Matt Galligan has put his college education on hold to launch a software product that he hopes will allow people to better manage their online lives.
But the St. Louis resident and his two partners will be getting “schooled” this summer in Boulder by some of the top technology and business minds in Colorado, if not the country.
“There are some things we have to learn one way or another,” said Galligan, 22. “It’s better that we learn this way rather than screwing something up.”
Jared Polis, Brad Feld, David Cohen and David Brown are the “professors” – the founders of an organization called TechStars, created to mentor 10 startup companies for the summer. The inaugural session kicks off Monday.
TechStars is the brainchild of Cohen and Brown, who then pitched the idea to Feld and Polis.
“I had never met David (Cohen),” Feld said. “We had a random meeting and in 15 minutes, I was totally in love with the idea.”
The idea: Find 10 of the most innovative ideas in technology, and bring their teams to Boulder. Give them office space, up to $15,000 for expenses, and unfettered access to about 40 mentors to help guide them through the strategy, implementation, funding, marketing and legal obstacles every startup faces. TechStars will also take a 5 percent stake in each of the companies that participate this summer.
“I was thinking about the gaps in my own experience. I made a lot of mistakes,” said Cohen. “I wish I had had more mentorship, and more access, not only for capital, but the critical thinking. How to think about (starting a company) and approach it from a strategic standpoint.”
Access to a brain trust
Cohen teamed with Brown, a business partner in several ventures, including Zoll Data Systems, of which Brown is co-founder and current president.
“We tried a few different things, we got into angel investing,” Brown said. “We felt our core competency was in very early stage startups, which angel investors aren’t typically interested in.”
The founders of TechStars are technology rock stars in their own right. Polis, founder of BlueMountain.com and ProFlowers.com, sold those web entities to Excite@Home and Douglas County-based Liberty Media Corp.
“Certainly people who are investing look into us and what we’ve done. There’s really a strong bench of support and proven success there,” Polis said. “I wish when I was first starting out I had access to this kind of brain trust.”
Feld is a well-known figure in the venture-capital world, serving as managing director of both Mobius Venture Capital and the Foundry Group, a venture firm specializing in early-stage funding. Before entering the VC world, Feld started three companies, including a software firm, Feld Technologies, in 1987. That company was later sold to AmeriData, which was acquired by GE Capital in 1995.
“I love helping start companies,” Feld said. “The four of us funded TechStars this year. If it’s successful, we’ll do it again.”
Success depends on interaction between the companies and the mentors, and the quality of the 10 companies themselves.
The names of eight TechStars companies are public, as others prefer to “fly under the radar” in the highly competitive world of technology. Two of companies are in Colorado: Boulder-based Tru.Vu and Denver-based No Sleep Media.
Tru.vu is working on a system to deliver online business content to small and medium-sized companies. No Sleep Media is a Web-based software company with a service called Loopnote, which provides notifications about things such as traffic and social plans of friends and family.
TechStars hopes the summer will shine light on Colorado as a top destination for technology startups.
“I think this is an opportunity to highlight the Boulder/Denver tech corridor,” Brown said. “This is a way to showcase nationally that we have a very positive business climate, great human capital and resources.”
There are other programs that mentor entrepreneurs and help startups, such as the TiE Rockies mentoring program here in Colorado, and Y Combinator, a Silicon Valley effort, which funds startups in California and Cambridge, Mass., each year.
Cohen says TechStars has more mentors involved in the program than Y Combinator, which according to its website offers up to $20,000 in seed money to each company and tries to match it with other potential investors. Y Combinator hosts a dinner once a week and invites guest speakers in to discuss various aspects of starting a business. TechStars has also lined up sponsors such as ViaWest, a Denver-based data and hosting company.
“We’re not landlords, this is not an incubator,” Cohen said. “We’d rather have people call it a hatchery. We’re testing our theories about what ideas might be viable, and great founders will find the right ideas.”
“Yugo to a Corvette”
Cohen said the TechStars program isn’t about the money, but the opportunities being made available to the companies through mentoring. The 5 percent stake in the companies makes TechStars a for-profit, something the founders firmly agreed on, Cohen said.
Mentors – in addition to the four TechStars founders – include area entrepreneurs such as Ryan Martens, founder and chief technology officer of Rally Software Development, a Boulder-based firm.
“Helping young entrepreneurs succeed is a vital part of the overall entrepreneurial engine of the Boulder/Front Range economy,” Martens said. “Through this experience, we intimately understand that it takes a community to help start and grow a successful business.”
Other mentors include Brad Schnell, founder of Boulder-based @Last, which was purchased by Google last year. There are also attorneys, such as Michael Platt, a partner at Cooley Godward Kronish LLP, on tap to help guide the TechStars through some of the crucial legal hurdles faced when inking contracts.
Galligan’s digitalsoap is working on a technology the company is calling “socialthing” that helps people organize their digital photos, music and social networking destinations at a single online location.
“Throughout the summer our plan is to finish the application,” said Galligan, one of four founders of the company. “I’m hoping we have something really complete that additional investors will see as fit for the Internet.”
For companies like digitalsoap, getting chosen out of a pool of 300 applicants nationwide instantly adds validation to their work.
“We went from being 1980s Yugo to a Corvette,” said Galligan.
Staff writer Kimberly S. Johnson can be reached at 303-954-1088 or kjohnson@denverpost.com.
List of participants
A list of some of the TechStars. The three-month program begins Monday. Some of the companies have principals scattered across the globe, but will come together in Boulder.
Source: TechStars
