More than 100 startups competing for Boulder bootcamp
03/16/2007
Source: Boulder County Business Report
Author: Lyla D. Hamilton
BOULDER - Four well-known entrepreneurs have created an innovative program designed to bring fledgling high-tech companies to Boulder.
The new venture will select 10 early-stage firms for a summer-long immersion program that culminates in an "investor day." Participants will have the opportunity to make their case for funding before an audience of more than 100 angel investors and venture capitalists.
Principals in Technology Stars of Colorado Holding Company LLC are David Brown, David Cohen, Brad Feld and Jared Polis. Brown and Cohen co-founded Zoll Data Systems. Feld is managing director of Mobius Capital Ventures Inc., and Polis founded BlueMountain.com and ProFlowers.com.
Companies selected for the TechStars program will receive $5,000 per founder up to $15, 000, free legal counsel and access to business-level Internet services from May 21 to Aug. 17. The firms will share office space in a downtown Boulder location yet to be determined.
In his personal blog, Feld told potential applicants, "If the only value you see is the seed funding, then you're missing the point of what we are trying to do."
He suggested candidates regard TechStars "not as a source of capital, but as a co-founder that brings a little money to the table."
In keeping with the co-founder model, TechStars takes a 5 percent equity interest in each participating firm.
Cohen, the executive director of TechStars, said, "The goal is to help the companies become sustainable."
"Founders will have a chance to build a prototype and work on the company while surrounded by mentors who can help them with a go-to-market strategy," he said.
Planned activities include trips to successful local companies as well as evening discussions among participants and mentors.
Numerous other high-tech luminaries will join TechStars' principals in advising the selected companies. They include Kimbal Musk, founder and CEO of Me.dium Inc.; Wendy Lea, president and CEO of Newmerix Corp.; and Frank Moyes and Paul Jerde of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado at Boulder.
Among the mentors is Ben Casnocha, founder of Comcate Inc., a provider of customer relationship management software for government agencies. Casnocha is in Boulder through March to work with Cohen to develop the program and recruit applicants nationwide.
He will return this summer after a tour promoting his book, "My Start-Up Life: What a (Very) Young CEO Learned on his Journey through Silicon Valley."
Casnocha, 19, will be a first-year student at Claremont McKenna College near Los Angeles this fall. (See story on Page 26A.)
TechStars seeks first-time entrepreneurs and will accept applications until March 31. It encourages early submissions with the pledge that they will receive "additional consideration."
Cohen emphasized that TechStars welcomes Internet, software and information technology companies that solve "problems people have and know they have." It discourages firms whose products or services are simply fun or entertaining.
A credible team with an appropriate mix of skills is critical.
"It would be hard to get in with just one founder," he said. "Most likely, the team will include a technologist who can build the product, a businessperson who can run the thing and a marketing and salesperson who can get customers."
The program has partnered with Boulder-based National Center for Women and Information Technology to recruit applicants. Still, 98 percent of the companies that have applied so far have all-male founding teams.
To date, most applicants are between 20 and 30 years old. The youngest company founder to apply is 16.
TechStars aspires to draw more high-tech startup action to the Boulder region, Cohen said. So far, about 80 percent of the more than 100 applications for the program have come from outside Colorado.
Jim Pollock, executive director of CTEK Boulder Venture Center, is impressed with that result.
"If you can attract the founders here, the companies will stay here," he surmised.
According to Pollock, TechStars provides key services for early-stage technology companies.
"There's not much capital available to get to prototype. Venture capitalists are interested in companies that already have customers. Angel investors want them to have at least their first customer," Pollock mentioned.
"Before that, you're on your own. TechStars fills that need with a little money and a lot of support."
Pollock agreed with Feld that the support is at least as important as the money. He said TechStars can help entrepreneurs avoid problems by prodding them to set up appropriate legal and financial structures for the business.
He said companies at this stage are very fragile, and many make dumb mistakes because they lack access to the kind of experience and expertise TechStars mentors offer.
In addition to CTEK, TechStars sponsors include law firm Cooley Godward Kronish LLP of Broomfield, Metzger Associates, a Boulder-based strategic communications firm, and Viawest, an Internet service provider based in Denver.
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