[jillesvangurp]

I mentored in the Techstars program in Berlin a few years ago. Nice people and they mean well. But in the end the program I mentored in was a dud. As far as I know none of the companies were invested in and the upfront screening wasn't great either. I.e. it was obvious to me early on in the program that there were no unicorns anywhere in sight.

Not that I'm an expert on spotting those of course. But as it turns out, my skepticism was justified as there were no investments at the end of the program and few of these companies (if any) survived very long after. I was kind of sad about that because there were a couple of founders I really liked there.

Several of the companies actually died early in the program because of the usual founder issues, or the lack of coherent plan. Apparently, none of these issues came up during screening.

I've stepped back a little from mentoring (at least for them) because it's kind of time consuming and I got the vibe that Techstars took my time a little too much for granted. You get invited to some events and I got the hoody (which is a nice one) and that's about the extent of their appreciation or engagement. The promise of a great network (to both mentors and founders) is hard to live up to if you don't nurture that network. And there's not a lot of that nurturing happening lately.

[buf]

Having done a Techstars program myself, I was also surprised at some of the companies that were allowed in.

[loceng]

Would that most likely be an artifact of not enough in-flow/supply of startups to choose from?

If not, a mechanism to let the other participants anonymously vote and rate and comment such things, and then administrators can look at that data - and see what specific admin(s) was/were responsible for inviting them in, and then address the issue as close to the core as possible might of helped?

[michaelt]

Isn't the whole point of a VC/Accelerator to take investors' funds and idenfity good investments to make, while not making bad investments? Is that not the core of their job?

If the only investments available are unprofitable, you don't invest.

I don't see why you'd introduce a reality-TV-style backstabbing mechanic, just to get the 19 year old founders to do the work the rich, sophisticated investors were supposed to be doing but weren't.

[pyb]

They always say that finding great investments is much more important than avoiding bad investments. This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in.

However, Techstars always had an adverse selection problem : the best companies usually prefer to join YC.

[itsoktocry]

>This is because the upside is unlimited, whereas you cannot lose more than 1X what you put in.

Well, yes, this is exactly what someone who sells this kind of service would say. Where is the skill, though? Just spray and pray. Eliminating survivorship bias, is it actually successful, on average? Can it beat the S&P?

The upside is certainly not unlimited, and you can lose all of your money before you find a big winner.

>the best companies usually prefer to join YC.

If they are already the best companies, what does YC add? Besides, most of the best companies don't join any incubator.

[pyb]

> Where is the skill, though?

100's of competing accelerators popped up but none could match these results : https://www.ycombinator.com/topcompanies/

[buf]

Likely this is true.

I also think that the Techstars staff members were not adequate. Every single staff member had left by the next year. And when I would email the subsequent MDs about anything, I'd get no reply.

[loceng]

So I guess there's a lack of passion-sense of commitment and perhaps an incentives issue.

[CalRobert]

I just finished a few days at another accelerator in Berlin (not Techstars), and I mostly came away feeling like I should be bootstrapping.

[Jgrubb]

I’m interested if you felt like elaborating on that.

[itsoktocry]

The angel investing landscape is filled with ZIRP morons, both founders and investors. You attend these things (I do, less now) and the conversation revolves around raising money, exits, and nothing else. Hardly any talk about building a business or the actual products. Raising money to exit is a game in itself for these people.

Check out VCs Congratulating Themselves twitter feed.

[dartos]

I feel like that’s tech in a nutshell now too.

Only now am I starting to see smaller web companies be product focused instead of funding focused.

Probably bc ZIRP ended.

[sanderjd]

Yep, it feels tough at the moment, but what's happening right now is actually a healthy retrenchment.

[mistrial9]

some people might call this "money-first" companies.. financialization of company startups normalized a lot of historically-impossible means of operation IMHO

[CalRobert]

I took a try at emailing you based on your username and domain

[bradhe]

I live in Berlin and am an active mentor with the Berlin program, too. I also participated in TS in the US, actually the Seattle program in 2016 with Chris DeVore (author of this post).

> it's kind of time consuming and I got the vibe that Techstars took my time a little too much for granted.

The Give First ethos applies here. If you approach TS with this mentality, you'll get more out of it.

> The promise of a great network (to both mentors and founders) is hard to live up to if you don't nurture that network.

I agree that, perhaps, there should be more, consistent events to bring the network together. For instance, in Seattle, we had regular mixers that were just at Startup Hall--swing by, grab a beer from the keg, and have a chat. Events pulling the network together don't have to be a heavy life.

But I think you also get out of it what you put into it: Again, give first, and follow up with folks and you'll get more out of it.

[jillesvangurp]

> The Give First ethos applies here.

That's the theory. I gave quite a lot of time to them first. There's just not a lot coming back in kind. Techstars seems a bit complacent about people giving them their time. But they are not a charity. So they've been cutting on giving back. From having talked to other mentors, the quality of the network used to be better when they were more engaged. Even the networking events seem to be very infrequent at this point and frankly the last few ones weren't great. Somehow that never recovered after COVID.

I still mentor BTW. Just not via Techstars.

[itsoktocry]

>The Give First ethos applies here.

Does that apply to TechStars themselves, or just the people donating their time?

[mc32]

In life it’s a two way, else it burns out. People will tire of “gimme”.

[rexreed]

Give first as a general mantra sometimes works. But in situations where you're constantly giving to new people who have never gotten anything from you before, and therefore want the same "give" that you gave the earlier people means that you never get to the return part. Instead you're always giving. New people come in, want the same give that you gave others, and then at some point you're not getting the return because those new people are placed with even newer people. This is the revolving door of give, and why the give first never results in the... what next? Give first, get later? A lot of times it's give, give, give, with no return, until you finally tire out.

[lkdfjlkdfjlg]

> You get invited to some events and I got the hoody (which is a nice one) and that's about the extent of their appreciation or engagement

What were you expecting?