Deadline: 20 November 2024
Home to a thriving tech ecosystem, Techstars NYC supports a diverse group of founders with world-class resources that help them grow and scale and to help people start companies, invest wisely, transact efficiently, and live well, with a focus on FinTech, Enterprise SaaS, Health & Wellness, Efficient Transactions, and PropTech.
Techstars is the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. As one of the largest pre-seed investors in the world, they’ve funded over 3,200 companies that have gone on to have a market cap of $79B+. Techstars portfolio companies include more than 100 companies with valuations of over $100M, and 19 of them have already reached unicorn status including SendGrid, ClassPass, and Chainalysis.
Techstars accelerators have one goal: to help entrepreneurs succeed. During each three-month program, they surround companies with the best mentors and an unrivaled network of corporate partners, investors, and alumni. They provide funding and fundraising opportunities, workshops and curated resources, not to mention countless moments where you can learn from your peers. It’s a proven model that’s helped build thousands of successful companies, all over the world.
How they’re Different from other Accelerators?
- Personalization – They steer clear of a generic plug and play formula. Founders only attend workshops that are beneficial to them and the mentor, investor, and speaker selection is done after the class is finalized to bring in the most relevant advisors for each company. Instead of a generic demo day, they organize an investor week where investors with pre-vetted interest are matched 1:1 to meet with the companies. They achieve this level of personalization with an unparalleled ratio of 8 team members to 12 startups during program.
- In Person – The founders from all over the world join us in NYC for the full 13 weeks of program, where they work closely with the team, mentors and speakers out of the office space. You never know who will make a guest appearance in the office – might be your future lead investor.
- Let Founders Build Quickly – They avoid over programming to allow founders to focus on growth and let founders only attend workshops relevant to their success. They hire incredible business associates to help founders with any task to accelerate their growth including sales, financial modeling, investor lists, market research, and product design.
- The Network – There is a strong family within both the program’s alumni in the internal program Slack (KJ has worked with over 200 companies during his decade at Techstars) while the entire Techstars network of over 3000 companies (including 18 unicorns & 103 companies with market cap > $100M) is one click away with Techstars Universe, the in-house networking platform.
- Invest financially and operationally – Although they financially invest up to $120k and provide $2M+ cash equivalent in credits and perks, the true value is the operational investment. They support the alumni for any need beyond the program including Series A+ raises. This is why they take common stock (not preferred shares) since they want to be a cofounder at the seat of the table with the startups.
About the Programming
- You can expect to learn about perfecting your pitch, fundraising, working with mentors, product-market fit, hiring/firing, building, marketing, and much more as needed to help you #DoMoreFaster.
Who can apply?
- They fund all types of startups, working in most verticals, using any type of business models. Do keep in mind, however, that the focus is on startups rather than small businesses.
For more information, visit Techstars.
