Aug 17 2007

TechStars Rocks!

Wow! What can I saw about the TechStars investor pitch/demo day except that it was fantastic. The teams were extremely well prepared and every single one of them really nailed it. We had about 50 private investors and venture capitalists in attendance to see the 10 TechStars teams go through what they’ve been up to this summer.

Those of you who follow me on Twitter know that I’ve been somewhat of a TechStars groupie this summer – I’ve spent many hours with the teams giving feedback, advice and lending a sympathetic ear. I’ve seen early ideas and kluge demos turn into the seeds of real business ideas, real prototypes and true products. The journey has been amazing to watch. For me this was the best part of yesterday – the progress that each of these companies has made this summer is truly remarkable.

TechStars was raw entrepreneurship at its finest. The program brought in teams who had ideas that ranged from pet projects to recently crafted plans to companies that the founders had been working on already for years. Over the course of the summer these ideas were refined, changed, thrown out completely and refined again. The result was a pretty amazing experience for the founders and ten pretty interesting potential businesses.

Don Doge had a nice summary of each on his blog if you’re interested. I’ve also linked to the companies below.

EventVue

IntenseDebate

SocialThing

StickyNotes

Search-to-Phone

Villij

MadKast

FiltrBox

KBLabs

BrightKite