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ffirs i 14 March 2020 5:03 PM ffirs.indd 1 7/27/2020 6:02:24 PM ffirs ii 14 March 2020 5:03 PM ffirs.indd 2 7/27/2020 6:02:24 PM Do More Faster India
TECHSTARS LESSONS TO ACCELERATE YOUR STARTUP
Second Edition
David Cohen and Brad Feld
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Authorised reprint by Wiley India Pvt. Ltd., 4436/7, Ansari Road, Daryaganj, New Delhi-110002.
Copyright © 2020 by David Cohen and Brad Feld. All rights reserved.
Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey.
No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise, except as permitted under Section 107 or 108 of the 1976 United States Copyright Act, without either the prior written permission of the Publisher, or authorization through payment of the appropriate per-copy fee to the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc., 222 Rosewood Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, (978) 750-8400, fax (978) 646-8600, or on the Web at www.copyright.com. Requests to the Publisher for permission should be addressed to the Permissions Department, John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030, (201) 748-6011, fax (201) 748-6008, or online at www.wiley.com/go/permissions.
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Wiley publishes in a variety of print and electronic formats and by print-on-demand. Some material included with standard print versions of this book may not be included in e-books or in print-on-demand. If this book refers to media such as a CD or DVD that is not included in the version you purchased, you may download this material at http://booksupport.wiley.com. For more information about Wiley products, visit www.wiley.com.
Authorized India Edition ISBN: 978-93-88991-02-5 ISBN: 978-81-26596-98-0 (ebk) Printed in India by Sanat Printers
ffirs iv 14 March 2020 5:03 PM Contents
Foreword xiii
Preface xv
About Techstars xix
Foreword to Do More Faster India xxiii
Do More Faster India xxvii
Why Entrepreneurs in India Need Techstars xxix
Mentor-Backed Entrepreneurship in India xxxiii
Legal Tips for Indian Startups xxxvii
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 Do More Faster 3 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 2 Do or Do Not; There Is No Try 7 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Theme One: Idea and Vision 9
Chapter 3 Trust Me, Your Idea Is Worthless 13 Tim Ferriss, 4-Hour Workweek
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Chapter 4 Start with Your Passion 17 Kevin Mann, Graphic.ly
Chapter 5 Look for the Pain 21 Isaac Saldana, SendGrid
Chapter 6 Get Feedback Early 25 Nate Abbott and Natty Zola, Everlater
Chapter 7 Usage Is Like Oxygen for Ideas 29 Matt Mullenweg, WordPress
Chapter 8 Forget the Kitchen Sink 33 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 9 Find That One Thing They Love 37 Darren Crystal, Photobucket
Chapter 10 Don’t Plan. Prototype! 39 Greg Reinacker, Newsgator
Chapter 11 You Never Need Another Original Idea 43 Niel Robertson, Trada
Chapter 12 Get It Out There 45 Sean Corbett, HaveMyShift
Chapter 13 Avoid Tunnel Vision 49 Bijan Sabet, Spark Capital
Chapter 14 Focus 51 Jared Polis, State of Colorado
Chapter 15 Iterate Again 55 Colin Angle, iRobot
Chapter 16 Fail Fast 59 Alex White, Next Big Sound
Chapter 17 Pull the Plug When You Know It’s Time 63 Paul Berberian, Zenie Bottle
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Chapter 18 Love Doesn’t Scale, or Does it? 67 Nicole Glaros, Techstars
Chapter 19 Reconciling Vision and Focus 71 David Cohen, Techstars
Theme Two: People 73
Chapter 20 Be Open to Randomness 75 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 21 Entrepreneurship Is a Group Sport 79 Mark O’Sullivan, Vanilla
Chapter 22 Avoid Cofounder Conflict 83 Dharmesh Shah, HubSpot
Chapter 23 Hire People Better than You 87 Will Herman
Chapter 24 How to Find and Engage Mentors 91 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 25 Hire Slowly, Fire Quickly 99 Matt Blumberg, Return Path
Chapter 26 If You Can Quit, You Should 103 Laura Fitton, Oneforty
