E1066: The Power of Accelerators E6 David Brown, CEO & Co-Founder of TechStars on leading the virtual accelerator trend, benefits of going global, sustained vs. temporary changes from COVID & more!
This Week in Startups
Jason Calacanis
4.4 • 1.3K Ratings
🗓️ 27 May 2020
⏱️ 67 minutes
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Summary
4:47 TechStars leading the virtual accelerator trend
10:21 Will TechStars go with a hybrid model going forward and what key points should remote accelerators focus on?
15:27 How did TechStars settle on the number of 10 companies per cohort?
17:28 What has TechStars seen across their portfolio since COVID started?
21:21 Sustained changes vs. temporary changes due to COVID, will COVID lead to more entrepreneurs?
31:58 How to explain edge-case funding scenarios to founders who have real businesses that are having troubling raising capital, taking a long-term view on accelerator engagement, why B2B is easier than B2C
36:22 Why angels invest in one company over the other? Do metrics matter as much as personal relationships? What are ideal founder characteristics that David looks for?
40:25 How TechStars selects mentors by surveying their mentees, comparison against Y Combinator
51:45 Opportunity for going global, David's relationship with Co-Founder David Cohen
1:00:30 Would TechStars ever go public?
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This Week in Start-Up's The Power of Accelerator series is brought to you by |
| 0:06.0 | LinkedIn Jobs a business is only as strong as its people and every hire matters |
| 0:12.2 | to post a health care or a central service job for free |
| 0:15.9 | visit LinkedIn.com slash power and Twillio runs an amazing program for startups that includes a $500 getting started credit, |
| 0:28.7 | access to webinars made exclusive for startups, and full support via their Twillio startups team. |
| 0:35.8 | Sign up now at Twillio Startups.com slash twist. |
| 0:42.1 | Hey everybody |
| 0:43.4 | in startups. We're recording this in month three of the global |
| 0:48.2 | coronavirus pandemic and we're hoping everybody who's listening to this is safe and your family is safe and if you are |
| 0:55.1 | going back to work or going out please wear a mask that seems like a no-brainer and you know we we are very concerned about people's lives. We're also now |
| 1:08.3 | starting to see people's livelihoods being impacted and as predicted this is having just a tragic impact on society |
| 1:18.9 | in the suffering from losing a job is not exactly comparable to you know being sick and in the |
| 1:27.5 | ICU obviously stating that stating the obvious but we are seeing sadly you know people falling into |
| 1:36.7 | depression mental illness is spiking and sadly even suicides and we're |
| 1:41.3 | starting to just start to see that. |
| 1:43.6 | And that is very concerning to me. |
| 1:45.8 | But one thing that does give me hope is that in these other down markets I've |
| 1:49.1 | seen when there was despair, when there was serious unemployment,ups tended to lead the way out and new |
| 1:55.8 | companies and the entrepreneurial spirit is what creates opportunity and the world creates |
| 2:02.2 | jobs and over the last greater than a decade actually now I think |
| 2:07.8 | going on maybe close to 15 years David Brown and Dave Cohen have been working tirelessly on TechSars, which has |
| 2:18.1 | over 2,000 graduates as of this point, and they run a huge business with their accelerator partnerships and I've had |
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