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TechStars, the Boulder, Colo.-based startup incubator, has appointed former Microsoft employee and early-stage startup investor Katie Rae as managing director of its two-year-old Boston program, a little over a week after former director Shawn Broderick announced he would step down. TechStars made the announcement this morning.
Rae is co-founder of Project 11 Ventures with Reed Sturtevant, her former colleague at Microsoft. The new early-stage venture capital firm has so far made two investments – Locately of Boston and PeerTransfer of Cambridge.
In an interview this morning, Rae said she will continue at Project 11, but Sturtevant will “shoulder most of the burden” during the three months in the spring that the TechStars program runs. She said her priorities for the program include finding a permanent home in Boston. The incubator is currently between locations, having left its former Central Square digs. Broderick had previously said the program was scouting a Kendall Square location.
“There is a lot of energy from younger entrepreneurs and people who are mentors are even more excited,” she said, mentioning other startup accelerator efforts in Boston, including the MassChallenge incubator that ran its first session this year. “Everyone’s getting more and more excited about the opportunity for building really big companies here.”
Rae said TechStars will not conflict with her Project 11 investing, noting that the incubator typically accepts companies at an earlier stage than Project 11 would invest. Other TechStars managing directors in Boulder, New York and Seattle are also investors with other funds.
TechStars seeks to connect entrepreneurs with mentors, advisors and potential investors. In a blog post this morning, Rae called mentorship and advice "an important, powerful force and an unspoken bond and obligation that fellow entrepreneurs have with each other."
In addition to Microsoft and Project 11, she's also an organizer of the Boston Open Angel Forum.
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