Talking about Scaled Operations

Here’s an interview I did with my friend Mark Peter Davis of Interplay Ventures. Mark was around when we first brought Techstars to NYC in 2011, and played a key role in helping us get off the ground there. At that time, we had just 4 locations and we were investing in 40 startups a …

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file under: Startups

Congrats to DigitalOcean on their IPO this week

This week, DigitalOcean became a public company. Moisey Uretsky, Ben Uretsky, Alec Hartman, Mitch Wainer, and Jeff Carr founded the company and it’s been an incredible journey for them since they were in the Techstars Boulder Accelerator in 2012. That was class #17! In 2019, Yancey Spruill became CEO of DigitalOcean. I had gotten to …

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Listen to Techstars new CEO Maëlle Gavet on the #GiveFirst podcast

Brad Feld and I recently chatted with Maëlle Gavet who is the CEO of Techstars. I really encourage you to get to know her by listening in to hear more about where Techstars is headed in the future. Maëlle has only been in the job for about two months, and I have to say I’m …

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How did the 2020 pandemic impact startups?

Here’s a chart of financings that happened inside the Techstars portfolio during 2020 vs 2019. 2020, of course, will likely be known as the year of the pandemic. There were 623 discrete financings totaling approximately $3.1B in our existing portfolio of 1,751 active companies in 2020. By contrast in 2019, there were 619 financings totaling …

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Are you sure?

One of my favorite new questions to ask is “Are you sure?” As I’ve been helping Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet get up to speed, I noticed she’s been asking me that question quite often! I’m pretty certain that she asks many people at Techstars this same question too. When I’m asked “are you sure?”, it …

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E is for Engage

Recently, on my social accounts I said that my new years resolution was something that began with E. That was a fun little game, and here are the “guesses” that I received. Exhale. Emigrate to France. Eat crepes. Environment. E-sports hall of fame. E pluribus unum. Empathy. Electric Vehicle. Equanimity. Entertainment. Everest. E-Techstars. Exit. Enjoy. …

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file under: Startups