How To Prepare for Your First Techstars Interview
Jan 22, 2026
By Andres Barreto, Managing Director of Techstars New York City Accelerator & Techstars Economic Mobility Powered by Samvid Ventures
First, the basics:
Join from a computer, each founder on their own machine. Not a phone. Not a car.
Test your mic.
Put the zoom window under your camera if you use multiple monitors.
Show your whole face (not just your nose / eyes).
Only founders on the call (no advisors, no investors). Don’t talk over each other.
Now the important stuff:
This is not a gotcha interview. We’re trying to understand your company well enough to write a strong investment memo.
Be ready to answer four things, clearly and concretely.
Customer and Pain
Who is the customer, specifically? What hurts? How are they solving it today? Who did you talk to and what did you learn?
Speed and Execution
What did you build first? What did you skip? What’s something you shipped fast and what changed because of it?
Market Size
How big is the opportunity, bottoms up? How is this venture-scale? Where are you seeing real pull?
Differentiation
What’s meaningfully different about your approach? Why now? What’s hard to copy?
How to answer: pause, think, then give the bottom line in one breath. Expand if asked. Most answers should take under 90 seconds.
About the Author
Andres Barreto
Andres Barreto is a Managing Director at Techstars, where he invests in and champions promising early-stage technology startups. He brings a unique, founder-first perspective, honed by his own journey as a serial entrepreneur. Andres has successfully built and launched impactful ventures such as Grooveshark, PulsoSocial, Socialatom Group, and Onswipe.
A passionate advocate for innovation in Latin America and emerging markets, Andres is deeply committed to supporting founders in these regions. He has been instrumental in building robust startup ecosystems, collaborating with governments, accelerators, and investors to empower the next generation of entrepreneurs.
Andres's extensive experience, having founded three VC-backed companies and invested in hundreds more at the pre-seed stage, uniquely positions him to guide early-stage founders. He helps them accelerate their path to product-market fit by identifying effective strategies and avoiding common pitfalls.
Beyond achieving product market fit, Andres specializes in streamlining fundraising processes and recruiting top tier software engineers once funding is secured. He helps founders scale their leadership as their companies and complexity grow.