The Passion of the Startup – Tech Stars Documentary "The Founders"

Andrew Hyde is one of those guys that is brimming with energy and just alot of fun to be around. He is what I like to call “Good People”. We met three years ago at the Gnomedex conference and we hit it off immediately. He had just moved to Boulder, CO and was helping start up this summer event called “Tech Stars“. A cross between summer camp for entrepreneurs and American Idol without the humiliation and the voting out.

According to the web site, “TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment fund. Each year we run a summer-long program in Boulder, Colorado and Cambridge, Massachusetts. We’re very selective – each year hundreds of companies apply to the program and we only take about ten per city. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, a summer of intensive top-notch mentorship, and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the summer.”

The two most powerful things that this program has is that it goes on all summer long and the mentoring power that gives these entrepreneurs time to really get their business in shape and present to investors. Many have gotten funded the weekend they present. This truly blows the “investor” cattle call presentation events I have done in the past away. Plus it makes Boulder the epicenter of startups these days. People might still be starting up businesses in Silicon Valley but if you want to find great talent, have a better tax base and be in an ecosystem of innovation and investment, Boulder is the place to be.

This is the third Tech Stars which headed up by David Cohen, CEO and Executive Director in Boulder and Shawn Broderick, Executive Director in Boston. Andrew is the Community Director and Nicole Glaros is the General Manager. Together they herd the cats…err…entrepreneurs.

This time around they put together a episodic documentary following a few startups and their founders through the TechStars process. Megan Sweeney directed, shot, & edited the “The Founders”, with the contribution of some video from Andrew on his trusty Canon 5d Mark II (so jealous) DSLR.

There are 12 episodes so far and the documentary is Sundance worthy. Here is the first one below:

Go and checkout the site for the rest. It is totally worth your time.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 4th, 2009 at 8:00 am and is filed under Entrepreneurs, Resources, small business, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.


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