Want to work for a startup?
Have you ever wanted to work for a web startup, but aren’t sure where to look or how it might be different from a big company gig? Come check out the TechStars Smackdown event on October 12th in Boulder.
It’s not a typical job fair. The event starts with a panel of entrepreneurs that will answer questions about what it means to work for a startup – common questions such as salary levels, equity versus salary compensation, work/life balance, and job security. Then 12 Boulder companies (Vacation Rental Partner, ScriptPad, Rezora, SendGrid, Omniar, StatsMix, Spot Influence, Graphic.ly, Snapabug, Next Big Sound, Orbotix, BlipSnips, and Gnip) will each get 5 minutes to sell you on why working for their startup will be a great career move.
The event ends with networking so you can meet the founders of these companies in person.
It’s free and open to the public, but requires a reservation. Check it out – you might be the key employee that helps propel that company to stardom.
TechStars is coming to New York City. The first program runs from 1/10/11 to 4/8/11. Applications are open now. The NY mentor list is stunning and includes the following:
Phin Barnes (First Round Capital), Alex Blum (KickApps), Matt Blumberg (Return Path), Brad Burnham (USV), Jeff Clavier, Dennis Crowley (FourSquare), Chris Dixon (Founder Collective), Roger Ehrenberg, Darren Herman (The Media Kitchen), Jennifer Hyman (Rent The Runway), Alex Iskold (Adaptive Blue), David Karp (Tumblr), Zach Klein (Boxee, Vimeo), Evan Korth (NYU/HackNY), Mike Lazerow (Buddy Media), Ben Lerer (ThrillList), Sam Lessin (Drop.io), Joey Levin (MindSpark, IAC), Howard Lindzon (StockTwits), Eric Litman (Medialets), John Maloney (Tumblr), Dave McClure, Hilary Mason (Bit.ly/HackNY), Jeremie Miller (Telehash), Howard Morgan (First Round Capital), Charlie O’Donnell (First Round Capital), Eric Paley (Founder Collective), Raphael Poplock (ESPN), Alex Rainert (FourSquare), Avner Ronen (Boxee), Naveen Selvadurai (FourSquare), Justin Shaffer (HotPotato), Tim Shey (NextNewNetworks), Andy Smith (Daily Burn), Rex Sorgatz (Kinda Sorta Media), Jon Steinberg (BuzzFeed), Vinicius Vacanti (YipIt), Albert Wenger (USV), Fred Wilson (USV)
David Cohen, who is relocating to NY for January to March of next year, and David Tisch (I’m encouraging him to change his name to just Tisch to save me the brain damage of “which David”) will be running the program. When we went about setting up the NY program, we evolved our funding model to be as inclusive of the local VC / angel community as we could. We’ve created a long term funding model, which I expect David Cohen will write about at some point, that we implemented in TechStars Seattle and will be rolling out to Boulder and Boston this year. As a result, the investors in TechStars NY include many local financial investors such as:
AOL Ventures, DFJ Gotham Ventures, FirstMark Capital, First Round Capital, Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Jove Ventures, Lerer Ventures, RRE Ventures, Social Leverage, Village Ventures, Zelkova Ventures, Peter Hershberg, Josh Stylman, David Tisch, Nate Westheimer, and Kal Vepuri.
When David first talked to me about his idea for TechStars in 2006, if you had asked me if we’d have Boulder, Boston, Seattle, and NY programs up and running by 2010 I would have chuckled (a real chuckle, not my evil laugh chuckle.) The Seattle program is crushing it already and I’m excited to go spend time up there. And I can’t wait to see the NY program start cranking.
We’ve got a few other interesting pieces of TechStars news coming over the next month – look out for them! And, if you are an entrepreneur interested in the TechStars NY program, apply now so you can come to TechStars for a Day on 11/20/10.
Last week I co-hosted a lunch for Jared Polis with Kyle Lefkoff at Boulder Ventures which Jud Valeski covered nicely in his post titled Luncheon with Jared Polis. Jared was one of the first people I met when I moved to Boulder (thanks to an introduction from my long time friend Dave Jilk) and we’ve been great friends and partners on a number of fronts ever since.
The attendees at lunch were a bunch of Boulder entrepreneurs in three areas – software / Internet, biotech, and natural foods. While I spend almost all of my time focused on software / Internet, it’s always interesting to hang out with some of the Boulder entrepreneurs in other segments to hear what they are thinking and working on.
During lunch, I reflected some on the number of times I’ve heard in the past year from people outside of Boulder about how Boulder has become a nationally known entrepreneurial center. The comments come from all over and are often followed by the question “how can we do what you guys have accomplished in Boulder in our city?”
While I was listening to everyone and being proud of the little 100,000 person town I call home, I thought of a new phrase that I hadn’t used before: “entrepreneurial density.” I wondered out loud if Boulder was the “highest per capita collection of entrepreneurs in the US.” I have no idea if this is true but from my travels around the US it feels like something that might be true.
On Saturday morning as I was filling my car up with gas, I ran into someone I know that works at Rally Software. This kind of thing happens all the time – I’m constantly running into, sitting next to, or just saying hi as I wander down the street to people that work at startups in Boulder.
Entrepreneurial density isn’t just the “number of entrepreneurs per capita”, but it’s the “number of people that work at entrepreneurial companies per capita.” It gets even bigger when you include students and calculate the “(number of people that work at entrepreneurial companies + the number of students) per capita.
As ED = ((entrepreneurial_emps + students) / adults) approaches 1, you get complete entrepreneurial saturation. I’m going to guess that Boulder’s Entrepreneurial Density using this equation is somewhere between 0.50 and 0.75, but this is just a guess. I’m curious if anyone out there has a real way to calculate this.