Chapter 27 Build a Balanced Team 107 Alex White, Next Big Sound
Chapter 28 Startups Seek Friends 111 Micah Baldwin, Graphic.ly
Chapter 29 Engage Great Mentors 115 Emily Olson, Foodzie
Chapter 30 The Mentor Manifesto 119 David Cohen, Techstars
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Chapter 31 Define Your Culture 123 Greg Gottesman, Pioneer Square Labs
Chapter 32 Two Strikes and You Are Out 129 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 33 Karma Matters 133 Warren Katz, MAK Technologies
Theme Three: Working Effectively 137
Chapter 34 Assume That You’re Wrong 139 Howard Diamond, Performance One Media
Chapter 35 Make Decisions Quickly 143 Ari Newman, Filtrbox
Chapter 36 It’s Just Data 145 Bill Warner, Avid Technologies
Chapter 37 Use Your Head, then Trust Your Gut 149 Ryan McIntyre, Excite.com
Chapter 38 Progress Equals Validated Learning 153 Eric Ries, Lean Startup Methodology
Chapter 39 The Plural of Anecdote Is Not Data 157 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 40 Don’t Suck at Email 161 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 41 Use What’s Free 165 Jason Seats, Techstars
Chapter 42 Be Tiny Until You Shouldn’t Be 169 Jeffrey Powers, Occipital
Chapter 43 Don’t Celebrate the Wrong Things 173 Rob Johnson, EventVue
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Chapter 44 Be Specific 179 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 45 Learn from Your Failures 181 Fred Wilson, Union Square Ventures
Chapter 46 Quality over Quantity 183 Andy Smith, DailyBurn
Chapter 47 Have a Bias Toward Action 187 Ben Casnocha, Village Global
Theme Four: Product 191
Chapter 48 Don’t Wait Until You Are Proud of Your Product 193 Ajay Kulkarni and Andy Cheung, Sensobi
Chapter 49 Find Your Whitespace 197 Raj Aggarwal, Localytics
Chapter 50 Focus on What Matters 201 Dick Costolo, Twitter
Chapter 51 Obsess over Metrics 203 Dave McClure
Chapter 52 Avoid Distractions 205 Andy Sack, Founder’s Co-op
Chapter 53 Know Your Customer 209 Bill Flagg, RegOnline
Chapter 54 Beware the Big Companies 213 Michael Zeisser, XO Group
Chapter 55 Throw Things Away 215 Eric Marcoullier, OneTrueFan
Chapter 56 Pivot 219 Rob Hayes, First Round Capital
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Theme Five: Fundraising 221
Chapter 57 There’s More than One Way to Raise Money 223 Brad Feld, Foundry Group Chapter 58 Beware of Angel Investors Who Aren’t 227 David Cohen, Techstars Chapter 59 Don’t Forget about Bootstrapping 231 David Brown, Techstars
Chapter 60 You Don’t Have to Raise Money 235 Joe Aigboboh and Jesse Tevelow, PlayQ
Chapter 61 Seed Investors Care about Three Things 239 Jeff Clavier, Uncork Capital
Chapter 62 Practice Like You Play 243 Alex White, Next Big Sound
Chapter 63 If You Want Money, Ask for Advice 247 Nicole Glaros, Techstars
Chapter 64 Show, Don’t Tell 251 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 65 Turn the Knife after You Stick It In 253 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 66 Don’t Overoptimize on Valuations 257 Kirk Holland, Access Venture Partners
Chapter 67 Get Help with Your Term Sheet 261 Jason Mendelson, Foundry Group
Chapter 68 Focus on the First One-Third 265 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Theme Six: Legal and Structure 267
Chapter 69 Choose the Right Company Structure 269 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
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Chapter 70 Form the Company Early 273 Brad Bernthal, University of Colorado
Chapter 71 Default to Delaware 277 Jon Taylor, KO
Chapter 72 Lawyers Don’t Have to Be Expensive 279 Michael Platt, Cooley LLP
Chapter 73 Vesting Is Good for You 283 Jon Fox, Intense Debate
Chapter 74 Your Brother-in-Law Is Probably Not the Right Corporate Lawyer 287 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 75 To 83(b) or Not to 83(b), There Is No Question 291 Matt Galligan, Socialthing
Theme Seven: Work–Life Harmony 295
Chapter 76 Discover Work–Life Harmony 297 Brad Feld, Foundry Group
