TechStars application now open | Hacker News Reader

TechStars application now open

techstars.org

41 pointsunalone22 comments

Andrew from TechStars here, let me know if anyone has any questions.

I would question the 'rival' tag. I think their is no doubt that everyone here loves startups, and the whole community benefits when there is a vibrant scene.

Are you interested only in out of college guys or will you also fund well establish founders with good ideas?

Interested in both.

If you look at any early stage investing, you will see it is 99% about the team. We have accepted really solid teams with a very light prototype to fully launched almost profitable apps.

Also there are quite a few meetups around the world planned (one tonight in SF) if you want to meet the staff or mentors.

http://www.techstars.org/meetups/

Nice job on the website, it looks much better than it has been for previous funding rounds.

If you've got a working prototype of your site, should you include that URL/display it in the video? If so, would you encourage submitting the URL only if it's near production-ready?

Would you consider startups not based in the US?

Yes. Absolutely. From the /details page "Yes. As long as you and your team can be in Boulder, Colorado legally for the summer, please do. We have accepted overseas founders in the past."

I'd be curious to hear what people think about TechStars in comparison to YC.

Tough to compare unless you've been close to both. A friend of mine was in a TechStars startup. Just got funded (in this economy!). http://foodzie.com/

The advice & support he got was really helpful. Lots of successful people's brains to pick, and enough cash & supplies to build a basic v1.0. I'm not sure what else to tell you...

Could you kindly elaborate as to the details of being "funded" in this situation? I am very interested in real numbers. (Obviously you may not be able to provide specifics, but even meta info would be nice, considering the product and the economic climate etc.)

They got $1 million: http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/01/16/an-online-farmers-m... . Always nice to see another vertically-focused online marketplace get funded.

(Interesting note: we started getting a lot more interest once we stopped talking about ourselves as a platform technology that just happened to start off in video games and gear and just kept it simple in calling ourselves a marketplace for video games, systems, and accessories with no upfront mention of the platform. Lesson: tell potential investors the same thing you tell your customers; you can answer follow up questions however you want.)

If you're interested in the numbers: http://www.scribd.com/doc/9932346/Incubator-RoundUp-SeptDec-...

The scene in Boston isn't as good as New York of SF. I'd imagine the location is the biggest fault of TechStars.

But the model is so good, that I don't really like the "rival" status.

There are positive sum effects from a lots of early stage venture firms, and lots of startups. To illustrate this, just try to ask any YC or TechStars company for advice. You'll notice that they are probably both going to be nice and helpful. That's because that's a characteristic of early stage startups. It's all good.

Isn't techstars in boulder?

Yes, they are. Or their footer and about pages are eerily misleading.

Yes, and I'm sure Boulder ranks close to or behind Boston. Which seems to me a worse location than NYC or SF.

The reason Boston and Palo Alto are such great locations are due to the locations of the elite neighboring universities and abundant reverse brain-drain

I would say being from Boulder is one of the biggest strengths. Vibrant and helpful tech community out of the pressure bubble.

  pressure bubble

What? That wasn't my impression at all, though I was only there for ~8 months. That thinking seems like making lemonade out of lemons. There are orders of magnitude more angels and VCs that understand the web in silicon valley. That means there are that many more companies and sources of advice and support. You can't really get around that - it really does matter.

Keep in mind that this is coming from someone based in Boston that goes to NYC all the time.

Everyone has their style of how they see early stage startups, and how they do it. I've heard many friends refer to larger tech hubs as 'pressure bubbles' for early stage companies because of all the hype that can snowball around their company.

We really value the beautiful surroundings Boulder has, as well as the vibrant tech scene.

We also have an extensive list of mentors that regularly meet with the teams. http://techstars.org/mentors

Snowball is certainly a good analogy. In my brief experience, success yields to more success, especially with business development deals. If you're close to a company, you're more likely to do business with it. That makes a big network effect from the number of startups in the area.

So your stress level could snowball, or you might leverage strength over strength. Even if stress were an issue, my happiness is definitely tied more to the direction Tipjoy is going than the excess of companies around me.

Unfortunately, the other side to my original comment was lost. I think TechStars is great, and more people doing startups is great. I didn't mean for this to become a debate about the relative strengths of cities.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com