Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 6)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

David: TechStars has a long-term view – a 20-year view. It’s not just about what these [entrepreneurs] do in their first companies. It’s about what the founders do after that.

Rob Johnson [of EventVue] is now in a high-level position at Gnip, a company in Boulder that’s doing quite well.

His co-founder, Josh Fraser, has partnered on a new company with one of the founders of IntenseDebate, which is the one that was sold to WordPress, and is doing a company called Torbit. They’re doing great. They’ll have some interesting stuff soon to announce.

You see the recombination of things. EventVue did a great job of blogging what they learned from the company and sharing it with the broader community. What they got were new opportunities back from that community. I think they’ll both be great entrepreneurs over the long term. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 5)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

David: One of the things that is I think unique about TechStars is our incentive structure. We are like a co-founder. So, the pitch to the entrepreneur is, If you could have a co-founder for 6 percent of your common stock who had this sort of network and this sort of access to capital, would you do it? That’s what we are. TechStars takes common stock. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 3)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: What are your relationships with mentors? Do they get any stake in those companies or do they just want to help?

Paul: They just want to help. One, it is exciting for them. Two, it gives them lots of visibility and, yes, it is really useful to the companies. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 2)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

Irina: What are the core benefits to entrepreneurs that you bring to the table?

Paul: My three partners have all started businesses that you know, and in total there are hundreds of millions of users. We started companies that did quite well, and [with i/o Ventures], we are sitting down and giving a lot of personal attention to the companies we work with.

We give them an amazing office space to work out of, and most important, we also bring in the best angels and mentors we know and get entrepreneurs access to people from YouTube, Yelp, Digg, and so on. They are all our personal friends, and they will come and hang out at our companies. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 4)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How do you conduct your due diligence?

David: With 600 companies, and you’re picking 10 and investing little money and mostly time, diligence is mostly about the people. Again, we know half of them are going to change their ideas. So, we don’t really get into much market or product diligence. We look at the people, the references of the people, the past work of the people. A lot of it are gut [feelings] about people we would like to work with. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With Paul Bragiel, Managing Partner, i/o Ventures, San Francisco, California (Part 1)

By guest author Irina Patterson and Mridula Velagapudi

I am talking to Paul Bragiel, managing partner of i/o Ventures, which is a three-month accelerator program for technology entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley. The partners of i/o Ventures come from companies like MySpace and BitTorrent, and their mentors are from Yelp, Digg, Mint, Mochi Media, and OpenDNS. They invest up to $25,000 if a startup is selected, and in return for the investment and mentorship, i/o Ventures usually gets 8% of the company in common stock. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 3)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: What are your mentors’ relationships with the companies? Is there compensation involved?

David: No. No compensation. Many of them will go on to be investors or advisors long term. That’s the natural outcome. At the start of the program, the mentors work for free. The reason they do this is that they want their entrepreneurial ecosystem to be better. >>>

Business Incubator Series: An Interview With David Cohen, Founder And CEO, Startup Accelerator TechStars – Boulder, Colorado (Part 2)

By guest authors Irina Patterson and Candice Arnold

Irina: How many companies have you incubated?

David: We’ve now done 81 companies. We’ve operated for four years in Boulder, two years in Boston, one year in Seattle, and it’s our first year in New York. We’re not expanding anymore. If you add all those up, about 10 per class, you get to 81 as the current number. >>>