Chapter 77 Practice Your Passion 301 Eran Egozy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Chapter 78 Follow Your Heart 305 Mark Solon, Techstars
Chapter 79 Turn Work into Play 309 Howard Lindzon, StockTwits
Chapter 80 Don’t Make Yourself Indispensable 313 David Cohen, Techstars
Chapter 81 Get Out from Behind Your Computer 315 Seth Levine, Foundry Group
Chapter 82 Stay Healthy 319 Andy Smith, DailyBurn
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Chapter 83 Get Away from It All 323 Amy Batchelor, Anchor Point Foundation
Conclusion 327
Appendix 1: The Evolution of Techstars 331 What Motivated Us to Start Techstars? 331 Why Techstars Started in Boulder 334 How Techstars Came to Boston 336 How Techstars Came to Seattle 338 So You Want to Start a Techstars Accelerator in Your Community or Company? 340 Techstars in 2019 and Beyond 341 Techstars Foundation: Increasing Diversity in Entrepreneurship 342
Appendix 2: Original Edition’s Foreword 345
Appendix 3: Where are the Techstars Companies Now? 349
About the Authors 355
Acknowledgments 357
Index 359
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My first real interaction with Techstars was in the lobby of the Marriott hotel next to the LAX airport in early 2009. I had applied to the Techstars accelerator in Boulder a few weeks earlier and now I was meeting the cofounder, David Cohen, who had flown in for the day to meet several LA-area companies for in-person interviews. I had built a few startups already, but I hadn’t found the success I was seeking. Something was missing. We had the talent. We had the idea. We had the drive. But still, we hadn’t been successful. It’s obvious now that we didn’t have some of the critical ingredients, such as mentorship and a network, to be successful. That day at LAX—meeting with David Cohen and learning about the Techstars approach to entrepreneurship—changed everything for me, for my cofounders, and for our company, SendGrid. We participated in the third cohort of Techstars in Boulder in 2009. Techstars provides seasoned mentors to work with startups. These aren’t just any mentors, but people you can trust, who have your best interests in mind, and who want to see you succeed. Our men- tors started adding value right away. They began buying our product for their own companies. They helped us think through pricing and marketing, so we would get those things right from the start. We even met our first nonfounding CEO, Jim Franklin, because he was a mentor at Techstars that summer. We found our first investors because of the accelerator program. What we didn’t expect was the help we’d get from Techstars after we left the accelerator, during the many challenging years that fol- lowed. As participants at Techstars, we are part of a community of people, before and after us, who care about our success and provide ideas and insights. For example, we received acquisition offers and Techstars guided us and helped us avoid selling too early, which would have been a tragic mistake. They helped us focus on our cul- ture and pushed our team to define key elements of our culture,
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which we refer to as our “four Hs” (honest, hungry, humble, and happy) and that still exist today. Techstars actively helped us recruit Sameer Dholokia, who helped SendGrid from its early growth years through its IPO. Techstars representatives served on our board of directors from the beginning to well past $100 million in revenue. Countless customer introductions have been made by Techstars, which have been invaluable. As I write this, SendGrid has just completed a public offering (NYSE: “SEND”) and now has more than 150,000 customers.1 It has been an amazing journey with Techstars since that meeting with David at LAX about a decade ago. To this day, I still mentor at Tech- stars because I have seen firsthand the impact and power of giving first and doing more faster! For me and many others, Techstars is for life. Isaac Saldana May 2019
1 Out of the 1,700-plus companies in 13 countries to go through the Techstars accel- erator programs, SendGrid is the first company to complete an IPO.
