Startable – Healy Jones’ & Prasad Thammineni’s Blog

Wow, the Techstars Boston Investor Day last Thursday was great! I can’t believe the progress made in the past month by the teams. I’ve been a very absent Techstars advisor for the past month, so I didn’t know what to expect. Everyone in the crowd seemed impressed by the startups, and I felt a great vibe and high level of interest from some of the well-known Boston angel investors I spoke with during the event. Andrew Hyde mentioned to me that it felt a lot like Investor Day at the 1st Techstars Boulder in 2007 – and that 3 of those companies have had successful exits. Let’s hope that the good Techstars mojo continues here on the East Coast. To that end, here is my advice to the Techstars entrepreneurs on keeping the positive momentum going post-Investor Day. I guess the gist of my advice is that the hard work hasn’t ended – it’s actually just begun. But you are in such a great spot that you should be excited to keep moving forward and you should continue to take advantage of everything that Techstars has created with/for you – especially the network.

Techstars Boston, photo by Andrew Hyde

1. Don’t take a breather. You have a narrow window to exploit the momentum that you’ve created. Investors and the press are interested in what you are doing, but they have notoriously short attention spans.
2. Follow up with EVERYONE you spoke to. Send emails to each and every investor that you met – ask Shawn for their contact info if you didn’t capture it. These emails should be out by Monday afternoon at the latest – again, people have short attention spans. Did you speak to any of the tech reporters at the event? Heck, even if you didn’t get a list of the reporters (and bloggers) at the event from Shawn and send them a “thank you for attending email.” Include a three or four sentence business description so they remember who you were. Finally, offer yourself up to talk to them about Techstars or ASK for something.
3. Hit up your local tech press if you’re not from Boston – with a “the local tech startup doing something big time” angle and see if they bite.
4. Have an opinion on the terms of your investment round. This will help move the angels along more quickly.
5. Look for an investor “anchor” for your angel round (if you haven’t already raised your capital/got your fund raise going.) You need an angel to set the terms for seed round, so that the other angels will fall into line and step into the mix. I know a few of you have investors approach you and express high interest in the business. Those are the ones to hit up first. Once you have an anchor things become much, much easier.
6. Consider doing a tranched close on your round so you can get money into the company sooner rather than later (this means taking less than 100% of your hoped for fund round and continuing to work toward getting the other % at the same terms in the not too distant future). Angel rounds seem to take even longer than VC investments, so if you can get some of the investment dollars to come in right away that will help you do important things like pay for developers and ramen.
7. Take the free stuff. If Techstars offers to let you stay in the space for a while, take it. You probably had a good routine going pre-Investor Day in the space, so why mess things up? Keep the same schedule going. Cheap or free rent is VERY hard to find. And if Shawn wants you to pay for the space, well, talk him down as much as you can or ask for the first month free or something.
8. Stay in touch with all the other companies! How awesome were these other entrepreneurs? You have one of the best advantages of any startups – a real, legit peer group. Do you know how lonely doing a traditional startup is? You don’t have that problem! Those other CEOs and founders want you to succeed just as badly as you do. They will experience the same issues that you will face, sometimes before you do. Hit each other up for advice, networking and friendship.
9. Keep the weekly email updates going. It will help you stay focused – and you don’t want to lose the connections that you developed during the program.
10. Don’t get distracted. $, PR and continued growth of the business are your near-term goals. Don’t forget about the business while you take advantage of the external momentum. Set aggressive near-term business goals and hit them.

Finally, a bonus tip:

1. HAVE FUN! You are better off than 95% of all startups in the world. Your network is so much stronger than anyone else I know. Your peer group is strong, smart and passionate. You guys and gals are awesome – kick some butt! (And don’t forget about little old me once you hit it big time…)

Link to Andrew’s photos of Investor Day: http://www.flickr.com/photos/bouldair/sets/72157622218729239/