Hacking the Techstars Boulder Application: An insider's guide.

Are you applying to Techstars Boulder? I wrote down all the tips that will help you stand out and answer questions I typically get from founders when they apply.?

Ten years ago, I graduated from Techstars. Since then, I've helped review applications for people applying to Techstars and other accelerators, so I have empathy for all the rewrites, edits, and video re-shoots that go into an application.?

Now that I am on the inside, I wrote the guide I wish I had.?

A refresher on Techstars Boulder.

In Techstars Boulder, we focus on getting founders to product-market-fit faster. We also help companies that want to raise their next round of funding run an efficient fundraising process.?

Boulder is the original Techstars accelerator and has helped over?160 companies?(who raised over $1B) take their business to the next level.?

We will be running in hybrid in-person and remote. In the first and final weeks of the program, we will be in person in Boulder. We have designed the middle part of the program for an optimal remote experience so that founders can choose to work wherever it is best for themselves and their business.?

The program officially starts in January, but we start working with companies as soon as they are selected.?

The final application deadline is October sixth.?Start your application?and use?this template?to collaborate with your co-founders. You can also?book office hours.

About the Techstars Deal

Techstars provides an initial investment of up to $120k paired with $2M+ in perks and an invaluable global network of alumni, mentors, and investors for 6% common stock and up to 3% in a convertible note.?

The common stock is for the program, the alumni, investor, mentor network?for life, around?two million dollars?in credits and perks, including over four hundred thousand in AWS, GCP, DigitalOcean, and Azure, and twenty thousand in cash.?

There is also a?$100k?convertible note that you may choose to take or not, at a cap between?three million and five million dollars.

We earn primarily common stock to align with the founders and employees. With common stock, we only make money when founders and employees make money.??

Investors buy preferred stock or convertible securities that convert into preferred stock, and they get paid first, among other rights.?

Common stock is typically priced at a fraction of preferred stock.?

What companies does Techstars Boulder look to back?

We are looking for companies that want to grow faster at any stage and in any vertical.

In terms of geography, we are looking for companies whose primary market is anywhere in the Americas, from Canada to Argentina and everything in between, independent of where you may live.

When it comes to the stage of your company, you could be as far as having millions of dollars in yearly revenue or as early as validating the problem.?

I had raised?$1M in funding?a month before I started my Techstars program and closed on an additional?$5M before Demo Day. (Results may vary, obviously)

Techstars will accelerate your progress no matter your starting point.?

The 12 teams that we select will be the founders that:

1. Have a deep or understanding of their customer's pain, and
2. Have demonstrated a spectacular ability at executing incredibly fast

Having a deep understanding of customers' pain and an extraordinary ability to execute quickly are the criteria that weigh the heaviest when we evaluate the quality of a team. Founders obsessed with their customer's pain are more likely to succeed at finding it and solving it.?

Now let's talk in more detail about each of those points, starting with a deep understanding of customer pain. What does that mean??

The founders that will stand out have found users that know they have a problem and will do something about it one way or another with or without you. Doing nothing is not an option for them.?

Now, this is easier said than done.?

It is common to fall into the trap of speaking to potential users with a sales hat on. You are pitching them on what you are building and asking them if they would use it, or worse, convincing them that they have a problem and persuading them to buy the solution from you. This approach will commonly lead to churn, and it does not show me that you discovered a problem so painful for your users that they will take whatever you give them.?

The best way to discover painful problems is to put on your problem-finding hat, not your problem-solving hat, nor your sales hat.?

When speaking to users, talk about their life instead of your idea. Ask about specifics in their past instead of generics or opinions about the future, talk less and listen more. Read my approach to?getting product-market fit.

Founders that jumped straight into problem-solving without problem-finding are less likely to get into Techstars Boulder than even those still in problem-finding mode.

Suppose that you have identified the problem so painful that users will take whatever you may have, as imperfect as it may be. At this point is when I evaluate your ability to execute quickly.?

Does it take you three months to run and measure an experiment to validate a hypothesis? Or can you get it done in three weeks? Three days? The faster you can experiment and apply the learnings towards the next experiment, the higher the chance of making it to the top 12 companies.

Your speed of execution is a good predictor of your success during and after the program.

What can aspiring Techstars founders expect from the application process??

After submitting your application, the evaluation process has one twenty-minute initial call with Malte and me, a second deep-dive call, and a final fifteen-minute Q&A with a screening committee comprised of other Techstars Managing Directors and external investors.?

How to stand out

We have to sort through thousands of entrepreneurs, so here are some tips that can help us understand your startup and team much better.?

