Stories of Technology, Innovation, & Entrepreneurship in the Southeast

BizWest reports that a trio of Boulder, CO start-up scene veterans is reviving the local Techstars accelerator program, which was discontinued this year after a decision by the organization’s previous leaders to move Techstars’ headquarters from Boulder to New York.

As noted in the article, one of the three people working on the revived program is Techstars Co-Founder David Cohen, who resumed his longtime role as Chief Executive Officer of the Boulder-born startup accelerator in May (see teknovation.biz article here). He will be joined by Natty Zola, a former Techstars Managing Director who left the organization in 2020 to form the investment firm Matchstick Ventures, and Nicole Glaros, a former Techstars leader, investor, entrepreneur, and member of the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Denver Branch board of directors.

The trio announced the revival of Techstars in Boulder in a series of blog posts last week and said they will be hiring a Managing Partner to lead the day-to-day operations of the organization.

The Boulder program will differ from existing Techstars accelerators in that it “will be locally owned, governed, and operated while still having access to the global Techstars resources,” Glaros wrote. “While Techstars will be an anchor investor, and David will sit on the board alongside me and Natty, the vast majority of the capital will be from the local ecosystem, governed by a local board of directors that Techstars influences but doesn’t control, with a staff that reports to this local entity. This allows the economic incentives to be fully aligned, to keep the returns and control here in Colorado, for Techstars to support the success of the local activity, and for the local program to take advantage of all that Techstars has built over the years.”

Boulder will be “the first community with this arrangement,” she wrote, and the new program will be “called Techstars Colorado, a start-up community partnership.”

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