Accelerating our Pace in Boston: Opening Applications Earlier in 2020
May 20, 2020
By Clement Cazalot, Managing Director of Techstars Boston
Hey you — mostly likely, reading this article from home right now. We, too, are at home here in Boston, and we are working hard to leverage all our resources to help founders in the Greater Boston Area.
We just finished our 2020 program with a fantastic online demo day (that you can learn more about on our demo day website, and have a solid look at these top companies, praised by the press and blessed by many investors). However, we realized that in Boston we have a unique opportunity to offer more support to our community at an accelerated pace as our mentor, alumni, and investor community is eager to be even more engaged through the screening and selection phase. They are also committed to adding value to as many of the applicants as possible, whether or not they are accepted into our program.
For these reasons, we’ve decided to make Techstars Boston more accessible to our founder network and are moving to a schedule where the accelerator will run every nine months — as opposed to every 12 — for the next two classes.
What does this mean? Our next class of Techstars Boston will kick off in November 2020 and applications are now open. We’re excited to offer more support and access to our network with this new schedule!
Who is this program for?
At Techstars Boston we focus on companies that are leveraging Boston’s industries and strengths. Since we only work with 10 companies at a time, we tailor the program specifically for each founding team, stage, and industry.
That said, there are some specifics that we are looking for in our next class:
Are you based in the Boston area/New England and/or planning to move here to leverage or impact the local ecosystem?
Are you in the early days of the business? I.e. bootstrapped, pre-seed, or seed stage. Our focus is to deploy all our resources to grow your core business, technology, customer and user base, to build a long term business, not necessarily to force fundraising (although we are quite good at it when needed)
Are you working on one of the major pillars of Boston? Generally speaking: Deep Tech (Material Science, Applied AI, Hardware, Cloud Infrastructure), Fintech (Insurtech, Compliance, Fund management), Healthcare, SaaS, or Consumer (Marketplace or e-commerce).
How can we help?
It’s been 11 years since we launched Techstars Boston and our alumni, spanning from pre-seed to pre-IPO, have collectively raised more than $1 billion. Hundreds of world-class mentors are helping them.
We’ve had the time and opportunity to refine a program deeply ingrained in the local community. This enables startups playing to the strengths of the Boston ecosystem to use us as a platform — a cofounder — to scale.
Boston is consistently viewed as a top technology and innovation hub for startups. Techstars Boston works with top talent from all over the world and maintains a reputation of churning out successful founding teams like alumni CareAcademy (2017), Own Up (2017), Openly (2018) or AceUp (2019). Boston boasts an intensely active startup ecosystem that enables hundreds of companies and successful exits each year.
Jennifer Jordan, Mentor-in-Residence at Techstars Boston, says it best: “The way you [accelerate a company at Techstars] is diving in side by side. You get in the trenches with them and grab a shovel.” During our 2020 program, Jennifer spent upward of 20 hours every week working hand-in-hand with our founders, after a successful career in Venture Capital.
How to connect, meet us, and book office hours
Applications are now open for our November 2020 class and would love to talk with you.
We are available for virtual office hours and AMA events, as well as live events, meetings, hosting various workshops, talks, and office hours.
Watch this video to hear what founders have to say about the program.
What to expect when we meet
In these office hours meetings, we meet with founding teams for a 20-minute virtual session. Our goal of each meeting is to leverage what we’ve seen in thousands of companies and help you over the most challenging hurdles. Feel free to come with your team, and ask questions, including our learnings from comparable companies that we’ve helped through our 11 years.
Before or after meeting with us, check out our Toolkit, where we’ve compiled some of our best resources to run a startup. Additionally, visit the application FAQ for answers to frequently asked questions about how our application process works and how to submit a killer application.
Regardless of what company you’re building: if you’re working on a problem you have a conviction for solving, we’re eager to hear more.