davidgcohen.com

Originally published in 2010, we’ve updated the book to bring the lessons we’ve learned about accelerating early stage startups into even sharper focus. In this book, we identify the key issues that first-time entrepreneurs encounter, and offer proven advice from successful entrepreneurs who have worked with the Techstars accelerator program. So many of the stories had fantastic twists and turns that we were able to update in this refreshed second edition. The scale of Techstars has changed tremendously since we originally wrote the book, so we were able to add in much more context and share outcomes in specific cases related to the stories.

In 2009, coming out of Techstars, SendGrid set out to raise a seed round. Eight years later, they went public at around a $1B valuation. Shortly thereafter, Twilio acquired SendGrid for $2B. Great success stories have humble beginnings. Here’s a video where we break down their pitch a few years after their demo day at Techstars.

Those companies got to Air Force Pitch Day by engaging with something called AFWERX, which is an “open dual-use” program (meaning something that applies to both military and commercials worlds). technologies that detect, track, identify, characterize, attribute or mitigate unmanned systems, to include sensors, compute hardware/software, image processing, AI, sensor fusion, secure comms, trusted ID, power systems, advanced materials, and man-machine interface. In this program, you can get US $120,000 in funding as an investment from Techstars, and our intensive mentorship-driven accelerator program. Techstars also recently launched a Space tech accelerator program with the Air Force in partnership with Starburst, JPL NASA, Lockheed Martin, SAIC, Maxar Technologies and Israel Aerospace Industries (an admittedly long but ridiculously cool list of partners).

I’ve always thought that so much about prejudice was based on the most uncontrollable and tiny differences between us, and how ridiculous this will seem when someone eventually visits us from another planet. Based on this simple idea (and it was not much more than that), Eliot created a fantastic short story called True Blue, and published it nearly two years ago. Eliot and his friends (Phoebe Morris and Peter Nowell) have now created a way to not just read that short story, but to experience it. They’ve just released it today, a few years after this was just an idea.