be aware of the cliff
My experience as a Techstars Sales & Growth Associate 🚀
It’s been two weeks now since the end of the Techstars program in Turin. I sit at my old desk at OGR Tech, a coworking and innovation hub carved out of an old train repair workshop, and I watch distractingly the founders from Vento, another startup builder in OGR taking over the old seats where I would find the familiar faces of Volteum and Gymnasio, two of the twelve companies who participated in the program this year.
The last day of the accelerator came immediately after Demo Day, an in-person (the first one for this program, actually) and live streaming event where companies get to present – pitch – their ideas on stage to a crowd of investors, fellow founders, professionals and startup & tech enthusiasts. After this event the Managing Director of the program, Martin, hosted a workshop called ‘Techstars for life’ whose purpose was to teach us, founders and team, how to treasure and make the most of the experience we just had completed, even after the program.
‘Be aware of the cliff’ a slide said in gigantic bold letters. The cliff being the inevitable moment we would slowly go back to our old pre-Techstars routine, away from the rigorous structure and dynamism of a 90-day program and knees deep into a nebulous gray area where one is forced to make something of an experience like that.
Still buzzing from the adrenaline of the previous night, tired from a bittersweet mix of sadness and joy of closure, we all sat back, nodding in silence to Martin’s recommendations. We all knew, founders and us team, that it was going to be difficult to be back into the wild, once again. It is the most frustrating feeling, waiting for change to settle; it’s like shedding an old skin, allowing for another one to grow.
There are 47 Techstars accelerators operating across 33 cities in the world, and each one of them follows more or less the same structure. There aren’t any strict requirements for admission, other than the obvious ones of being a promising startup to invest in, but the two underlying components that make a startup a good fit specifically for Techstars are: 1) the team, and specifically, founders; 2) and the willingness to go through the ego-washing machine that can be a high-intensity, 90-day accelerating program.
All entrepreneurs, and risk takers in general, are forced to deal with self-doubts, harsh feedback, rejections and lack of faith. But not all entrepreneurs manage to grow stronger from that experience. Especially during the ‘honeymoon’ phase of the business, where it’s all a work in process and the final prize at stake yet to be determined, it takes a great deal of strength, sheer will and courage to set the eyes on the finish-line, without being pulled in all sorts of directions.
Techstars was and continues to be a pioneer in tackling this delicate aspect of entrepreneurship with a very simple, yet effective old-fashioned method: an open and well connected international community of like minded people who are all willing to #givefirst.
I
Borrowing from the opening sentence of Tolstoj’s masterpiece Anna Karenina,
All Techstars accelerators are alike, but each accelerator is unique in the change it brings to founders and team.
A Techstars program consists of three months, 12 weeks, corresponding to three phases of the accelerator, that all companies, associates and core Techstars team and partners participate in.
The first month is solely focused and organized around ‘Mentor Madness’, three weeks of structured meetings with hundreds of mentors in the local and international community of Techstars. These professionals volunteer to support the startups, and some of them will be picked by the companies to be their lead mentors until the end of the program. Similar to a blind-dating event, as companies and mentors only have 20 minutes to get to know each other, Mentor Madness is extremely challenging for everyone involved. For the Techstars team in terms of scheduling and organizing weekly networking sessions, both online and offline; and for the companies to pitch their businesses and open up about their challenges in a short amount of time to strangers, for 8 hours straight, often receiving blunt feedback that can be hard to swallow while running the day-to-day operations of a new business.
There is a fundamental aspect of Mentor Madness though that often goes unnoticed because it’s hidden behind the scenes.
The first month is based around Mentor Madness and the objective of gathering feedback from the outside world, but it is also the month where companies and associates attend workshops, team-building events and structured weekly gatherings to make sure that companies and the Techstars team grow comfortable with each other and the support available to them. They build trust and connection with one another.
It’s a lot easier to dismantle and rebuild yourself when there is a group of people willing to carry some of the weight, to push you and humble you when you need it the most. The promise of money often overshadows this aspect, especially when the need is urgent and the market in a whirling circus, but an honest friend can be a catalyst for long-term growth.
During the first week of the program, before Mentor Madness, I attended the first ‘deep dive’ sessions with the companies, and listened to them carefully responding to all of our questions; walking us through the story of how they got to Techstars and what their objectives were in terms of product, business development, fundraising and team. I began collecting all of these objectives down with the same sentimentalism I collect my own thoughts: because it’s nice, one day, to look back and read a version of yourself before a big change. To use the mostly used quote in the tech world, ‘You can’t connect the dots looking forward. You can only connect them looking backwards’.
