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Comment by badclient | Hacker News Reader

As I stated below, I largely believe Bloomberg did its job and techstars owes a big fat apology to their cos for putting them in this situation without covering all bases.

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I don't know the exact details, but you'll notice that there are only 6 companies being profiled in the show. Ten companies went through the NY program in that cycle. My understanding is that each team was given the option of participating in the show, along with appropriate caveats. I doubt anyone from TechStars pressured them to participate, although the folks from BloombergTV may have. In theory, TechStars founders are supposed to be smart people: they surely knew the risks to perception and weighted it against the rewards of exposure.

EDIT: Melanie says I'm wrong. Color me surprised.

Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars. Bloomberg followed all 11 (not 10) companies throughout the entire program, but focused only on 6 companies because it was impossible to follow 11 different story lines in 6, 22-minute episodes.

> Every company was required to participate: the choice was (1) do the show or (2) drop out of TechStars.

Required by whom?

Sounds like TechStars signed up for a 'documentary' PR push and prioritized the filming over the founders. If it didn't work out, sorry, but I don't think TS can play the victim card here.

Whoa, what? Did you know about this before you took investment money from TechStars?

I was told that Bloomberg filmed all of the teams and then chose whom they wanted to include.

Could someone from TechStars clarify if teams were given a chance to opt out?

EDIT: Just saw below that it was required for all teams to participate or drop out of TechStars. Wow.

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