Tag: techstars
If you want to go to TechStars for a Day in Boston, today is the last day to apply for the Boston program early application deadline. If you haven’t heard of TechStars for a Day, it’s a one day event that immerses you in the TechStars program, exposes you to the mentors, and increases your visibility with the selection committee. Why wouldn’t you do this? I have no clue.
If you are contemplating applying to Techstars Boston, stop procrastinating and apply now. If you are curious about how some of the TechStars Boston class of 2011 have done, take a look at the post titled 2011 Funding: Boston. And yes, I plan to be in Boston for the second half of January so I’ll be at the first few days of the program for everyone who gets in.
I’m about to head out to TechStars New York Demo Day. Our investment in SideTour – one of the TechStars New York companies – was announced yesterday and I’m excited to introduce them along with hanging out with all of the other great entrepreneurs from this session. If you’ve been watching the Bloomberg TechStars series, we are doing the finale tonight where we meet with all of the teams and see where they are six months after the program ended. It’ll be happening live at 9pm ET/PT.
Since I haven’t yet figured out how to be in two places at the same time, I ended up recording a short video for a meeting on entrepreneurial communities that I was invited to. In it, I talk about my first of four principles of entrepreneurial communities, specifically that entrepreneurial communities must be led by entrepreneurs.
Following is the video along with my notes.
Four key principles of entrepreneurial communities
– led by entrepreneurs
– 20 year view from today
– engage the entire entrepreneurial stack
– continually get fresh blood into the system
briefly focus on the first – entrepreneurial communities have to be led by entrepreneurs
entrepreneurial communities have leaders and feeders
feeders include everyone that does things that are inputs into the entrepreneurial community
– lawyers
– accountants
– angel investors
– venture capitalists
– government
leaders are the entrepreneurs
– you don’t need a lot to make a huge difference
– a half a dozen is a great starting point
– but they have to commit for 20 years from today
all of the feeders have a role
– some feeders try to be leaders – this never works
– rhythm is wrong: 20 years vs. 4 of government
– personality is wrong: lead vs. support
– incentives are wrong: job vs. creative act
if the leadership of an entrepreneurial community is co-opted by local government
– there might be short term activity
– but it will fail over the long term to become sustainable
remember: the entrepreneurs need to be leaders
if you are a feeder:
– identify them
– encourage them
– support them
but let the entrepreneurs be the leaders
Are you building a cloud startup? If so, apply to TechStars Cloud today!
Earlier this month TechStars announced its newest accelerator program, TechStars Cloud, and we are looking for the best cloud startups we can find to go through the inaugural program.
We’ve gotten a lot of questions about what constitutes a “cloud startup”, so here is a discussion of what we think are cloud startups. We think we can do something special with this program and have big expectations for the results we’ll see when we connect early stage cloud startups to the best cloud mentors and companies.
If you haven’t heard, we have upped the initial funding in the program to 118k.
The official TechStars Store is up. Shirts, hats, hoodies, and stickers. And of course the books Do More Faster and Venture Deals. What – no sweatbands? Cohen – we need sweatbands. C’mon man.
Don’t forget to check out the new TechStars website while you are at it. And apply for one of the upcoming programs, including the brand new TechStars Cloud program
Today, TechStars announced that they’ve raised $24 million from a broad syndicate of investors to fund an additional $100,000 for every TechStars company going forward. The investors include Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, SoftBank Capital, SVB Financial Group, RRE Ventures, Right Side Capital Management and TechStars alumni.
There are lots of good articles on the news – two of them are at TechCrunch (Startup Incubator TechStars Raises $24M, Increases Funding For Each Company By $100K) and Launch (TechStars Offering Extra $100K to All Companies with New $24M Fund.)
One of the principles of TechStars has been to be as inclusive as possible for the VC and angel investors in the communities in which we run programs. To date, there are over 75 VCs and angels that are funding TechStars programs in Boulder, Boston, Seattle, and New York. There are many more who have invested in individual TechStars companies.
With the launch of the new TechStars Cloud program, there are now over 60 new companies a year going through TechStars and getting launched. At $100k / company, TechStars has raised enough to fund each company with the incremental $100k for the next three to four years (that’s a hint that there will be more programs coming.)
When I think about all the amazing investors – and the hundreds of mentors – involved in TechStars, I’m deeply humbled to be a part of it.
Before we invested in MakerBot, we bought and assembled a Thing-O-Matic. When I say we, I mean me, Jason, and Ross. It took us about 20 hours (Jason and I did the first half; Jason and Ross did the second half) and was a blast – think of it as an adult lego project. Our Thing-O-Matic has been steadily printing stuff – you can play a game of chess with our Thing-O-Matic pieces. the next time you are in my office.