II
A few months before I joined Techstars as an associate, I read ‘The Ugly Truth’, a thorough and riveting investigation on Facebook, from its birth to its latest upheavals, written by 2019 Pulitzer finalists, Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang.
Reading ‘The Ugly Truth’, I was reminded of another book that I’d devoured in a frenzy: ‘Bad Blood’ the 3-year long investigation lead by Wall Street Journal reporter, John Carreyrou, on Theranos, the blood-testing startup that I coincidentally read before entering the start-up world.
Just like ‘The Ugly Truth’, ‘Bad Blood’ peaks behind the scenes of Silicon Valley’s darlings and their ruthless ambition. The old Greeks would call it ‘hubris’, excessive pride and confidence that can only lead to destruction, as the Olympus’ gods would not accept to be challenged by mere humans unwilling to accept their limits.
After reading about the downfall of Theranos, a start-up that had raised more than $700M in fundraising, once valued at $10B, I went back to read old pieces on Elizabeth Holmes and watch her old videos, reeling into the myth that the media and the start-up culture had created around her, before she was charged with 20 years of fraud and conspiracy.
CEO and founder of the startup at only 19 years old, Elizabeth was the soul and engine of the company. She was praised for her grit and blind faith in challenging the healthcare sector; for being the Valley’s version of an underdog; a young, Ivy League-dropout white woman, who had been able to convince Walgreens, corporate titans and even the U.S Secretary of State to believe in her vision, or empty promises. The dividing line is often thin.
Both books perfectly depict the blurred areas between magic and madness that run underneath the life of a startup and the circus of money ogling around it. I liked both of those books because they told an ‘ugly truth’; they pulled the curtain behind a story of genius and overnight success that the media and the public, and sometimes even the founders themselves, carefully construct around startups and innovation.
It breaks the spell of the ‘self-made person’ myth and shines a light on the importance of picking people who not only trust your vision, but who are able to call you out when you are flying too close to the sun and who actually have you and the company’s best interests at heart.
During the first two months of the program, I listened to founders discuss the key lessons they had learned from the hours of feedback from mentors and the team; I watched them change their ideas, or grow more confident about them. It wasn’t a sudden change, it’s like one random day of April, and you look up to the trees, and flowers have begun to bloom.
III
In the second month of the program, the one where companies and associates work more closely together to bring the vision they had refined in the previous month progressively close to reality, I worked with them on building a structure and a process to optimize their growth.
12 companies with 12 different markets, products and internal dynamics, 12 different visions and challenges. It took me a whole day to understand how to find a process that would allow me to juggle the complexity of this dynamic and be of support to all companies.
Even though I thrived off and was charged by the complexity of the challenge - and it was the most fun I’d had in a long time —it was intense and complex on multiple levels, and it went by with a snap of fingers; so quickly that I couldn’t immediately translate what we had all accomplished until the third month. It’s like staring at bare trees all day long, waiting for leaves to sprout once again.
With only a month to prepare founders to pitch, and prepare the event itself, Demo Day, the third month of the Techstars accelerator is tightly organized and all activities are maximized to the highest level, in order to reach the most valued opportunity for a startup: a first impression within a community who has the power and desire to ignite their growth.
I knew that the month would have gone as quickly as the other ones, if not quicker, so I forced myself to pay attention to the change, to notice small details of their process because they would have been meshed into the whirlwind of the event, of the program, and the plans that came afterwards.
I’d collected and treasured their visions of the future in the beginning of the program, I now wanted to watch the change secretly blossom, one by one, all at different times, away from the bright lights and before the verge of the cliff ahead. There were days where I forced myself to stop and pay attention. To listen. To live the change that it was unfolding. Spring didn’t come as a surprise, it was right in front of me.
Today, a founder from Vento, the other accelerator, fellow neighbor in OGR Tech over these past few months, told me that he was interested in applying to Techstars with his startup and he asked me what I thought about his decision.
I said many things, more technical than ever, but all I really wanted to say is what I said up to now.
That bringing something new in the world is the scariest, most joyful and bravest act of faith in the future, but you can’t do it on your own. Actually, you can can do it on your own, but it will always be at the expense of something or someone else at some point.
That you can have many things; money, a great product and a mind shaped like a genius, but sometimes all you really need is a group of people who are brave, committed, honest and willing to build the change with you.
That’s what Techstars has been like for me.