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Entrepreneurship is hard. Starting with an idea that inspires you and creating a sustainable company is one of the most difficult tasks for people to achieve. Along the way, you will experience joy like you have never felt before and despair so deep that you will question everything about yourself. It’s not surprising that most startups fail. Even entrepreneurs who have achieved success often have stories of staggering personal chal- lenges and failures where they lose all of their savings and the money given to them by friends and families. Personal relationships get destroyed. Friends’ couches are slept on and much ramen is eaten. The boneyard of unsuccessful entrepreneurial endeavors is wide, deep, and filled with talented, smart, and motivated people who had great ideas but couldn’t overcome the challenges of going from an idea to a sustainable business. We have been in that boneyard of failed businesses ourselves, which is why we decided to write this book. We started out aiming the book at the startup entrepreneur who has a great idea and wants to build a company around that idea. But we also think the book will provide insights to others, such as entrepreneurs who have been able to create a company but have not been as successful as they hoped. If you are involved in corporate innovation initiatives or product R&D, many of the ideas, tactics, and insights in this book will be applicable to you. Or perhaps you are a person with responsibility for commu- nity or economic development in your city or state. You will find the book to be helpful in jump-starting entrepreneurship in your community. Do More Faster was written to help everyone wanting to understand, and put into action, the principles that accelerate going from an idea to a sustainable business. We founded Techstars in 2006 with one idea in mind: to help entrepreneurs succeed. We believe that entrepreneurs create a bet- ter future for everyone and that they, and the companies they create,
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are the key to economic growth. The healthy startup communi- ties that result from entrepreneurship improve the lives of people well beyond the direct reach of startup companies. Education and healthcare improve because of the increase in economic activity. Other businesses, such as retailers, service providers, and real estate, benefit. We have seen this positive cycle of entrepreneurship and the startup community play out firsthand over the past decade in Boulder, Colorado, where we live. To get to a deep and lasting community-wide economic impact, startup entrepreneurs need to first be able to navigate the twists and turns, pitfalls, and obstacles that can derail a good idea. Our approach at Techstars has proven to be successful in helping start- ups succeed. Our mentorship-driven seed accelerators have helped more than a thousand fledgling companies attract more than$ 7 billion in investments and create tens of billions of dollars in enter- prise value. More than 150 of the companies that have gone through a Techstars program have been acquired since we started. Why has Techstars been able to help generate so many disruptive and innovative companies? What makes Techstars different from other venture capital firms and seed accelerators? How is Techstars able to expand so quickly and have programs running in over 30 dif- ferent cities around the world? It’s the mentorship. We create a bond between thoughtful, suc- cessful, serial entrepreneurs and startup entrepreneurs. This com- munity, and the culture of giving first between mentors and startup entrepreneurs, is critical to helping startup entrepreneurs validate ideas, avoid critical mistakes, and position themselves for the best possible outcome. This isn’t a short-term community that lasts only while the startup founder is at the accelerator; it’s a community that persists forever, becoming a construct we describe as “Techstars for life.” As investors and entrepreneurs, we have worked with tens of thousands of founders and thousands of companies over the past 30 years of our careers. Even though many things evolve and change, we have seen the same issues come up over and over again. We cre- ated Techstars to channel the cumulative experience of successful and unsuccessful entrepreneurs for the benefit of today’s startup entrepreneurs. But we don’t do it alone; we are helped by over
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10,000 of the best entrepreneurs on the planet who are mentors at Techstars accelerator programs.
Organization of the Book
Do More Faster was first written in 2010 to capture Techstars mentors’ unique insights into what it takes to make a startup successful. At that time, Techstars was focused on accelerators to help entrepre- neurs succeed and we had only a handful of locations—in Boulder, Boston, and Seattle. We have since expanded to other locations throughout the world and work with global corporations, communi- ties, and business schools to drive entrepreneurship. The chapters in this edition of Do More Faster reflect our early years as a startup in the United States and the challenges that startup entrepreneurs face. Our next book, Do Even More Faster, picks up where this book leaves off and provides insights on scaling up your business. It also reflects our global expansion to Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. We thought carefully about the key issues around early-stage entrepreneurship and organized those issues around seven themes: Idea and Vision, People, Working Effectively, Product, Fundraising, Legal and Structure, and Work–Life Harmony. The recurring les- sons have stood the test of time and we’ve freshened up and updated these sections. Each theme contains the personal experience, insights, and first- hand accounts of the startup entrepreneurs and mentors who are involved with Techstars. The chapters are short, targeted, and focus on common sayings heard around Techstars. Some of these sayings, such as the title of this book, are mantras of ours. A few are well-worn clichés. But all of them are critical ideas that have withstood the test of time and can help you to become a successful entrepreneur. You’ll also encounter what seems to be contradictory advice between some of the chapters, but we view it as a balanced perspective show- ing the complexities of startup challenges. Entrepreneurship is not a one-size-fits-all endeavor. Although mastering these themes doesn’t ensure success for every first-time entrepreneur, our experience is that understanding the challenges, hearing personal stories, and consuming advice from
