Techstars plans return to Boulder with a whole new look after its departure fractured the entrepreneur community

The jolt of Techstars pulling out of its hometown of Boulder earlier this year triggered fractures in the local entrepreneurial community. But locals are now back to doing what they do best: coming together — online and offline. And soon, they’ll relaunch the tech-business accelerator in person and likely in the same city.

Things will be different this time around, though. Called Techstars Colorado, the effort will be locally owned and a “first of its kind Techstars partnership,” but still will have access to resources of the rest of the company, which moved its headquarters to New York in February, said David Cohen, an original Techstars founder. 

But the company, dreamed up in Boulder circa 2006, had unofficially left Boulder a few years earlier when a New York-based CEO was hired. Cohen, who lives in Boulder, returned as CEO in May, a month before the last cohort made pitches to a packed audience at the Boulder Theater. He said he never felt right about what happened after Techstars decided to end the Boulder program in order to focus on coastal cities with more venture funding, talent and startups. 

“While it was a business decision I supported at the time, it never felt good,” Cohen told the Techstars community Tuesday. “It never felt right. And I’m truly sorry for how that felt. It sucked, and I own that.”

Over the summer, Cohen met frequently with former Techstars Boulder managing partners Nicole Glaros and Natty Zola “over tacos and margaritas” at Mojo Taqueria in Boulder to figure out how to bring something back. And that something turned out to be very close to OG Techstars, when it was up to local investors and mentors to support the next batch of founders. 

“We had capital from each local market (and) that created an opportunity for people in the local community to invest, participate and feel ownership over the outcome,” Cohen said. “We’re really just recreating that.”

The business model of Techstars is to support founders, provide mentorship and investment of up to $120,000 in exchange for 6% to 9% equity in the startup. Several startups went on to hit it big, which meant sizable returns for Techstars. Sometime around 2017 or 2018, Cohen said Techstars didn’t need to rely on smaller investors and began funding the entire program.

“We became a very institutional, multibillion-dollar asset manager and we were 100% of the capital for all of the locations that we operated,” Cohen said. “This is simply a hybrid of that where we’ll be an investor and the community will invest alongside us. We’ll have a local group of people that have been engaged for a long time that are providing a level of oversight and governance of the local activity.”

But Cohen, Glaros and Zola are just the instigators, they said. They’ll be on the new board but continue in their regular day jobs. They’ll need other local founders and funders to help support the efforts to build a new startup accelerator. 

Perhaps the chaos was a good thing. When the news of abandoning Boulder first came out, it created both uncertainty and energy. Yoav Lurie posted an online survey to gather suggestions on how to fill the void Techstars was leaving. He got “well over 100 replies, and people engaged through the form, in-person conversations, and group town-hall-style meetings.” The outcome is what he’d hoped for.

“As a Techstars founder who has been deeply invested in the Boulder startup community for over a decade, I am wildly supportive of the plans Nicole, Natty and David have announced,” said Lurie, who founded Simple Energy, in an email. “This is an exciting step towards reinvigorating the Boulder (and by extension, Colorado) startup community.”

Serial entrepreneur Lizelle van Vuuren has had her head down on Knolly, an AI-based learning tool that is prepping for its private alpha launch next week. As a member of the most recent Boulder Techstars cohort, she misses what was lost. But, she said, “I sure hope that it activates us to gather more and have more amazing community energy in Denver and Boulder.”

“They’re getting the band back together!” emailed Scott Yates, a serial entrepreneur who has been a mentor for the Boulder program for years. “The world has changed so much since those early days, but it will still be somehow comforting knowing that there’s going to be a Colorado cohort again.”

Techstars, which also counts Gov. Jared Polis as an original founder, was pivotal to the region’s growth as a startup community in the early 2000s and attracting entrepreneurs to a landlocked Middle America. The company is known for its 3-month business accelerators that put founders through a crash course of refining their ideas, and getting their service or product up and running. It has grown into a multicity organization with partners that have included Nike, Disney and United Healthcare. The Techstars network includes more than 10,400 founders, including a few dozen who built billion-dollar businesses. Four graduated from the Boulder program, according to Techstars data.

The accelerators are still happening. The original Techstars wrapped up its first in Denver on workforce tech last month. Another 12 programs are taking applicants for accelerators that start in March. 

While details for the new Colorado program still are being finalized, founders who join the future accelerator probably won’t see much difference from the original Techstars program, Cohen said. They’ll get local mentors, same investment and access to the alumni network. 

And they will find a community, said Zola, a partner at Matchbook Ventures in Boulder. 

“One of the things Techstars did a really good job of was being a community gathering point where events were held, where startups came together,” Zola said. “It just didn’t feel like there was a central place anymore, certainly in Boulder, where entrepreneurs gathered.”

Glaros, Techstars’ first employee and its former chief innovation officer who was running her own founders’ program when the Boulder end was announced, has taken the lead to find a new startup space where Techstars Colorado would be one of many tenants. She wants a place roomy enough to house not just the accelerator, but other startups, founders, mentors and organizations that support startups. She said she’s looking at a spot in Boulder but would also consider a move-in ready and affordable space in Denver with a long-term lease.

The other immediate plan is to hire a managing director and get the accelerator up and running by summer, Cohen said. Glaros called that an aggressive timeline but said if everything falls into place, it could definitely happen by late next year. They’re also looking for mentors, sponsors and investors. 

“When the money is local, those people have a vested interest in seeing these companies succeed here and so they will get more involved,” Glaros said. “And it’s not just community alignment, it’s economic alignment. If these companies are successful, then that money comes back locally (and) gets reinvested in the next group.”

Gadalia Montoya Weinberg O’Bryan became a Techstars mentor in 2019 and later joined the Boulder cohort in 2023 with her cybersecurity startup Dapple Security in Centennial. Her company has gone on to raise $2.3 million from investors this year. She remains a strong supporter of Techstars as a mentor who took the stage once again in June to introduce one of the startups at the last Boulder Demo Day. She said she appreciated the thoughtfulness in bringing a local Techstars back to Boulder.

“What is exciting to me about this is that they are re-thinking what the program will look like rather than it just being an, ‘oops, sorry folks, nevermind we are going right back to how it was,’ but at the same time it will be backed by the name and community that already exists through Techstars,” O’Bryan said in an email. “I do think it’s likely that Techstars Colorado will emerge bigger and better in the end.”