So, Techstars is quitting Boulder. My feelings are... complex. But now I can be public about how, in my opinion, Techstars has been a slow-motion car crash for years.
A couple of foundational beliefs:
1) Techstars started as an incredible experiment in building a comprehensive localized startup community, comprised of founders, mentors and investors.
2) Many (most?) people at Techstars corporate have had the best intentions for founders.
3) THE THING THAT DIFFERENTIATED TECHSTARS FROM OTHER ACCELERATORS WAS THE DEPTH AND QUALITY OF MENTORSHIP.
Yes, that last statement is past tense. Yes, I'm biased. As a (let's face it, former) mentor, I have a specific point of view and you should question my perspective.
In my experience, and those of many other people in this community, Techstars fundamentally changed as it grew from one, to a handful, to 50+ programs over the globe.
It seems like Techstars began to view mentorship as a commodity. In the first decade, the managing directors invested effort in recruiting and retaining mentors. There were mentor dinners where we got early access to new cohorts. There were mixers where the mentors got to meet one another and celebrate the joys of the role.
Eventually, the only time I would hear from programs were "please sign up for a mentor madness slot for X program" emails that would let me know a program was already underway.
And as Techstars scaled, two things appear to have happened:
1) The paid, corporate programs became the primary focus.
It takes a lot of work to raise the hundreds of millions of dollars to support a dozen city-based programs netting 6% each of a couple hundred companies. It's perhaps easier to get corporate sponsors to underwrite similar programs, even if you have to share that 6%. Mentors are now, effectively, free labor for a massive VC firm.
And to be clear, Techstars is a MASSIVE spray-and-pray VC firm. Whatever its authentic and altruistic beginnings, Techstars is a for-profit investment co.
2) A lot of those independent city-based programs were told to run two annual cohorts. I've known plenty of MDs over the years and the one month they got off between Demo Day and the start of the next recruiting cycle was a vital contributor to their sanity. That's when they were running a single cohort each year. Two seems impossible.
Again, the first thing to go was mentor engagement. I had to chase program MDs to get involved, so I stopped trying. I don't hold it against the MDs that they didn't have time to respond. That's symptomatic of a corporate strategy that both requires and benefits from mentors, but no longer values their contributions.
Techstars relentlessly promotes the "Give First" mantra and those are powerful words to live by. But, as a former Techstars MD once said, "our entrepreneurs need to understand that 'Give First' does not mean 'Give Forever'."
Perhaps that message failed to reach Techstars' corporate team.
RIP, Techstars Boulder.