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mentors and startup entrepreneurs can be very helpful. You’ll real- ize that you aren’t alone in facing these challenges and will see that successful entrepreneurs have trudged down the same path as you. While Techstars is focused on technology companies, the princi- ples and advice throughout the book apply to other types of startup ventures as well. They also can be helpful to established companies exploring new, innovative approaches to their businesses, as well as organizations working on economic and community development initiatives. So, whether you’re creating a world-changing app, start- ing a restaurant, creating a nonprofit, building a startup commu- nity, or increasing innovation in your organization, Do More Faster will help accelerate your success. In the spirit of Techstars, this book is community-oriented and mentorship-driven. It’s also very personal, as we wanted to help the reader put a name to a face. For that reason, we have included many photos to bring the stories to life. The stories form a cohesive narrative, but they also stand alone. Techstars is a magical thing. We hope you’ll find the perspectives and stories in this book to be powerful and useful to you and your startup. Let us know what you think. Come visit us at Techstars.com or email us at [email protected] or [email protected]. David Cohen and Brad Feld May 2019 Boulder, Colorado
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Techstars started as an idea in 2006, when David Cohen sent an email to David Brown about a novel way to help entrepreneurs accel- erate their businesses. Since then it has grown into the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. In a little over a decade, Techstars accelerators have funded more than 1,700 companies in more than 30 locations in 13 countries.1 About 80% of these compa- nies are successful: they have become profitable, have been bought by notable companies such as Salesforce, Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, and they have gone on to raise more than $7 billion in venture capital and angel investors. We believe that Techstars represents something special. We’re often told that it feels like an entrepreneurial revival. What’s the secret to Techstars’ rapid growth and success rate of companies going through accelerator programs? The reasons can be distilled into three unique ingredients: practicing the principles of Do More Faster, integrating mentorship deeply within the accelerators, and promoting community by giving first. At Techstars, we practice the principles outlined in this book. We run intensive, three-month programs for startup entrepreneurs—not a full year, not six months, and definitely not 9-to-5. Our accelera- tors remove all the distractions and force the entrepreneurs to focus solely on their startup. We do this once a year in each location that we run an accelerator. We bring together 10 startups (from between 500 and 1,000 applicants) with around 100 local mentors, who are top entrepreneurs and investors, for each three-month program, then focus intensive mentorship on them and tie them into our global net- work. After 13 weeks, the program culminates with a series of events during which the startups pitch their ideas to hundreds of investors.
1 Techstars is growing rapidly. For a list of locations and a timeline with milestones, see http://history.techstars.com/.
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Another key ingredient is mentorship. You’ll often hear us describe Techstars as “mentorship driven.” We carefully select peo- ple who are interested in deeply engaging with entrepreneurs—not simply to get the inside track on investing or give high-level feedback or tell biographical stories. Our mentors are selected because they want to help entrepreneurs avoid roadblocks that will prevent them from getting their idea to the market. Each of the 10,000 mentors who participates in Techstars accelerators or community programs is asked to focus on a single company or, if she has a great deal of free time, at most two. We carefully avoid fly-by mentorship in which someone successful or famous stops by an accelerator to impart some generic wisdom and give shallow feedback on each company. At Techstars, we’re only interested in deep and engaged mentor- ship, where mentors want to develop a relationship with an entre- preneur and be involved for the long haul. Our approach results in around five mentors working closely with each company. This is the magic of Techstars—a focused group of amazing mentors paired with each company to help them excel and accelerate. Techstars is also about community. When we started Techstars, one of our primary goals was to connect and improve our local startup community in Boulder. We wanted more passionate and skilled busi- nesspeople in Boulder, engaged local angel investors, and entrepre- neurs. We wanted Boulder to be known to the world as a credible place for talented entrepreneurs. We wanted the best, brightest, and most experienced entrepreneurs to become mentors and work together on new and exciting startups. Fundamentally, we wanted our community to be better. Our mentors help for the same reasons. We believe that a culture of sustained mentorship is the secret weapon of successful startup communities. Because of Techstars, we’ve noticed that mentorship and community eventually come full circle. The founders of early Techstars companies are now men- tors to the founders of newer ones. Some of the founders who have been through Techstars are starting their second, third, or fourth company. Alumni of the accelerators have started making their own angel investments, and several venture capital funds have now been started by alumni. The life-changing value of highly engaged mentorship is now ingrained into the very fabric of who they are. In turn, they give back every day.
