Techstars returning to Boulder with locally owned startup accelerator

BOULDER — A trio of Boulder startup scene veterans is reviving the local Techstars accelerator program, which was discontinued this year after a decision by the organization’s previous leaders to move Techstars’ headquarters from Boulder to New York.

The new program will be overseen by Techstars co-founder David Cohen, who resumed his longtime role as CEO of the Boulder-born startup accelerator in May; Natty Zola, former Techstars managing director who left the organization in 2020 to form the investment firm Matchstick Ventures; and Nicole Glaros, a former Techstars leader, investor, entrepreneur and member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Denver Branch board of directors. 

Glaros, Cohen and Zola announced the revival of Techstars in Boulder in a series of blog posts on Tuesday and said they will be hiring a managing partner to lead the day-to-day operations of the organization.

The Boulder program will differ from existing Techstars accelerators in that it “will be locally owned, governed, and operated while still having access to the global Techstars resources,” Glaros wrote. “While Techstars will be an anchor investor, and David will sit on the board alongside me and Natty, the vast majority of the capital will be from the local ecosystem, governed by a local board of directors that Techstars influences but doesn’t control, with a staff that reports to this local entity. This allows the economic incentives to be fully aligned, to keep the returns and control here in Colorado, for Techstars to support the success of the local activity, and for the local program to take advantage of all that Techstars has built over the years.”

Boulder will be “the first community with this arrangement,” she wrote, and the new program will be “called Techstars Colorado, a startup community partnership.”

In a Tuesday phone interview with BizWest, Glaros said that the structure of the new program is “very experimental — we are the first ones to do this and we’re really trying to get the model right.”

Participating companies are likely to be in their pre-seed, seed or Series A eras of the startup-development lifecycle.

“For the long-term viability of the program, we need to be investing in the best companies. I think it’s natural to believe that local companies will have a leg up because we have relationships with a lot of them already,” Glaros said. “But we’re not exclusively looking in Colorado — our job is to bring in the best companies from anywhere. If we found a great company from the Bay Area or Boston or Austin, we would absolutely bring those companies to Colorado. Their growth here helps the Colorado ecosystem.”

Boulder Chamber CEO John Tayer told BizWest in a text Tuesday that it is “a positive statement about the character of Boulder’s entrepreneurial ecosystem to see the Techstars team finding a home for this rejuvenated accelerator here in the home of their iconic international startup support organization.”

The Boulder program is expected to launch next year.

“I’ve been working on securing a building (in Boulder) that will house not only Techstars Colorado, but other venture capital funds, startups of varying stages, and mentors to foster that ecosystem,” Glaros wrote Tuesday on LinkedIn.

Glaros told BizWest Techstars Colorado’s leaders “have the building identified and we have a partner identified, what we need to do is figure out what build-out costs are and if that’s going to be feasible from an economic perspective.”

While she didn’t reveal the site of the potential Techstars Colorado headquarters, Glaros said the property she’s eyeing is “centrally located” in Boulder. She added: “We have options in case that doesn’t work.”

Beyond the accelerator program, “we will probably be doing a lot of events that support the local community for entrepreneurship, regardless of stage,” Glaros said.

Techstars was founded in Boulder in 2006 by Cohen, Brad Feld, David Brown and Jared Polis (now Colorado’s governor). But after 17 years headquartered in the shadow of the Flatirons, previous Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet shocked the local startup community in February when she announced that the organization would relocate to the Big Apple, Gavet’s homebase. 

“We remain proud of our Colorado roots; however, New York is the second largest — and growing — startup ecosystem globally, and we want our headquarters to be in one of the epicenters of the startup world with more funding, connectedness, talent, knowledge and market reach,” Gavet said in an early 2024 blog post.

Techstars then-leaders also decided this winter that the spring cohort would be the Boulder accelerator program’s last. 

“Techstars was born here in Boulder, and it was sad and disappointing to me and many others when we announced that Techstars wouldn’t be running any more accelerators here,” Cohen wrote Tuesday on the Techstars blog. “… It sucked, and I own that.”

Gavet stepped down as Techstars’ CEO in the spring to focus on her health, paving the way for Cohen, who lives in Boulder, to re-enter the picture. 

While Cohen said at the time that the Techstars headquarters would remain in New York, speculation began brewing that the Boulderite would revive the organization’s local presence. 

“We brainstormed several times over tacos and margaritas about the importance of continuing to improve the startup community in Boulder and throughout Colorado,” Cohen’s Tuesday blog post said, “and ultimately it became clear that we needed to not only find a way to restart the Techstars accelerator here but also to infuse it with a new energy and approach.”

Editor’s note: This story has been updated to reflect that a managing partner will be hired to lead the day-to-day operations of Techstars Colorado.

on Facebook on LinkedIn