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Comment by thinbeige | Hacker News Reader

I find Techstars in many regards underwhelming:

- The people behind, from top to down feel uninspired and could work at any random corporation; they just do not fit or appear entrepreneurial at all

- Their white labeling/partnering with corporations is super strange: weird corporations, awkward demos days with even weirder people running around having absolutely no relation to the actual ecosystem; I guess they get a lot of money for creating those joint accelerators and that's the point: it doesn't feel like proper seed investing what they do but rather like a too expensive event management service for clueless corporations

- No clear positioning; for what do they stand? Being just another accelerator shouldn't let you raise any money in 2017

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Alum here. Throwaway.

The value they add it limited at best. The worst mistake they made was broadening the program past NYC and Boulder to take money from corporations and dilute the mentor/partner pool. My advice to other founders is to stay far away.

Here's the key to running a successful accelerator:

1. find people that would be able to succeed in any environment

2. invite them to work for you under your accelerator. Don't do anything particularly special to help them

3. take credit for their success when they inevitably succeed (see #1)

IMO, the technical teams with very little or no understanding of sales & marketing are the ones who would get the most value out of startup accelerators. They're not gonna help you build a better a product, but they're gonna help you find resources to sustain your product development before hitting profitability.

We're currently going through TechStars with a very technical product and no experience in doing enterprise sales, marketing, and fundraising. They have helped us a lot in figuring out who to target in big companies, how to put together sales pitches, how to close pilots, how to price our product, how to get follow-up sales meetings, how to talk to investors, how to pitch a very technical product in a way that non-technical people can understand, etc.

If we end up succeeding, I'd say TechStars played a very large part in taking us from being a bunch programmers who could build stuff to being a real company with a real business model. Before Techstars when we were on our own, we would make 10 wrong decisions per each right decision we made. Having access to mentors who have been in our shoes before that can help us avoid making mistakes is very valuable.

People in this thread are hating on how TechStars programs each have a few corporate partners, but I have found them to be super helpful in getting some early traction going. They're all very open to working and adapting the products developed by teams in the cohort.

The associates, mentors, and the managing director in our cohort are all amazing and have been super helpful to us. I would highly recommend TechStars to anyone who's building a B2B company.

Alum here. TS Chicago 2015.

Best experience of my life.

Biggest difference between YC and TS (from what I hear) is that TS spends much more time hands-on mentoring.

I had the honor to have ~60 1on1 meetings with very respectable entrepreneurs and investors during the program. In addition to very high quality workshops and inspiring talks almost every day. Compare that to the weekly office hours at YC (again, through multiple grapevine branches).

I personally deem the TS experience the most accelerating for my personal career, as well as our start-up.

I wrote about my experience and my lessons learned here: http://www.techstars.com/content/accelerators/lessons-busine...

I have heard mixed stories from other Techstars chapters, especially the corporate sponsored ones. But I can vouch for Chicago :)

Based on what you know, do you think TechStars is better than Y Combinator?

For first time entrepreneurs, yes. And if you don't care about becoming a unicorn, but rather build a slower growing but healthy business.

For serial entrepreneurs that are looking to raise heaps of money and be in SV, going big or go home, then YC is the better choice.

What about first time entrepreneurs who want to become unicorns, or serial entrepreneurs who don't?

I guess part of the model is to bank fees from multinational companies that want to look innovative.

100%. The rumor is they get $1mm per program to affix their name to a corporate accelerator.

Great model, to be honest. I'd do that, if I were Techstars!

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