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In its second year as a local high-tech startup incubator, Techstars Boston has raised $450,000 and released a report card detailing the program’s performance thus far.
The program, first established in 2007 in Boulder, Colo., incubated nine companies last year in its first year in Boston. All nine are still active, and three have raised outside funding, according to the Techstars website’s new results page. The nine so far employ 33 people, in total.
Of the 39 total companies that have participated in Techstars since its founding, 29 are still active. Four have been acquired for more than $2 million; one was acquired for less than $2 million; and four have failed. The 10th is listed as ‘other.’
“The goal is, we want to be transparent,” said Boston director Shawn Broderick of the organization’s decision to publicize its results — an anomaly in the image-conscious world of startup investing. “We want the companies that are thinking of getting into Techstars to know what they’re getting into. We don’t see any down side to creating that transparency.”
TechStars invests $6,000 per founder (up to three founders) in each of the 20 or so companies it brings each year into its Boston and Boulder programs. The incubator takes 6 percent of common stock in participant companies.
The incubator program, co-founded by Boulder entrepreneur David Cohen and former Boston entrepreneur Brad Feld, is backed by a list of VC firms and angel investors — including, in Boston, iRobot Corp. (Nasdaq: IRBT) CEO Colin Angle, StillSecure Inc. corporate director Will Herman, Avid Technology Inc. (Nasdaq: AVID) founder Bill Warner and Spark Capital. TechStars Boston’s new funding information was published Thursday in a regulatory filing. The Boulder program disclosed a fundraise of $375,000 in a separate filing.
Techstars Boston launched its 2010 program last Tuesday, Broderick said, with 10 new companies and a list of mentors that includes at least seven new startup advisors, including Polaris Venture Partners’ David Barrett, Highland Capital Partners’ Michael Gaiss, LaunchCapital’s Elon Boms, angel investor Joe Caruso and angel investor Sean O’Sullivan.
“We’ve got 10 great new sausages,” Broderick said. “We sliced ‘em open and dumped all the contents out and we’re sifting through and figuring out what to put back in the casings.”
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