TechStars New York

About TechStars:
"TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program. We run a three month long program in Boston (MA), Boulder (CO), New York City (NY) and Seattle (WA) once each year. We’re very selective - hundreds of companies apply and we only take about ten companies per city. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, three months of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program"



I met with Adam Rothenberg, Associate Director of TechStars New York. My first impression of the building was that this met the stereotypical tech startup space - people playing ping pong, stocked fridge and snacks and people glued to their monitors. This was their quiet time between programs but there was still a buzz and I wanted to sit down and code something there and then. TechStars has some serious 'cool' value.

The program attracts a huge number of qualified applicants making it very difficult to whittle this down to the 10 successful companies. TechStars tries to meet as many of applicants in person as possible and application videos (usually a short 2 minute online video) make it a bit easier to get a feel for the applicants and their businesses.

The model/financials for this program are very interesting. The program is funded as an investment (chiefly by angels and VCs), operating expenses and investment in the chosen companies then come from this pool.

All mentors are volunteers and each business company works with upwards of 10 lead mentors. With this large amount of mentoring time you really do need a team to start the business. TechStars really values a team of entrepreneurs over single operators because a startup is just too much work for one person."

I purchased a copy of Davids new book prior to flying out and it is jam packed with case studies and examples of great tech startups and the benefits of the program. It points people to open source legal documents and other information on their web page.

Thanks to Adam and the team for their time. Thankyou also to David Cohen, one of the founders of Techstars, for his assistance and for introducing me to the New York team.