Equity Back Guarantee

Today Techstars announced an “equity back guarantee” for any company that goes through the Techstars program starting in 2015. We’ve been talking about this for a while. One of Techstars’ matras is #givefirst which builds off my “give before you get” philosophy that I highlight in my book Startup Communities as a key part to building a great startup community. As we talked about this, we realized that we could apply this directly to Techstars. We periodically encounter founders during the selection process who question the value of Techstars. It’s not that they don’t value it, it’s that they aren’t sure it’ll be worth it. Our solution historically has been to introduce them to Techstars alumni , which almost always results in the founders understanding the value of the program and jumping in with both feet. ...