Brad Feld - Do More Faster India

At Techstars, we practice the principles outlined in this book. We run intensive, three‐month programs for startup entrepreneurs—not a full year, not six months, and definitely not 9‐to‐5. Our accelerators remove all the distractions and force the entrepreneurs to focus solely on their startup. We do this once a year in each location that we run an accelerator. We bring together 10 startups (from between 500 and 1,000 applicants) with around 100 local mentors, who are top entrepreneurs and investors, for each three‐month program, then focus intensive mentorship on them and tie them into our global network. After 13 weeks, the program culminates with a series of events during which the startups pitch their ideas to hundreds of investors.

Another key ingredient is mentorship. You’ll often hear us describe Techstars as “mentorship driven.” We carefully select people who are interested in deeply engaging with entrepreneurs—not simply to get the inside track on investing or give high‐level feedback or tell biographical stories. Our mentors are selected because they want to help entrepreneurs avoid roadblocks that will prevent them from getting their idea to the market. Each of the 10,000 mentors who participates in Techstars accelerators or community programs is asked to focus on a single company or, if she has a great deal of free time, at most two. We carefully avoid fly‐by mentorship in which someone successful or famous stops by an accelerator to impart some generic wisdom and give shallow feedback on each company. At Techstars, we’re only interested in deep and engaged mentorship, where mentors want to develop a relationship with an entrepreneur and be involved for the long haul. Our approach results in around five mentors working closely with each company. This is the magic of Techstars—a focused group of amazing mentors paired with each company to help them excel and accelerate.

Techstars is also about community. When we started Techstars, one of our primary goals was to connect and improve our local startup community in Boulder. We wanted more passionate and skilled businesspeople in Boulder, engaged local angel investors, and entrepreneurs. We wanted Boulder to be known to the world as a credible place for talented entrepreneurs. We wanted the best, brightest, and most experienced entrepreneurs to become mentors and work together on new and exciting startups. Fundamentally, we wanted our community to be better. Our mentors help for the same reasons.

We believe that a culture of sustained mentorship is the secret weapon of successful startup communities. Because of Techstars, we’ve noticed that mentorship and community eventually come full circle. The founders of early Techstars companies are now mentors to the founders of newer ones. Some of the founders who have been through Techstars are starting their second, third, or fourth company. Alumni of the accelerators have started making their own angel investments, and several venture capital funds have now been started by alumni. The life‐changing value of highly engaged mentorship is now ingrained into the very fabric of who they are. In turn, they give back every day.

Today, more than a decade after founding Techstars, we are on the path to achieving its vision as the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. We work with corporate partners like Target, Ford, Barclays, Amazon, and over 50 others to supercharge growth by accelerating innovation and cultural transformation. Startup Week, Startup Weekend, and Startup Accelerators have helped to create tens of billions of dollars in value and tens of thousands of jobs. We currently provide our Startup Weekend in 630 cities in 110 countries with over 70,000 attendees annually. Startup Week takes place in 147 cities in 16 countries with over 100,000 participants annually. And our three‐month Startup Accelerators have helped more than 1,700 companies.

In 2019 we launched a new initiative called Techstars Studio, which will allow Techstars to source new company concepts from Techstars alumni founders, community leaders, venture capitalists, mentors, and corporate partners. The Techstars Studio will then build prototypes, test market adoption, and select the most promising concepts for launch. The first Techstars Studio will be in Boulder, just like the first Techstars accelerator was in 2007. As with the expansion of Techstars Accelerators around the world, we expect Techstars Studios to follow a similar expansion path. We are especially excited about the founding team of Techstars Studios. Along with the leadership of David Cohen (the co‐CEO of Techstars) will be Isaac Saldana, founder of SendGrid, and Mike Rowan, former VP of SendGrid Labs. We’ve worked closely with Isaac and Mike over the years and are psyched to have another chance to create something with them from the ground floor.

One of the things that sets Techstars apart from others is the consistency of what we do and the results we achieve. We frequently hear from participants in our programs—startup founders, mentors, corporate partners, and attendees at our Startup events—that regardless of location, program, or Techstars leaders, the same high‐quality standards and value are delivered. We attribute this to our Code of Conduct, which permeates all that we do at Techstars and is rigorously enforced. 2 We hold ourselves and all others in the Techstars community to the highest levels of conduct because we believe we are ambassadors for the Techstars community, and we live in the public. Our code has three tenets: we give first, we act with integrity, and we treat all others with respect.

By giving first, we mean helping others whenever possible, and appreciating the help others give us. By acting with integrity, we mean being honest and transparent, protecting sensitive information, communicating with our investors, and disclosing conflicts of interest. And by treating others with respect, we mean committing to an open, nonhostile workplace, having zero tolerance for any form of discrimination or harassment, avoiding gossip, and promoting fair pay for equal work.

We believe all companies should operate with these principles, and by doing so they will achieve a harmony that leads to higher levels of engagement and better productivity, and will attract talented people at all levels.

In addition to our global reach, Techstars is committed to making an impact. The mission of our Techstars Foundation is to foster diversity and inclusion throughout the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We work with nonprofit organizations like Student Dream, Change Catalyst, and Patriot Boot Camp to help individuals and organizations make a positive impact in their local communities. Brad and his wife Amy Batchelor’s foundation, the Anchor Point Foundation, actively supports a broad range of efforts by individuals and organizations to improve their communities.

Although Techstars has grown significantly over the past decade, we remain committed to the core idea of Techstars: helping entrepreneurs with an idea to create a sustainable business. We are the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed.

Co‐CEO David Brown with team members from around the world.

1 1Techstars is growing rapidly. For a list of locations and a timeline with milestones, see http://history.techstars.com/.

2 2See our Code of Conduct here: https://www.techstars.com/code-of-conduct/.

Moving back to the United States, and a mix CD, changed my life.

In 2010, I moved to Boston for love—to follow my wife who was starting her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Ten years earlier, after graduating with a computer science degree from the University of Texas at Austin as an immigrant student from India, I became part of the founding team at a startup called United Devices. We had a fantastic run. I learned a ton as a developer, a team lead, and a product manager. My final role was to start and build operations in India and Europe. I set up and groomed our pre‐ and post‐sales organization in Europe, and eventually blossomed into a sales leader.