When it comes to seed investing, New York City is becoming a hotbed. And now TechStars, the incubator that began in Boulder. Colorado and has spawned nearly 40 startups, is coming to New York. This will be the fourth (and supposedly last) city TechStars expands to, according to CEO David Cohen (the other two are Boston and Seattle).
TechStars is accepting applications for the New York City Class of 2011, which will start in January. TechStars provides a little bit of cash ($6,000 per founder for a three-month program) and a lot of mentorship. The list of New York City mentors includes Foursquare founders Dennis Crowley and Naveen Selvadurai, Tumblr founder David Karp, VC Fred Wilson, Hunch founder and seed investor Chris Dixon, Roger Ehrenberg of IA Ventures, StockTwits CEO Howard Lindzon, Boxee CEO Avner Ronen, BuzzFeed president Jon Steinberg, and Hot Potato founder Justin Shaffer. Jeff Clavier and Dave McClure snuck in there as well, even though they live in California.
TechStars takes a 6 percent equity stake in each startup in common stock (no board seats), and has a decent track record. Cohen and David Tisch will be running the program. They are looking for about ten startups for the initial New York City class.
TechStars (www.techstars.org) is an elite mentorship-driven start-up accelerator and seed fund. Founded in 2006 and recently recognized as the No. 1 accelerator program; the TechStars philosophy focuses on deep mentorship and surrounding a small number of companies with highly engaged members of the entrepreneurial ecosystem to coach and support them to success. The TechStars community currently includes more than 300 mentors, more than 1,000 investors, and 120 alumni TechStars companies. TechStars currently operates six programs each year: Boulder, Boston, Seattle,...
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