Tag Archives: TechStars

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The Denver Post’s Andy Vuong highlights the four Denver-based companies that will be involved in TechStars Boulder this summer. Elihuu being one of them:

“[Designers have] tested the market, they’ve figured out price points, they’ve figured out materials, they’ve figured out processes — and they need to get this thing manufactured,” said co-founder Dorian Ferlauto. “They come to us and we find them the best matches.”

Its great that the multiple TechStars locations (Boulder, NYC, Seattle, Boston, etc.) has allowed for these locales to help ‘bring up’ local companies instead of ‘ship in’ entrepreneurs from around the country (sure, that still does happen).

But, this also means there’s more tendency for those folks who started a company locally to maintain and grown their network, continue to stay in town where their mentors and funders reside, grow a startup ecosystem, find more resources, stick around, and turn around and mentor the future incomers. I may be overstating, but in the early days, most successful TechStars companies simply moved to California shortly after getting investments after demo day…

TechStars Boulder 2013

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TechStarsCongratulations are in order to the newly announced summer 2013 class at company incubator and accelerator, TechStars Boulder. It’s hard to believe this is already the 7th group of companies to spend their summer in Colorado.

Having chatted with David Cohen back in July 2006 about his new “summer program” idea, I can remember that TechStars was exactly the kind of thing that young companies and entrepreneurs should clamor to be a part of: access to great mentors, help with raising funds, building a product or service around a market, etc. At the time I had no co-founders, no company ideas, and no good foundation to take advantage of the opportunity about to launch in the coming months…

Fast forward six years and having observed from the outside and made friends in TechStars and working with Alex (a Boulder TechStars mentor) and a very smart group of folks at at Crowd Favorite: I’ve learned a lot about successfully building a web application, designing a solid web experience, taking something from concept to implementation, hiring, iterating and dealing with feedback, making decisions, presenting to stakeholders, communicating, and so on.

Through a circuitous route1, I’m happy to say that the newly-inducted team at Elihuu (pronounced E-lay-who) has asked me to help lend advice and mentorship around building their web-based company. The idea behind Elihhu is to use proven processes and allow technology to connect designers (with product ideas) and manufacturers (who have extra capacity) to create products together and sell them in lieu of the typical agency / brokerage model. I’m proud of what the team has designed and built in a few short months and it’s been fun to watch and be involved in. Now it’s time to turn it into a business… I’m excited for what the summer will bring!

Kudos class of 2013 and best of luck this summer…

  • AdsNative
  • Augur
  • Brandfolder
  • Elihuu
  • Given Goods
  • GoodApril
  • hull.io
  • LeChat
  • Prediculous
  • Shopventory
  • ShowShoe
  1. I’ve worked with Susanna in Boulder since I was in college and I had met Dorian, a family friend, through her many years ago. She re-introduced us a few months ago when Dorian started looking for a team to design and build her company concept and knew that was the kind of thing I did day-to-day now. ↩