After being reduced to a mostly remote program since the pandemic, the Boulder-born startup accelerator Techstars announced last week it will move its headquarters to New York. Local venture capitalist, philanthropist and tech luminary Brad Feld co-founded the accelerator along with now-Gov. Jared Polis and others in 2006. It has harvested thousands of startups around the world, including more than 200 in Boulder. Four of those became billion-dollar companies and over 60 were either acquired or went public. Feld also co-founded the successful VC firm Foundry Group, which recently announced it will stop raising funds.
Taken together, this may seem like a blow to the Boulder startup community, even though Foundry Group still has years of work ahead of it. But while some are surprised or disillusioned by the news, at least one influencer in the space sees it differently.
“The startup community was suffering and wasn’t what it used to be, but Techstars being half-in was preventing people from stepping up,” said Yoav Lurie, who came to Boulder in 2011 to launch his company, Simple Energy, through Techstars. His company, a certified B Corp, was valued at $1.5 billion in 2021, making it one of the many success stories from the accelerator.
As an alum, Lurie participated in the 2023 Techstars program in the role of entrepreneur in residence. He said that with the cohort only meeting in person for two weeks in a hybrid format, the community piece just wasn’t there. And because of the pandemic-induced dispersal of workers, the local startup scene has diminished, going from numerous events each week to just a few per month.
Nationwide, the startup space isn’t what it used to be. Jobs at private companies less than a year old have been declining in every state for almost a decade, and Silicon Valley may lose its position as the innovation capital to other global hubs in the coming years. Still, according to Kauffman’s indicators of entrepreneurship, the share of jobs in new startups in Colorado is relatively high at 3.65%, compared to Techstars’ new headquarters of New York, which is down to 2.55%, at least as of 2020.
With the energy in Boulder waning over the last few years, Lurie saw the Techstars news as a natural evolution, especially now that the accelerator has gone global. He said it makes sense that its center of gravity would be in New York, where the energy is so high.
“This has been coming for some time. Nonetheless, the finality of it is saddening,” Lurie said. “But I still think it’s a great opportunity.”
One of Techstars’ partners is the LEEDS School of Business at CU Boulder. The partnership, which launched in 2020, gives students access to job opportunities at Techstars companies.
“This will certainly impact our Boulder community and our overall entrepreneurial ecosystem,” said Erick Mueller, executive director of the Deming Center for Entrepreneurship.
“Techstars has been a very positive presence, bringing inspiring and ambitious entrepreneurs to our community,” he added. “These entrepreneurs inject innovation and energy into our ecosystem that elevates the connections and opportunities of the Boulder area.”
While the partnership will continue, fewer Techstars companies locally might make it less mutually beneficial. The other half of the agreement allows Techstars entrepreneurs to get automatic credit toward the LEEDS program for their work at the accelerator.
“We’ll continue to partner with Techstars as our students are excited to work with Techstars locations around the world as it’s an amazing learning and growth experience,” Mueller said.
After the announcement that Techstars would be moving out of both Seattle and Boulder to cities with greater venture capital presence — San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City — X lit up with posts from local Techstars alum who attributed their success and community of friends to their time at the accelerator. Many of them want to see the idea continue on in Boulder, and some are raising a hand to contribute to the creation of something new.
Brett Jackson is a venture capitalist in Boulder who joined the discussion on X.
“Super grateful for Techstars. I’ve met most of my current-day best friends/collaborators through the network and learned a ton from everyone there,” he wrote. “What an incredible contribution to Boulder and beyond. Huge positive influence on my life. It would be awesome to keep that going in Boulder.”
Lurie is openly prodding the startup community to think about what’s next. After putting out a call on X asking who would want to join a new accelerator, he said there was a lot of interest from both investors and entrepreneurs. But he doesn’t know yet if recreating Techstars is the right answer for the present day.
Some speculate that Boulder has become too expensive and restrictive for building a company. Lurie said when he was at Techstars he rented an apartment right on Pearl Street for $1,800 a month, and all of his employees were excited to move here. Today, it’s harder to live for cheap, which entrepreneurs often have to do.
Still, he believes in the innate desirability of Boulder and has high hopes for the startup community’s future.
“It was because of Boulder, not in spite of it, that our company was successful.”