Every year, it seems to be there are more people right out of college who are willing to jump into a start-up.
If you look at the history of innovation, the innovations coming through the defence department have been some of the most important innovations ever. Little things like drones, sensors, and the Internet of Things are defence-type initiatives, but the big one is the Internet itself.
Company naming is a key part of the branding process, but it's subject to contrasting tastes and an illiquid domain name market that results in startups wasting their time during the branding process.
Because Techstars is an intensely productive three-month program in which product development and iteration are primary goals, we're constantly looking to streamline our program to help entrepreneurs avoid recurring obstacles.
I think there are ways that perhaps organic partnerships can occur in local geographies with groups that are extremely focused on their communities. That's really how Techstars began, as a grassroots movement in Boulder, Colo., that happened to catch fire and expand around the world.
Our goal is simply to make entrepreneurship more accessible to everyone around the world throughout the entrepreneurial journey, from inspiration to IPO.
I'm often asked what it takes to be 'Series A ready' in terms of metrics, progress, and traction. Unfortunately, there's no easy answer.
When fundraising, your network is critical. Leveraging it early and often is the key. Don't make the mistake of waiting until you need money to engage sources of capital.
If you're in a squeeze for capital and you have a solid, mutually beneficial relationship with a VC, your chances of raising will increase dramatically.
We're pretty broad as investors. Our thesis is work with great entrepreneurs that believe they can change the world. But there are specific areas that we get excited about - areas like hard tech, deep tech, companies that deal with really difficult technology, etc.
I had done six or eight traditional angel investments and basically just thought it sucked.
I wish I had had more mentorship and more access, not only for capital, but the critical thinking.
I think entrepreneurs should demand transparency for startup accelerators.
We've been publishing the TechStars data fully since the beginning on TechStars.com. For every single company, you can see if it's a failure, success, how much they raised. Entrepreneurs deserve that sort of transparency from accelerators, and it's not hard to do.
San Francisco is a great startup community that you shouldn't even try to model yourself after because it's just special.
Twitter needs to become more of a platform on the web. If Twitter went away today, people would just turn to Facebook. If Facebook went away, people would start screaming - it's so universal.
The Internet is full of choices, and nobody is going to make the choice to use a product that is hard to use or unattractive.
Because one of the main jobs of a CEO is to set the vision and strategy for the company, I'm a big believer in making one of the founders the default CEO.
There's no law that says you have to do what your mentor suggests. And the sooner you learn how to say 'no' confidently, the easier it will be to manage these key relationships.
At TechStars, I have the privilege of working with hundreds of the best and brightest start-up mentors on the planet. We coach our mentors to take a Socratic approach and to provide data rather than decisions.