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Today, more than a decade after founding Techstars, we are on the path to achieving its vision as the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. We work with corporate partners like Target, Ford, Barclays, Amazon, and over 50 others to supercharge growth by accelerating innovation and cultural transformation. Startup Week, Startup Weekend, and Startup Accelerators have helped to create tens of billions of dollars in value and tens of thousands of jobs. We cur- rently provide our Startup Weekend in 630 cities in 110 countries with over 70,000 attendees annually. Startup Week takes place in 147 cities in 16 countries with over 100,000 participants annually. And our three- month Startup Accelerators have helped more than 1,700 companies. In 2019 we launched a new initiative called Techstars Studio, which will allow Techstars to source new company concepts from Techstars alumni founders, community leaders, venture capitalists, mentors, and corporate partners. The Techstars Studio will then build prototypes, test market adoption, and select the most promising concepts for launch. The first Techstars Studio will be in Boulder, just like the first Techstars accelerator was in 2007. As with the expansion of Techstars Accelerators around the world, we expect Techstars Studios to follow a similar expansion path. We are especially excited about the founding team of Techstars Studios. Along with the leadership of David Cohen (the co-CEO of Techstars) will be Isaac Saldana, founder of SendGrid, and Mike Rowan, former VP of SendGrid Labs. We’ve worked closely with Isaac and Mike over the years and are psyched to have another chance to create something with them from the ground floor. One of the things that sets Techstars apart from others is the consistency of what we do and the results we achieve. We frequently hear from participants in our programs—startup founders, men- tors, corporate partners, and attendees at our Startup events—that regardless of location, program, or Techstars leaders, the same high- quality standards and value are delivered. We attribute this to our Code of Conduct, which permeates all that we do at Techstars and is rigorously enforced.2 We hold ourselves and all others in the Tech- stars community to the highest levels of conduct because we believe we are ambassadors for the Techstars community, and we live in the public. Our code has three tenets: we give first, we act with integrity, and we treat all others with respect.
2 See our Code of Conduct here: https://www.techstars.com/code-of-conduct/.
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By giving first, we mean helping others whenever possible, and appreciating the help others give us. By acting with integrity, we mean being honest and transparent, protecting sensitive informa- tion, communicating with our investors, and disclosing conflicts of interest. And by treating others with respect, we mean committing to an open, nonhostile workplace, having zero tolerance for any form of discrimination or harassment, avoiding gossip, and promot- ing fair pay for equal work. We believe all companies should operate with these principles, and by doing so they will achieve a harmony that leads to higher lev- els of engagement and better productivity, and will attract talented people at all levels. In addition to our global reach, Techstars is committed to mak- ing an impact. The mission of our Techstars Foundation is to foster diversity and inclusion throughout the entrepreneurial ecosystem. We work with nonprofit organizations like Student Dream, Change Catalyst, and Patriot Boot Camp to help individuals and organiza- tions make a positive impact in their local communities. Brad and his wife Amy Batchelor’s foundation, the Anchor Point Foundation, actively supports a broad range of efforts by individuals and organi- zations to improve their communities. Although Techstars has grown significantly over the past decade, we remain committed to the core idea of Techstars: helping entre- preneurs with an idea to create a sustainable business. We are the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed.
Co-CEO David Brown with team mem- bers from around the world.
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M oving back to the United States, and a mix CD, changed my life. In 2010, I moved to Boston for love—to follow my wife who was starting her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology. Ten years earlier, after graduating with a computer science degree from the University of Texas at Austin as an immigrant student from India, I became part of the founding team at a startup called United Devices. We had a fan- tastic run. I learned a ton as a developer, a team lead, and a product manager. My final role was to start and build operations in India and Europe. I set up and groomed our pre- and post-sales organization in Europe, and eventually blossomed into a sales leader. I left United Devices after our acquisition and moved to Boston to join my wife. Suddenly, I felt I was back to square one—back in the United States in a new city with no friends, no network, and no job. I was not sure what I wanted to do next, but I had to do something. After spending some time being what I jokingly called a “kept man to my doctoral student wife,” I eventually decided it was time to work on something new again. I came up with the idea for Kinvey, a company that was going to build a cloud platform to make it easier for developers and enterprises to build and run the next generation of web, mobile, and wearable apps. I called it “Backend as a Service.” But I was at a loss on how I would go about doing it. Creating devel- opment platforms for mission-critical apps required a lot of capital, a lot of time to build them correctly, and a hugely talented team, among myriad other things I was sure I hadn’t thought about. Then I heard about the Techstars Accelerator in Boston. To make progress on Kinvey and get help, I had forced myself, a rank intro- vert in an extrovert’s disguise, to get plugged into the Boston startup community. Through numerous meetups, events, and one-on-one conversations, I started to hear a consistent buzz about this thing called Techstars Boston and their new managing director, Katie Rae.
