Inside the 2026 Techstars Gold Shirt Celebration

Techstars has a simple rule about gold shirts. You get one for going the distance, from a founder's first pitch to a company's exit.

Every year, Techstars brings that group together to celebrate them, and this year's virtual celebration drew alumni from across the globe to trade stories, meet each other, and hear from Techstars Founder and CEO David Cohen. Techstars has now crossed more than 620 exits across its portfolio.

"It's not about the exit for everyone," David told the group. "Some of the exits are maybe not as big as any of us had dreamed about, and some of them are bigger than any of us have dreamed about. But we want to celebrate all of them."

The tradition started small. In the early days, Techstars numbered the shirts. Once the count passed 100, Techstars settled on the gold shirt itself as the marker. Wear one to a Techstars event today, and people will ask about your journey. That's the point.

The Stories Behind the Shirts

Evan Walden and his Getro co-founder, Maveric Ohm, met in Boulder and went through the accelerator program in 2017 with Managing Director Natty Zola. Techstars became an early customer, then an investor, and many of their first customers came through mentors they met in the program. At the end of 2025, Getro was acquired by Findem.

Mario Dealba went through Techstars in 2020, one of the rare in-person classes that year, led by Managing Director Nate Schmidt in Birmingham. Mario quit a well-paying job to do it, with two young kids and a stay-at-home spouse depending on him. His company, Elektrik App, makes it easier to buy the electrical equipment used in data centers, solar farms, and other infrastructure. In June, Elektrik App secured a new investment from Lead Edge Capital.

Aviran Yaacov started EcoPlant and joined Techstars' Future of Food program, powered by Ecolab, in 2019. Ecolab became the company's first customer in the U.S., its distributor, and eventually an investor across multiple rounds, a partnership Aviran still calls the jackpot. He's now three years past the sale of EcoPlant and mentors founders in the same program that helped build his company.

Max Greenwald's company, Warmly, went through Techstars Boulder in 2020 and pivoted mid-program. They landed their first customers from the Techstars network, and later acquired a Techstars Tel Aviv company along the way. Warmly grew to $8M in revenue and 60 employees before the team sold to HubSpot a few months ago.

Across every story on the call, the same idea kept surfacing. The gold shirt isn't really about the exit. It's about the mentors who showed up, the classmates who became co-founders and friends, and the founders who now come back to do the same for the next generation.

As David put it, that's the part of Techstars he's proudest of: watching people return to Give First, the same way it was given to them.