Techstars

For the next 90 days, Amy and I are matching every gift to the Techstars Foundation on a 1:2 basis up to $100,000 from us. Our overall goal is to raise at least $300,000 for the Techstars Foundation by the end of the summer. If Techstars has touched you in any positive way, I’d request that you consider making a grant to the Techstars Foundation . This request includes anyone who has gone through a Techstars accelerator, done a Startup Weekend, participated in a Startup Week, receives Startup Digest, or has been a mentor or investor in any Techstars company or program. Or anyone else who has been positively motivated or influenced by Techstars in any way. ...

Techstars had an incredible year in 2015 and grew the organization on many dimensions. If you want a full view of what Techstars is – and is doing – today, take a look at the 2015 Global Impact Report. https://impact.techstars.com/ To everyone who has been involved in Techstars in any way, thank you!

The current grant cycle for the Techstars Foundation is now open. We are providing grants, scholarships, and sponsorships to underrepresented groups in entrepreneurship, including women and minorities. Apply here . And, if you want to contribute financially to support the mission of the foundation (a 501c3) – donate here .

There are two common ways to scale a system – horizontally or vertically . If you are a software engineer, you probably get this instinctively. If you don’t know what this is, let’s work with the simple Wikipedia definition which is pretty good. Scale Vertically (or “scale up”): Add resources to a single node in a system, typically involving the addition of CPUs or memory to a single computer. Scale Horizontally (or “scale out”): Add more nodes to a system, such as adding a new computer to a distributed software application. Think of vertical scaling as building a bigger monolithic machine and horizontal scaling as add more machines to the system. Or, if you want a business construct, vertically scaling would be adding more people in one location while horizontal scaling would be creating a bunch of new locations, optimally with a similar footprint to the previous locations. ...

This is my last blog post of 2015. I’m taking a break from a bunch of things for a while. #GiveFirst is the title of my next book, which will come out sometime in 2016. I’ve started working on it and realize that I have a finite amount of daily writing energy. Since I no longer wake up every morning at 5am (I don’t use an alarm clock anymore), I have a less predictable morning routine. As a result, my writing times are more random and chaotic, which I like, but means that it’s harder to have big chunks of time on a consistent basis. ...

Techstars Boulder Demo Day is this week. It always marks the true end of summer for me and it’s a reminder that I stalled out on my Techstars Mentor Manifesto series of blog posts. The last one I wrote was #11: Clearly Commit To Mentor Or Do Not. Either Is Fine . It’s an important life rule – either commit or don’t commit – but choose! Mentor Manifesto #12 is also a good life rule: Know What You Don’t Know. Say I Don’t Know When You Don’t Know. ...

Today Techstars announced that it has acquired UP Global, including the organization’s Startup Weekend , Startup Week , Startup Next, and Startup Digest programs. This is great news for entrepreneurs everywhere. Both organizations have a deep seated community-centric ethos that aims to accelerate the pace of innovation through community-focused, entrepreneurial-led business creation. UP is now in 600 cities, 120 countries and six continents. Techstars now has over 18 programs worldwide and counting. ...

Scott Maxwell of OpenView Partners had an awesome post up this morning titled The Truth About VC Value-Add . Go read it – I’ll still be here when you get back. You may recognize Scott’s name – I wrote about him in my post When VCs Don’t Bullshit You . The next person on the list of supporters is Scott Maxwell at OpenView Venture Partners. Scott and I were both on the Microsoft VC Advisory Board that Dan’l Lewin organized and ran. While we had never invested together, I felt like Scott was a kindred spirit. We both spoke truth to Microsoft execs, even though they mostly ignored us. I remember a meeting with the Microsoft Mobile 6.0 team as they were pitching us their vision for Microsoft Mobile 6.5. Both Scott and I, on iPhone 1’s or 2’s at the time, told them they were completely and totally fucked. They ignored us. A year or two later they had less than 3% market share on mobile. We had a blast together and as we went out to raise our Foundry 2007 fund, Scott made several introductions which resulted in two wonderful, long term LP relationships. ...

I’m hanging out with Morris Wheeler and his family for a few days in Cleveland. I first met Morris through my friend Howard Diamond, currently the CEO of MobileDay (which I’m on the board of). Both Morris and Howard are extraordinary Techstars mentors, so I was motivated this morning to knock out another post in my Deconstructing The Mentor Manifesto series as foreplay for me starting to work on my next book, #GiveFirst . ...

As we continue deconstructing the Techstars Mentor Manifesto , today’s item is about keeping information confidential. Techstars operates on a FriendDA concept. It’s not official, but it’s understood that the entrepreneurs are going to bare their soul, be completely open and transparent, and not ask anyone to sign anything. In exchange, mentors will hold information in confidence. This can be tricky. It’s hard to know what is confidential, a secret, something someone is merely pondering, a brilliant new idea, something that conflicts with something else you know about, or, well, something that is going to make someone upset if it gets around. ...