#54: How Techstars Seattle Works & How Should Founders Think About It?

<p> To stay up to date checkout <a href="thestartupproject.io">⁠thestartupproject.io⁠</a> &amp; follow Nataraj on twitter: @natarajsindam In this episode Nataraj spoke to Marius Ciocirlan who co-founded ShareGrid, a marketplace for filmmakers and photographers to rent and sell their equipment. It was <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2022/freelancer-marketplace-backstage-acquires-seattle-content-creation-gear-rental-startup-sharegrid/">⁠acquired⁠</a> by Backstage and is now Managing Director of Techstars Seattle. Techstars expanded to Seattle in 2010, and since then more than 130 companies have gone through the program &amp; collectively gone on to raise more than $2.5 billion in capital.  <strong>Full Transcript:</strong></p> <p>[00:00:00] <strong>Nataraj</strong>: So Techstars is an, you know, traditionally what we call as an accelerator, right? Yeah. Uh, so what are the founders really getting outta, um, joining tech?</p> <p>[00:00:09] <strong>Marius</strong>: Yeah, for sure. So, um, the Tech Techstars program essentially, uh, falls into almost three phases. So it&#39;s a 13 week program and it&#39;s kind of, uh, set up in three phases. The first phase is customer discovery, so we worked with you to ensure that like, , you truly understand who your customer is and what are they buying from you.</p> <p>[00:00:31] <strong>Marius</strong>: Like, you know, you, you would be surprised how many people have an idea of who their customer is, but it&#39;s not clearly defined. They don&#39;t really understand why that customer is interested in their product. So even companies that are farther along, we find. , it&#39;s always good to like really reflect on who your customer is.</p> <p>[00:00:50] <strong>Marius</strong>: So the first phase is customer discovery. Second phase is go to market and execution, which is more important nowadays, especially given the market [00:01:00] situation. More important than ever to actually gain real traction in your business and prove out that your business has some product market fit