TechStars: The next great incubator unleashes 11 startups in NYC

Imagine you’re sitting fireside in the living room of your professor’s home. He calls out to each of you by name. Not only are there students in the room, students you call friends, but you’re surrounded by alumni and teacher assistants who mentor you along the way. It’s this kind of supportive, family style setting that epitomizes the startup accelerator TechStars. And this week, TechStars unleashed its first New York City class, a total of 11 startups out into the world.

Here’s how it works: TechStars, which was founded in 2006 in Boulder, Colorado by David Cohen and Brad Feld, invests a small sum of money into a selected set of tech startups — $6,000 to $18,000 on average — for a 6% equity stake in the companies. In exchange, the startups get access to an incredible network of mentors, experienced members of the local tech scene, who advise them on business and product development and the ins and outs of growing a company.

On Friday afternoon, we caught up with 29-year old David Tisch, the startup accelerator’s Managing Director in New York City. Tisch, the grandson of self-made billionaire businessman Laurence Alan Tisch, is as New York as New Yorkers come. In fact, aside from the 4 years he spent as an undergrad at UPenn, he’s never lived anywhere else.

Last June 2010, at Angel BootCamp in Boston, Tisch bumped into TechStars’ founder David Cohen, who was in town for the Boston class of TechStars’ Demo Day. Cohen told David he was going to launch the next TechStars in New York (L.A. was also on the list at the time), but he needed to find a managing director to run the program locally. The eager Tisch asked him what he was looking for in a director. Cohen spelled out 5 criteria.

1. Has launched a successful start up.
2. Has raised venture capital.
3. Has a failed startup.
4. Has made an angel investment.
5. Is a native to the city.

“I told him, well, I have 3 out of 5 of those criteria,” says Tisch. Cohen was still interested, in fact, before meeting him, he’d been told by several people to keep an eye out for Tisch as a possible candidate. After a long meeting in Boston, Cohen asked Tisch to come out to Colorado. “I said, ‘I can be there in 5 days.’ I had no planned meetings other than one with Brad Feld [Cohen's TechStars Co-Founder]. I was basically just coming to hang out in Boulder for 5 days,” says Tisch.

Hours before Tisch was supposed to meet Feld, he went to watch him on a panel.  Cohen said, “Alright Tisch, go up there and get on that panel.” Tisch suddenly found himself on a panel with Feld an hour before their interview and still had never met him. ”I probably talked 5 times during the panel, only when I was really confident. Fortunately, 4 out of the 5 times, Brad expanded on what I had to say,” says Tisch, relieved.

Tisch returned home to New York and Cohen spent the next month calling people, asking them about Tisch. At the time, Tisch mentioned that he had set up a meeting with Fred Wilson. “It took me 2 months to get that meeting,” says Tisch. So Cohen called up Wilson and said, “Fred, you’re his final interview.” Tisch, unknowingly went into the meeting, completely unaware it was his final interview for TechStars.

On mobile site? Click here for next page.