Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 7)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: Do you have any special initiatives at the moment?

David: We just launched the TechStars network, which is based on massive inbound demand for programs around the world that wanted to use this deep mentorship and community model.

We essentially just open-sourced TechStars, and we call it the TechStars Network. Over the past few years, I’ve been on probably about 100 phone calls with groups that were trying to do something like we had done, in their city. I’ve tried to be helpful. We’ve given them budgets. We’ve given them legal documents. We’ve given them our results.

What the TechStars Network, which we launched as part of Obama’s Startup America initiative, is really just saying is, “Yes, you should clone this model, and here’s how.”

We fully documented the model to people who joined the network. We try to support them, although each of the programs that are in the network is completely independent in terms of ownership and operation.

They’re not TechStars. They’re whatever they are, but they’re members of this TechStars Network. That’s been amazing. We’ve had about 20 organizations join it. We just launched it about two weeks ago. I was at the White House as part of that.

Our expectation is there will be 40 or 50 programs around the world that are part of this network that will be working together to make sure that access to these programs is easy for entrepreneurs and that, overall, we have a voice, almost as an industry.

We actually did another announcement, January 4, 2011, which was along those lines around how we’ll make sure that more entrepreneurs get more access to these great things around the world.

Part of what the TechStars Network does, of course, is filter and select programs on a quality basis. So, for example, Excelerate Labs or Launchpad LA are two members that are obviously high-quality programs.

But there are others around the world that people may or may not know much about, so we do a bit of that filtering to make sure they actually have interesting mentors and investors behind the program and that they’re delivering something of high quality. We have a quality bar to get into the network.

Irina: They use your framework?

David: They’re not actually required to use any of that. We provide that for them, which can be there for reference, or they could actually use it. Other members of the network provide their own best practices. It’s about sharing and learning from each other.

Irina: Is there any charge for accelerators to be part of the TechStars Network?

David: Yes. There’s a small membership fee, a few thousand dollars a year, which basically goes to make the program sustainable. We have a full-time employee who directs the program. There’s an annual conference and things like that. It’s really just a cost-recovery mechanism. These are accelerators that are joining, not entrepreneurs. The entrepreneurs don’t pay anything.

Irina: Could we talk about entrepreneurs who are not accepted for acceleration program?

David: Yes. Again, another great reason why we have the TechStars Network is that we’re funding the development of a unified application system. So, we are building a way for entrepreneurs to apply once not only to TechStars but to all of the TechStars Network programs around the world.

We’re allowing anyone to use that, even if they’re not in the network. The idea would be if you want to apply, you should be able to apply like you can to colleges. So, you have something similar to the common college application. We’ll make that very easy to be portable to different programs.

We think that’s an important thing because entrepreneurs are wasting too much time applying to too many different things that are really similar. The answer to the question is, “If you don’t get into TechStars, which is 98% of companies, what do you do?”

The answer is, “Hey, you’re a financial services company. There’s a financial services accelerator in the TechStars Network. We’re going to share your application with them, assuming you give us permission to do that.” You don’t have to do anything to do that. We’ll just make that easy. We want to help those 98%.

This segment is part 7 in the series : Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado
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