4-min read

By David Brown, Founder and CEO of Techstars

From: David Brown

To: All Techstars Network

Re: From “new normal” to what else can we do to help

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Hello Techstars founders, mentors, investors, employees, partners, community leaders, LPs and friends,

Greetings from my new home office in Boulder, Colorado.

So far, I’ve resisted sending one of the generic CEO emails that we’ve all been getting, like learning how my local sandwich shop is responding to COVID-19. But now that we are all settling in at home, I’d like to take this opportunity to think about what we can all do next. We’ve never needed to embrace our values more, especially #GiveFirst — to each other, to our families, to our communities. That’s what we plan to focus on even more in the coming weeks.

My goal in writing to you is to bring together our incredible community to help with this worldwide pandemic. There are some asks to get involved below, but if you don’t have the time for us right now, we understand and want you to know that we will be here for you when you are back to whatever “normal” will look like eventually. Before I offer you these ideas, here’s a quick summary of the things that we’ve done so far:

Safety and wellbeing of staff is critical

Early on, we adapted to remote operations for in-session programming. We also moved our 320 staff members to working from home, and we’re providing support resources to our teams and network.

Support resources: we continue to be here for you

Techstars is doing a number of things to support everyone in the network. We launched techstars.com/covid where you can find resources and information addressing many topics from fundraising to work-from-home best practices to perspectives from our leaders on navigating this economic downturn. This site will be updated on a regular basis. 

Operational adaptations are well underway

Programming:

• We moved our Q1 programs to remote in early March, and we will host the Demo Days for all 16 programs virtually in April and May. It’s a big change, but we have expertise in doing this (think Techstars Anywhere) and believe we will continue to ensure that everyone gets the high-quality experience and value that we promise. 

• We also moved our programs scheduled to start in March or April to June. All of our programs scheduled for June will be remote. From there, we will continue to make adjustments to programs as necessary. 

Financial support: 

• Just this week, we made a series of financial commitments to our portfolio companies. 

How We Can Continue To Help More

Now, to look forward at how we can continue to help more. We’re incredibly grateful for how our community (all of you) have pulled together to help. And I urge you to continue and to let us know how we can support you.

• Mentorship continues at all 16 programs in session. We couldn’t be more grateful to all of you for giving time out of your lives to help our founders. 

• Many of you are delivering solutions or support to help fight this crisis. Your efforts are remarkable. What do you need from us?

• Keep it going! We are keeping our community of mentors, investors, partners, and organizers engaged. Sign up for a virtual coffee to meet one or two or even a group of new people.

• We are also very grateful for our co-founder, Jared Polis, who as governor of Colorado has exhibited true leadership.

The thing I’m most excited to share with you right now is how we are focusing our efforts to bring the global community together. Now. Enter, Techstars Global Startup Weekend Covid-19 | Virtual Edition! 

• We are launching a Online Global Startup Weekend to support participants to develop prototypes that will contribute to solving the most pressing challenges around the Covid-19 pandemic. So far, we’ve received interest in participation from Community Leaders from 60 countries and the number keeps growing.  

• See https://covid.startupweekend.org/ for more. 

• We need your help! We need volunteers - We need mentors and to get the word out to as many participants as possible.  We will follow up soon with more information. In the meantime, you can let us know you are interested here.

• And help us promote - here’s an easy click-to-tweet: Join forces with like-minded people in your country and make a difference. Learn more about @techstars Online Global @StartupWeekend and help unite to fight #COVID19: covid.startupweekend.org

We’ve received questions about how our portfolio companies may be able to help to solve challenges. We’ve started a process to identify companies across the portfolio that have solutions that could be of benefit during this time. If you have solutions or ideas, please share them with us.

This is a lot and there is a lot more to come that you’ll find at the site I mentioned above: techstars.com/covid. I hope this note has been helpful. I look forward to hearing how we can #domorefaster to help all of you. The world needs your innovations and solutions more than ever. 

Stay healthy. Stay safe. We are all in this together!

David

Learn more about how to be a great mentor: read the Techstars Mentor Manifesto.

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