines from TechStars is that “investor day is just the beginning”.  In this great wrap up of the TechStars 2009 video series, David Cohen says it around 6:30.

The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 12 | The Beginning from Andrew on Vimeo.

All twelve episodes are up on the TechStars website.  I think Megan Leigh Sweeney of Alpine Light Pictures just did an amazing job with this project. 

There was an enormous amount of blog traffic about the TechStars Boulder 2009 class.  Following is some some of it (the blog posts from the teams are particularly awesome and really capture what they got out of the program.)

Mentors / Investors: Fred Wilson, Todd Vernon, Matt Blumberg, Jeffrey Kalmikoff, Don Dodge, Chris DeVore, Mark Solon, Andrew Hyde, Brad Feld

Teams: Vanilla, Next Big Sound, Everlater, Mailana, Spry, Retel

General: TechCrunch, Rocky Radar, The Deal,  Chad James, Rob La Gesse

I’m sure there are others – if I missed you just post the URL in the comments.  Thanks tons to everyone that has been involved in TechStars over the past three years!

I’m really looking forward to the TechStars Boston 2009 Investor Day on September 10th.  Even though it falls right in the middle of my Q3 off-the-grid vacation, I’ve gotten special dispensation from Amy to attend.

Even though investor day happened last week, this week’s TechStars’s video – Practice Like You Play – is the lead up to investor day.  Watch the Everlater guys kick Seth’s ass on bikes (plus they look so cute in their Everlater kit).

Don’t forget to live life.

I’m heading out for the first run in 10 days since I hurt my back playing tennis.  It’s a beautiful day here in Keystone and I’m looking forward to enjoying the mountains for a while.

I slept late, had breakfast with Amy, and then went through my morning information routine.  In addition to leveling up in Mafia Wars and Pirates, checking to make sure my Farm didn’t need harvesting until later today, and making sure my workers were feed and working the rides in Roller Coaster Kingdom, I ran across a pair of very inspiring blog posts.

Fred Wilson wrote a great post titled Doubling Down.  In it, he describes the biggest double down of his life – his decision around the Flatiron portfolio in late 2000 / early 2001.  In addition to a good story, he ends with some sage advice about how to think about doubling down.

Mark O’Sullivan, the CEO of Vanilla (one of the TechStars 2009 Boulder companies) also wrote an inspiring post titled TechStar for Life.  In it, he captures the essence of TechStars along with showing his depth as a person and entrepreneur.

While scanning my Facebook news feed this morning, I saw one more gem posted by Shawn Broderick (who runs TechStars Boston).  It’s the .sig of the day and says “How about instead of spreading the wealth around we spread the work ethic around?  Amen, brother.”  Having just come off an amazing summer with the Boston TechStars, I can comfortably say these guys all have an incredible work ethic that reinforces how important innovation and entrepreneurship is to our country and society as a whole.

I’m lucky to know and work with a large number of people that I put in the “strong work ethic club”, including many who are on their first venture as well as those that have been at it for a long time.  There is a common thread that runs through all of them – they believe in innovation, entrepreneurship, and getting things done that matter.  I’d like to think that I’ve been in this club my entire life and hope to retain my membership until the lights go out, whatever I’m doing.

Today is an exciting day in Boulder as it’s TechStars Investor / Demo Day 2009.  The unveiling of the 2009 class happens in a few hours to a large audience of mentors, angel investors, VCs, and the local tech gang.

I’m super proud of the 2009 Boulder TechStars gang.  This is the third year that we’ve done TechStars and it just gets better every year.  Once again, David Cohen, his team, and the Boulder mentor community have done a masterful job of working with ten “pre-seed” companies to get them up and running.

I’ve gotten to spent the past 36 hours with a couple of good friends, including Dick Costolo, Fred Wilson, Stewart Alsop, and Mike Marquez who have come to town for the event as well as other meetings.  Boulder has been buzzing all summer – today should be a fun one.

Good luck TechStars!

This is an exciting week for TechStars Boulder as Thursday is Investor / Demo Day.  As I was getting reacquainted with the early morning view from my condo in Boulder and pondered the great town I live it, I came across a few fun things.

First was a long post from the guys at Occipital (TechStars Boulder 2008) titled 2009 at Occipital: From the Hangar to the Crawler.  In this post, Occipital reminisces about the path they’ve traveled so far this year, including the creation of RedLaser, ClearCam, and OBE-1 (the Occipital Business Engine).  Look for another really interesting thing from them later this week.

Occipital Update from Jeffrey Powers on Vimeo.

Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, wrote about his experience moving Lijit from “the burbs” (ok Louisville) to downtown Boulder in his post Does Startup Location Matter?  As someone who had an office in Superior for six years before moving to downtown Boulder, I completely agree with Todd’s view of “Now after another year of Lijit under my belt and exposure to Boulder I get it and would never go back to remote model. What changed?” Read the post for Todd’s answer.

If you are coming to Boulder for TechStars Investor / Demo Day, I look forward to seeing you!