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I had to meet her and learn more about this organization. I net- worked my way to finally meet Katie and many of the mentors she had assembled to support the Techstars program. I was blown away by everyone’s experience, empathy, thoughtfulness, and willingness to help. I applied to the program, and our final interview was going to be in Austin, Texas. Katie was in Austin for the SXSW festival and she wanted to know if we could meet there. My team and I invited her to a tex-mex lunch and at the end of the lunch we offered her a mix CD of songs by local Austin musicians as a thank you. I’m not sure if it was the food, the margaritas, the mix CD, our team, or our idea, but the next day I received an email from Katie that we were accepted into the Techstars Boston 2011 program. The three months of the Techstars Boston program changed the trajectory of Kinvey, but not for the reasons you might think. Dur- ing the program, we didn’t change our idea, we didn’t discover a new strategy, there were no pivots, we didn’t launch our product, nor did we win any customers or generate any revenue. Techstars Boston helped us create a network of successful, genuine, insightful, and connected mentors who continued to help us in every facet of building our startup. Katie Rae, Reed Sturtevant, Brad Feld, David Cohen, Nicole Stata, Joe Caruso, Jennifer Lum, Fred Destin, Rich Miner, Michael Mark—the list of helpful mentors goes on and on. I built friendships and bonds of trust with some of the brightest minds in technology, relationships that I know will endure for the rest of my career. The secret sauce of Techstars then and now is its ability to quickly help founders meet and derive value from mentors and other people who can meaningfully improve the course of their business. That is priceless. By 2017, we grew Kinvey into the #1 Mobile Development Plat- form and Enterprise Health Cloud, and we earned the right to be the strategic digital application cloud platform vendor for many of the largest enterprises in the world. As a result, we were successfully acquired by Progress, creating a great outcome for all our investors, customers, and employees. My Techstars experience created an indelible passion in me to help other founders and to invest in startups. A value of Techstars is to #givefirst, to give back to the community, and to help others
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experience this fabulous journey of creating a business. I have con- tinued to give back over the years, and I’ve recently found myself gravitating toward startups in India, my home country. I believe we are in the very early stages of a multi-decade tech- nology innovation juggernaut in India. I see a growing ecosystem of founding teams in India who can compete with the best teams and technologies around the world. Indian entrepreneurs know how world-class products are built and scaled (because they started their careers in India, shipping customer-facing products at compa- nies like Google, Facebook, Amazon, Yahoo, VMware, etc.) and they understand how world-class teams are hired and nurtured. Indian entrepreneurs absorbed all the knowledge they could and digested every blog post, book, and podcast on how startups are built. Most importantly, our entrepreneurs have the vision, courage, and tenac- ity to believe that they can build seminal, transformative technolo- gies and teams and turn those into world-leading companies. The founding teams in India will bring a new age of technology entrepreneurship fueled by two massive opportunities. For the first opportunity, Indian entrepreneurs will focus on digitally transform- ing countless markets within India alone. With a rapidly growing consumer market the demand for new products and services will skyrocket. And with increasing purchasing power of Indian consum- ers, the digitization opportunities in large markets like healthcare, shipping, logistics, retail, and manufacturing are poised to become a consumption engine for homegrown innovation and disruption. The size and socioeconomic, linguistic, and cultural complexity of India makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, for a non-Indian team to understand local needs and build successful startup busi- nesses that cater to the Indian market. The time is ripe for Indian entrepreneurs to build, scale, and create significant enterprise value by just focusing on the Indian customer. The second opportunity for Indian entrepreneurs is to become competitive in global markets. In addition to now having world-class product-talent, the growth of cloud and SaaS tools allows Indian entrepreneurs to service, support, market, and sell to customers anywhere in the world. At the same time, the lower cost basis of building and supporting products from India enables Indian start- ups to deliver industry-leading solutions at disruptive price points.