On Wednesday I did two interviews with Mark Suster – one for This Week and Venture Capital and then one before the LaunchPad LA event. TechZulu recorded and broadcasted the second one. The first three minutes are kind of funny as we didn’t know they were recording so we were horsing around talking about funny drinks and the legalization of a particular type of medicine.
The actual investor that happens over the next 45 minutes is about TechStars, entrepreneurial communities, and some of the stuff I invest in. Mark does a good interview – he can have me back anytime.
The last two episodes of the Founders 2010 series are up.
Episode 11 is called Hard at Play. Special guests include Howard Lindzon (StockTwits CEO), David Brown (one of the co-founders of TechStars), Rob La Gesse from RackSpace (and the sponsor of this video series), Lewis Gersh (Metamorphic Partners), Josh Fraser (Eventvue co-founder – TechStars Boulder 2007), and scenes from the annual ping pong tournament.
“Hard at Play” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 11 from TechStars on Vimeo.
Episode 12 is called Demo Day. It’s a double episode as it’s the grand finale of the TechStars program and the beginning of the rest of the lives of the companies that participated in TechStars this summer. It’s a winner – just watch it.
“Demo Day” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 12 from TechStars on Vimeo.
A week ago I had just gotten home after a month in Homer, Alaska. I was totally chilled out – I worked plenty in July but had very little physical human interaction with anyone other than Amy. I’m sitting here in my Boulder condo today thinking about the entrepreneurial tour de force that was the last six days. I think I interacted with more different people each day than I did cumulatively over the previous 30 days in Homer.
The Boulder New Tech Meetup double header (Tuesday and Wednesday) started things off. The second Boulder Open Angel Forum delivered. Then we had TechStars Demo Day which was amazing, followed by an Open House at Jive Software (they acquired TechStars Boulder 2007 company Filtrbox last year and are growing like crazy), a Return Path board dinner at Black Cat, and the the TechStars Afterparty at the Draft House. Friday saw a Return Path board meeting and lunch with the folks at Return Path followed by TEDxBoulder on Saturday. Oh, and in between I had piles of “regular work.”
There were numerous blog posts and tweets from the week, but my favorite post about an event from the week is up on the True Ventures web site titled On The Road With TechStars Boulder. In addition to all the locals, there were a huge number of folks from out of town who participated in the various events and I smiled a big smile when I read the post.
Last night during the TEDxBoulder intermission break, I had a few quiet moments to myself as I wandered around the grounds of the Boulder Chautauqua. I was filled with a deep satisfaction about the amazingness of the people of Boulder. While there are lots of other great places in the world, I am most at home here. And it’s good to be back home.
I attended the second Open Angel Forum in Boulder tonight. Simply put, it was dynamite.
This is an intense week for seed stage stuff in Boulder as TechStars Demo Day is tomorrow where 11 new companies are having their coming out party. The Boulder New Tech Meetup had a special double header (Tuesday and Wednesday) where six teams practiced their pitches to a room of 300+ people on Tuesday followed up by the other five on Wednesday. The streets are crawling with angel and early stage investors – local and from other parts of the country – and the vibe feels great as tomorrow is the big day.
I had high expectations for Open Angel Forum after the first one in Boulder in the spring. Jason Calacanis came up with a great format when he created Open Angel Forum and David Cohen has done an awesome job of hosting and coordinating the two Boulder events.
The format is ideal. 20 qualified angel investors – to qualify you must be active making angel investments (at least three in the past year). Six companies all raising seed rounds ($1m or less). Dinner and drinks paid for by sponsors. No fee to either the entrepreneurs or the angels. Casual setting (we did it in the TechStars Bunker) – some mingling before it got started, followed by five minute pitches + five minutes of Q&A for each company. The whole thing took an hour – just the right amount of time.
All six companies – Pavlov Games, Rapid.io, Adapt.ly, Awesomebox, PlaceIQ, and BrowseAndPay did excellent jobs. They were each high quality and totally fundable and I heard several commitments happen during the evening. I left about 45 minutes after the pitches ended – the event was still in high gear and with Jason leading a table full of angels and entrepreneurs in a game of Texas Hold’em while the beer drinking and discussions continued.
The thing that is so cool to me about this is that it’s a super high signal to noise ratio – all the companies had clear, tight, and relevant pitches and the entire audience was accessible angel investors. No BS, no posturing, no fees for anything – just entrepreneurs and angels doing their thing.
Over two days, 17 early stage software / Internet companies are having high quality exposure to angel and seed investors in Boulder. And on Saturday, we have TEDx Boulder. It’s good to be back in town.
This week’s special guest are Jeff Clavier from SoftTech VC and Rob Hayes from First Round Capital. Among other things, you get to hear Jeff define the Three Asses Rule and Rob explain what happens after you finish the TechStars program. As a special bonus, there’s a cute clip of me near the end watching the incredible record tennis match between Isner and Mahut. And some funny running footage. And a glider. And Ari Newman and how sandpaper and rubbing alcohol intersect with the fundraising process.
“People Product Market” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 10 from TechStars on Vimeo.
Eric Ries is this week’s guest star on The Founders. Eric is an incredible speaker and is traveling the world on a mission to help people stop wasting other people’s time. If you don’t follow Eric’s thoughts on Lean Startups on his blog Lessons Learned, you should.
You get a little taste of the shift Omniar is making while they wander around the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art along with a surprise birthday party for David Cohen at The Lazy Dog on a beautiful Boulder evening. And a few special bonus visitors. And some great shots of Boulder in the summertime. I love Homer but I’m starting to miss Boulder.
“Conditions of Extreme Uncertainty” The Founders | TechStars Boulder | Episode 9 from TechStars on Vimeo.