Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Incubator TechStars lands in Boston after Y Combinator bails

By Galen Moore

Less than a month after Y Combinator announced it was leaving and never going back to Massachusetts, another pre-seed tech incubator is establishing itself here in a bid to fill the gap.

TechStars will add a Boston-area program for 10 new startups by this summer, the Boulder, Colo.-based tech incubator announced on its website.

Techstars provides companies up to $18,000 in funding, access to potential investors and mentoring for entrepreneurs. Each round of startups includes 10 companies. The Boston expansion will double its annual pool of startups. The application deadline for TechStars’ summer session is March 21.

The company has assembled an impressive list of Boston-based mentors, including Avid Technology Inc. founder Bill Warner, who was instrumental in convincing the firm to open a Boston program.

“The thing I was impressed with was that it’s very mentor oriented, and that’s something that I believe is really important for helping entrepreneurs, and also for building a connection between entrepreneurs and the local community,” said Warner, who first encountered TechStars last year through Boulder-based Eventvue Inc., in which he is an investor.

“I had wanted to bring TechStars to Boston before anything happened with Y Combinator,” Warner said. “Y Combinator’s decision to focus on the West Coast just made it that much easier to move things faster here.”

TechStars was founded in 2006 by Foundry Group managing director Brad Feld and entrepreneurs David Cohen, Jared Polois and David Brown. In addition to Warner, the firm’s list of Boston-area mentors includes Colin Angle, Dan Bricklin, Don Dodge, Eran Egozy, Chris Heidelberger, Will Herman, Nabeel Hyatt, Warren Katz, John Landry, Rich Levandov, Bijan Sabet and Ronald Schmelzer.

Venture investor Paul Graham of Y Combinator announced last month that the seed investment firm planned to cease its practice of splitting the year between Silicon Valley and Cambridge, and instead focus solely on Silicon Valley.