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I expect the startup revolution in India to happen quickly, but entrepreneurs need access to local and global talent, capital, cus- tomers, partners, mentors, fellow founders, universities, govern- ment, and other service providers who can help them. I personally saw Techstars bring all these ingredients together in Boston and they helped rejuvenate Boston’s startup ecosystem in a short period of time. In less than 10 years, Techstars Boston has accelerated over 175 startups with a 1,000+-strong mentor network, creating over 3,000 jobs and raising over $1 billion in capital, leading to more than 30 exits already. This ecosystem is now self-propagating and it is paying it forward to the next generation of entrepreneurs. I believe Techstars can do the same thing across numerous cities in India, and founders all across the country will benefit from this transformation. I used to dream of an India where technology innovation and dis- ruption could bring value to over a billion people, create millions of jobs, unlock thousands of crores of rupees in new economic value, and move the country forward for the better. After my Techstars experience I know that dream can become a reality. I want to live in that world. I believe we can, and we will. Sravish Sridhar Founder/CEO, Kinvey Techstars Boston 2011 Boston, Massachusetts August 2019
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David Cohen and Brad Feld
David is Managing Partner of Techstars and Brad is Managing Partner of Foundry Group.
W hen we started Techstars in 2006 we were focused on help- ing entrepreneurs succeed in one location, Boulder, Colorado. Do More Faster was first published in 2011 and this newly revised edi- tion will appear in 2019. Since our founding, Techstars has grown to become the worldwide network that helps entrepreneurs succeed. We scaled Startup Week, Startup Weekend, and Startup Accelerators that collectively have created tens of billions of dollars in value and tens of thousands of jobs. Startup Weekend takes place in 630 cities in 110 countries with over 70,000 attendees annually. Startup Week is provided in 147 cities in 16 countries with over 100,000 partici- pants annually. And our three-month Startup Accelerators operate in more than 30 cities in 15 countries and have helped more than 1,700 companies. Meanwhile, India has witnessed a remarkable transformation of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in that same time frame. In 2005, PayTM started, followed by Flipkart and Inmobi in 2007. Quikr and Your- story emerged in 2008, MobiKwik and Mydala in 2009, and Ola Cabs, Freshworks, and Snapdeal in 2010. Multiple other startups, like Big Basket and Delhivery, have followed and since 2005, 18 Indian startups reached valuations over $1 billion. Flipkart was purchased by Walmart for $16 billion in 2018, marking the first major exit of an Indian startup. This list barely scratches the surface of the vibrancy of India’s entrepreneurial ecosystem and we believe that thousands, millions,
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or tens of millions of Indians with an idea will be creating startups. Many will fail, of course, but we believe the lessons in this book, tested and repeated over a decade, will help startup founders under- stand what has worked for others and apply those learnings to their own situation. We believe Techstars can make a significant contribution to the Indian entrepreneurial ecosystem. We have found that by helping entrepreneurs we also help increase employment opportunities and that helps people and communities provide more services and bene- fits to others. The vast population of India means that Techstars can indirectly impact hundreds of millions of people and communities and elevate the standard of living for many people. We have also experienced firsthand the incredibly high levels of technical expertise in India, and in fact the technical skills of Indian engineers, computer software developers, and others surpass the levels of skill in other parts of the world. But because of the com- plexity and diversity of India, the ability to turn superior technolo- gies into marketable products, to develop business models that align with the market, is daunting. That’s where this book and our accel- erators come in. The chapters in Do More Faster India highlight the experiences of diverse people who have either participated in our Techstars accelerator program or been a mentor to the program. Some of these people have been wildly successful while others have failed. We think readers can learn something important from both the successful and unsuccessful people. And our hope is that the les- sons in this book will motivate entrepreneurs to develop networks and communities and seek out mentors to catalyze India’s entrepre- neurial ecosystem. The challenges in India are significant and unlike any other coun- try in the world. But for Techstars, India is not just one country with limited influence. With its scale, diversity, and constraints, India is a crucible and gateway for five billion people living in emerging economies. The ideas developed in Do More Faster India will work well in other parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Techstars believes that entrepreneurs create the future, and the future is truly one global family.
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