As part of the endless series of Amazing Deals I bring you from my deal site, today’s offer is a fully assembled Thing-O-Matic. If you want your own 3D printer, but you don’t want to assemble it, you can buy it fully assembled for $2,500. But, through the magic of daily deals, there are 20 available for a 20% discount ($2,000). This is a one time offer from my friends at MakerBot so grab ’em while they are available.
In additional TechStars Cloud launched today along with the first episode of TechStars on Bloomberg TV.
And finally, for all of you that have written asking for a “Convertible Debt Series” like our term sheet series, we’ve just started one on AsktheVC.com. The first post is up and introduces the series – we’ll be working through all of the terms in a convertible debt deal over the next few weeks.
On This Week In TechStars #6, David Cohen interviews Jason Mendelson on the making of our hard hitting documentary on VCs music video “I’m A VC.” The interview happens in Jason’s basement music studio where much of I’m A VC was written, composed, sung, recorded, and – well – whatever you do in a music studio.
If you haven’t yet watched I’m A VC, what are you waiting for? And, if you have a connection to Stephen Colbert or Jon Stewart, give me a shout as we’d love to help them educate the world about venture capitalists, along with helping promote our book “Venture Deals: Be Smarter Than Your Lawyer and Venture Capitalist.” Mendelson on the Colbert Report – doesn’t that sound cool?
I’m back in Boulder after living in Paris for the month of July and Tuscany for the month of August. I had an incredible time in both places, got a lot done, enjoyed being with Amy continuously, and had a very successful experiment of “working in some other place for a month” that I intend to repeat many times over the course of the rest of my life.
David Cohen (TechStars CEO) and his wife Jil were two of our many visitors in Tuscany. We stayed at a magical place called Casetta run by Xenia Lemos who we now consider a lifelong friend. David did a ThisWeekIn TechStars segment with me while we were together at Casetta in which you get to see the place, watch me swim laps in a pool while David interviews me about Occipital, the book Venture Deals, volatility in the stock markets and how entrepreneurs should think about it, and then some thoughts at the end of work-life balance.
I had an awesome time, but I’m glad to be back in Boulder.
Vote For My SXSW Panel – An Inside Look at BigDoor’s Venture Funding
I’ve thrown my hat into the SXSW Panel Picker this year – please click here to upvote my panel titled An Inside Look at BigDoor’s Venture Funding.
I’ve never presented at a SXSW panel because I usually like to stay flexible and check out whatever’s interesting, but we came up with an idea that got me excited enough to commit. An Inside Look at BigDoor’s Venture Funding is going to be me, Keith Smith (BigDoor CEO), and Andy Sack (Lighter Capital, Founder’s Co-op, and the TechStars Seattle Managing Director). Both are good friends of mine and have really interesting philosophies about startup funding.
I think Keith was once quoted as saying “I’d rather give up my left nut than give up equity in my company” and having gotten to know him over the past couple years, I don’t think that’s far from the truth. Keith has over a decade of experience running startup companies and is extremely passionate about BigDoor, which made him aggressive in any discussions involving giving up a stake to both Founder’s Co-op and Foundry Group.
Andy’s a serial entrepreneur who has spent the past few years working on ways to make the funding process better for entrepreneurs. He led the first round of funding for BigDoor through Founder’s Co-op, but used a creative structure, partly because Keith is such a stickler on valuation. Andy and Keith will discuss this more on the panel, but they used a RevenueLoan approach to bridge the gap on price.
The RevenueLoan structure is something new Andy’s been working on at Lighter Capital, where instead of making an equity investment, they get a set percent of the company’s revenues over time. It’s a cool idea that worked out well for Andy and Keith, since it got Keith the funding he needed on terms that Andy was comfortable with.
As a side note, Lighter Capital is the leader in a new funding approach called revenue based finance which is an interesting alternative for entrepreneurs to fund growth in their small business. I may write about this more in the future, but in the meantime Lighter Capital is funding an “explosive” company in August (you’ve got two days left to apply), a fun idea to keep small business funding interesting and worth checking out if you need 100K to 500K right now.
During the panel, I plan to bring Keith and Andy water to support them, as is my typical role. I actually didn’t like Keith’s business when I first came across it but as we got to know each other he did an awesome job keeping me in the loop, listening to my feedback, and iterating, so after about six months, I came around especially to Keith but also to BigDoor’s business. I’ll be giving my thoughts on how Keith convinced me to invest by just running his company and interacting with me over an extended period of time rather than by pitching me.
If you are into this, upvote our panel. Either way, I’ll see you at SXSW.