What is the right startup success metric? I was recently asked why we celebrate fundraising amounts as opposed to other meaningful metrics, such as revenue, recurring customers or staff size. To be perfectly honest, it’s a struggle to find intermediate metrics for startup success. In our industry, funding is used often as a measure of …
When you’re first starting a company, you’re right there in the thick of it, all the time. During that heavy lifting phase, you naturally have to throw yourself into getting your startup off the ground and figuring things out. But it can’t go on like that forever. Obviously your own personal health would take a …
Time and time again I’ve seen how important quality relationships are to a startup’s success. I really appreciated the focus on authentic connections in Jordan Fliegel’s book Coaching Up! Jordan is an alumnus of Techstars, and his company, CoachUp, is a service that connects athletes with private coaches. He started CoachUp because of his life-changing experience with a private coach, and his desire …
I recently spent a week in Australia. One of the things I often say when I travel to speak to startup communities around the world is: “We can’t hear you!” My point is that I want them to be loud and proud about what’s going on there. Often I hear them lamenting about not enough …
I know it can be counter-intuitive, but just because an investor says “No,” it doesn’t mean they don’t love what you’re doing. Keep in mind that as venture capitalists, our job is to say “No” 99+ percent of the time! That means we often say “No” to things we love and founders we love. Even when we …
Everyone who knows Katie Rae at Techstars is thrilled that she’s taken a lead role with The Engine at MIT, a new venture fund and incubator space there. Katie was the Managing Director at Techstars for our Boston program from 2010 to 2014. She epitomizes “give first” and cares deeply about the founders she works with …