How to describe yourself in your team bios

Why were you put on this earth to address the problem your company is working to address? Here is where we look for founder-market-fit.

How to answer "Tell us something amazing you built."

This Answer doesn't have to be about your current company. It could be anything. It helps us get to know you and gives us a soundbite to remember you.?

How to answer "Why is your team is uniquely qualified to solve this problem? How long have you been working together, and how did the co-founders meet? "

Help us understand the "why" behind your story. Do you have experience working in this industry? Have you tackled big problems together in the past? Why are you obsessed with this customer/problem?

We also want to avoid teams that are likely to have a founder break-up during the program. It happens.?

What about solo founders? Can they get in?

Solo founders, yes, but not alone founders. Ideally, you have a co-founder that you admire, trust, and respect. Short of that, it's better to have no co-founders than to have the wrong co-founders.?

We want to see that you are not alone; you should have a team that will help you manage the program's intensity and entrepreneurship in general.?

Here is my guide on?how to recruit a co-founder.

Describe your company

When describing your company, make it easy for me to quickly understand your customer, what problem they have and how you solve it. Keep your answers short and simple. Avoid using industry-specific jargon and acronyms.

For the one-line description, make sure you at least communicate what you do and for whom. As an example from our most recent class:?

"Code Inspector helps developers writer better code faster."?

For the longer company description, you can start with the following format: For (customers) that have (a problem), we provide (a solution).

Example: For software developers (customers) that have to deal with technical debt (problem), Code Inspector analyzes their code and provides real-time feedback to improve code quality (solution).

I am looking for evidence that you have found, or you are on your way to finding those users that have the problem and will do something about it with or without you.

How to answer "How is your solution uniquely addressing this problem?"

Tell us about your "secret sauce." How is your perspective on the problem unique? What unique insight that might not be obvious to competitors do you understand that they don't?

Traction or Progress

If you are post-revenue, great, but by no means is it what we care about most.

The Key Performance Indicators we love to see are:

1. KPI rate of growth over time, retention of use by cohort, expansion of use by cohort
2. # of customer conversations held this week

For us, the right Key Performance Indicator is that event that correlates with retention or that "aha moment" that captures the value generated to your user or customer. The more that event happens, the more customers stay, increase their use and tell others about it.?

Pre-revenue, pre-customers, that's ok too. How many prospective customer meetings do you have weekly? What are you learning from them? The number of conversations with customers indicates that you are building a customer-centric product and?not?a product searching for a market.?

What about the videos?

For the product video, do not use some flashy marketing video. Instead, record yourself using the product and narrate what is going on. Always tie it back to your user, what problem they have, and how you solve it.?

For the team video: We want to learn more about your story and how you got together to build this company. The video does not have to be perfect, the audio needs to be very good. There is no need to shoot 100 takes until you have the perfect one, we prefer to see how you interact naturally rather than the polished pitch delivery.

Any other final tips?

Include us in your weekly or bi-weekly updates. If you don't send out updates to investors or mentors yet, get started. It's a great way to start building a supportive community around you. It also helps us see your company progress over time rather than just a snapshot of when you applied.

You can add us to your updates at [email protected].?

Ok, now let's say you got an invitation for a first call. What should you do to prepare?

We will want to go deeper into the answers to your application. We want to learn more about your team and the background that led you to create the company together.?

We also want to learn about how you approach customer discovery and any evidence that people want what you are building. We want to go deep into your customer's needs.?

For companies with an existing product with users, we will ask you about user behavior with your product, including cohort retention and expansion of use.?

The deep-dive call

If you make it to the next stage, we will run a more extended call to go even deeper into your market and progress.?

The best way to prepare for this call is to have a strong understanding of how the market will grow in the future, your approach towards winning the market, and the unique insights your competitors do not have.?

This call is also an opportunity to show the detail of your progress. We want to learn more in-depth about your customer discovery and what you have learned since we last spoke. If you have users already, this is the time to have usage data, ideally organized by cohorts.?

Final Stage

The final stage is the screening committee which includes current and former managing directors and external investors. It will start with a concise pitch to provide context to the members, and then it will turn into a conversation. The screening committee offers different viewpoints and expertise for the Managing Director to make a more informed investment decision.?

At any point during the process, we may ask for clarifying information via e-mail. We may also call you if a question is answered better with a conversation than an e-mail.?

We will strive to add value at every step of the process and evaluate your company based on your best performance, independent of how far you make it.?

Have more questions? Put them in the comments, and I'll try to answer right away!?