I’ve been angel investing for the last few years and I love working with founders, and entrepreneurs but some of that changed when I recently accepted a role to run the Techstars Boston Accelerator program.
So why? Why join a company when I could just angel invest and work with entrepreneurs on my own? Two key reasons, and these are reasons appropriate for founders too.
- You can do more with a team. Yes, you can go it alone and there are plenty of successful solo-founders but I’ve found that you can accomplish a lot more as a team than you can on your own. For me the Techstars team will allow me to accelerate and invest in significantly more founders and companies than I could on my own.
- You can do more with a community. As an individual I’ve established many amazing relationships in the Boston community but the Techstars brand and reputation is so much larger than any one person. I’m inheriting the power of amazing mentors, unicorn companies, past and present founders and partners who are cheering for us. It’s exciting and humbling. A community is so much stronger than anything that I could do on my own.
Ok, ok… Team and Community. Sounds nice… but WHY?
I asked myself this question, why do I like entrepreneurship, founders and investing? The answer for me was that I wanted to leave the world better than how I found it. Entrepreneurs and startups are best positioned to create meaningful change. If I can accelerate companies that do one of the following, I think I’ll be helping to make a long-term difference.
- Save Lives – Companies that are doing the difficult work of developing technologies, medicines and other innovations that directly save lives or reduce suffering.
- Save the Planet – We all share this marble called earth and there are many things about it that we know need fixing. This covers sustainability and clean-tech across a number of technology sectors.
- Companies that profoundly change the way we live and work. This is the future of disruptive technologies, both the ones that are already in progress like crypto, robotics, remote-work and AI and future technologies that will change humanity for the better.
Hope you’ll join me for the journey. Know a company that fits one of the above three? I’d love to talk to them.