| I was a mentor for the Austin program for every year but the last (2013-2022) until they recently closed it.. and "top mentor" a half dozen times. I also worked with a number of other programs once covid hit. Overall, I had a blast, made some great friendships, and did most of my angel investing in companies I worked with through the program. One died, a handful were acquired, and the rest are still operational. That said, I don't think that Techstars problem was only chasing the cash. I think it came down to the problem they were solving disappeared and they didn't shift. Rewind to 2008 and the number of operators who had "been there, done that" successfully and were willing to share their time was exceptionally rare. By 2013 when they came to Austin, it was still uncommon but there were a few pockets here and there. Techstars was exceptional at collecting and coordinating them. Fast forward to 2018/19 and the sheer volume of people who had useful experience and the ability to share it was massive. One of the things the article nailed is the need for a good Managing Director (MD). If you had a good one, they were able to leverage those local (and some remote) ecosystem to help validate ideas, streamline the founders' thinking, and focus them on the goals. If you had a weaker MD, sucks to be you. Techstars HQ's only role in that was picking the MD. Beyond that, you were on your own. When covid hit, that ecosystem shifted and suddenly the number of people with experience and the ability to share it exploded, money flowed like water, and people's mindset shifted. The Techstars program didn't iterate and even lost the camaraderie that they'd fostered for years. When they took strong political stances for and against different groups, a bunch of mentors drifted away. On the other side of covid, now we have way more people with experience, way less money, and way fewer social bonds. Techstars doesn't address those needs. |
Out of curiousity, could you could elaborate on this a bit? I'm not that familiar with Techstars aside from being generally aware of them as a large accelerator for many years.