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Ah, thanks for clarifying what round that was, and kudos to David! Like I said, you guys have been doing a better job distinguishing between your accelerator an

Ah, thanks for clarifying what round that was, and kudos to David! Like I said, you guys have been doing a better job distinguishing between your accelerator and venture portfolio, although that hasn't always been the case. In a similar vein, what are your thoughts on Techstars calling themselves "the #1 startup accelerator in the world" and claiming "the best results" for their program? Given that YC's performance is roughly ~12X yours, this does seem to be somewhat of a misstatement. That is, unless you're claiming to be #1 for some arbitrary metric that isn't actually the benchmark for your industry (which to be clear, is the market cap of the companies you fund). I think Techstars is clearly a great program, but stuff like that just strikes me as disingenuous. :)

jedc 11y ago
I personally (speaking for myself) never cared for "the #1 startup accelerator" wording, and now that Techstars has built a small marketing team you'll have noticed that we talk about Techstars a lot differently - http://www.techstars.com/ http://www.techstars.com/ :) BTW, the #1 thing came from the first ranking of accelerators back in 2011 - http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05 http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05 (I believe they used a mixture of financial results and founder ratings, but I'm not sure.) Yep, YC companies have raised a lot more money and have a higher total valuation, but YC also has a two-year head start! Based on any reasonable metric, Techstars has better results than any other accelerator - http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators PS - my favorite story about how Techstars directly helped to change the course of one company is here - http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-galaxy-far-far-awaychanged-everything-for-sphero/ http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-ga...

jedc 11y ago

I personally (speaking for myself) never cared for "the #1 startup accelerator" wording, and now that Techstars has built a small marketing team you'll have noticed that we talk about Techstars a lot differently - http://www.techstars.com/ http://www.techstars.com/ :) BTW, the #1 thing came from the first ranking of accelerators back in 2011 - http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05 http://tech.co/top-15-us-startup-accelerators-ranked-2011-05 (I believe they used a mixture of financial results and founder ratings, but I'm not sure.) Yep, YC companies have raised a lot more money and have a higher total valuation, but YC also has a two-year head start! Based on any reasonable metric, Techstars has better results than any other accelerator - http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators http://www.seed-db.com/accelerators PS - my favorite story about how Techstars directly helped to change the course of one company is here - http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-galaxy-far-far-awaychanged-everything-for-sphero/ http://www.wired.com/2015/12/how-bb-8a-rolling-robot-in-a-ga...