Boulder-based Techstars acquiring Startup Week parent UP Global

BOULDER – Startup accelerator Techstars announced Tuesday that it has acquired UP Global, the nonprofit parent organization of the Startup Weekend, Startup Week, Startup Next and Startup Digest programs.

Terms of the deal were not announced.

Techstars cofounder David Brown said in a blog post that while the UP Global brand will go away, the individual programs will “continue to run as they do now.” Employees of Seattle-based UP Global, meanwhile, will be absorbed by Techstars, with chief executive Marc Nager becoming chief community officer at Techstars.

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For UP Global, the move gives the organization the financial backing of Techstars as it continues to try and grow its programs in more than 100 countries around the world.

For Boulder-based Techstars, the deal places the accelerator closer to startups being created or coming out of programs like Startup Weekend or Startup Next. But Brown was quick to point out in a webcast that, “this is not about creating proprietary deal-flow for Techstars.” Startups participating in such programs will be free to apply to and participate in any accelerators they wish. The idea, Techstars officials said, is a holistic one focused on helping entrepreneurs in general and by doing so creating value for all startup communities.

The partnership will allow Startup Next, a program that helps startups get ready to apply to accelerators, to eliminate fees for entrepreneurs to make the program more broadly accessible.

UP Global bloomed from what was the original Startup Weekend founded by Andrew Hyde in Boulder in 2007. It has since grown to 75 annual Startup Week events and about 1,000 Startup Weekend events around the world.

UP Global has had close ties to Techstars’ Seattle office for years and last summer began sharing space with Techstars in that city once again.

UP Global’s relationship with individual Startup Weeks varies widely, from providing financial backing through a sponsorship from Chase Bank for a handful of cities like Denver to helping out organizers loosely in the background. Many cities receive coaching and access to scheduling software and help promoting their events from UP Global. Locally, Boulder Startup Week is the most closely tied to UP Global while Longmont and Fort Collins are more independently run.