David Cohen

Co-Founder & CEO, Techstars at Techstars

Reviewed Updated May 1, 2026

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Location Boulder, Colorado
Check Size Techstars program: $220K for 6% (current); historical $118K. No separate personal angel checks.
Last Verified Investment Techstars 2025 accelerator classes (Pre-seed (program)) — Jun 3, 2025
Social @davidcohen LinkedIn
Stage Focus
pre-seed seed
Sector Focus
developer-tools fintech marketplace saas consumer hardware robotics ai infrastructure

Background

David Cohen is the co-founder and CEO of Techstars, the pre-seed accelerator he started in Boulder, Colorado in 2006 with Brad Feld, David Brown, and Jared Polis 123. He was born in 1968 in DeLand, Florida, and earned a BS in Computer Science from the University of Central Florida in 1990 14.

Cohen began his career as a software engineer at Automated Dispatch Services in 1991 1. In 1993 he co-founded Pinpoint Technologies with David Brown — the same David Brown who later co-founded Techstars with him 15. Pinpoint built public-safety and EMS dispatch software, grew from a basement startup to roughly $50 million in annual sales with 250+ employees, and was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation in 1999; Cohen stayed with the company through 2004 156. After leaving Pinpoint, Cohen founded earFeeder.com, a music discovery service that was acquired by SonicSwap in 2006 16.

Techstars was incorporated in November 2006 after a February 18, 2006 email from Cohen to David Brown describing his vision “to build something that would help founders succeed” 7. The first accelerator class ran in Summer 2007 in Boulder; the founders contributed roughly $200,000 to fund the first program 37. Cohen served as CEO from 2006 through 2021, when Maëlle Gavet became CEO and Cohen moved to the role of co-founder and board chairman 89. Gavet announced her departure in May 2024 for health reasons, and Cohen returned as CEO effective immediately on May 22, 2024 89. As of his “One Year Back as CEO” post (June 3, 2025), Cohen has led Techstars as CEO or co-CEO for 13 of its (then) 18 years of operation 9.

Beyond Techstars, Cohen is a founding board member of Endeavor Colorado and co-founder and advisory board member of the Techstars Foundation 610. He advises the Silicon Flatirons Center at the University of Colorado Boulder 610. He co-authored Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup with Brad Feld (Wiley, 2010; 2nd edition 2019) 11.

Stated Thesis

(Self-reported: These represent how Cohen publicly describes Techstars’ approach. See Inferred Thesis for analysis of actual behavior.)

Cohen frames Techstars as a co-founder rather than just an investor. In a Mixergy interview he said: “We literally pitch Techstars as we’re like a co-founder in the business” 12. In a more recent Full Ratchet appearance (episode 494), he described the investment structure: “We become essentially a co-founder to the companies that go through our program, and we have a 5% common stock interest” 13. (Techstars’ standard offer was updated in 2024 to $220K for 6% equity 2.)

His public posture in 2025 is explicitly “quality over scale.” He told The Full Ratchet: “Bigger isn’t better. Better is better, right? It’s just a focus on quality” 13. In his one-year-back-as-CEO blog post he repeated the formulation as a guiding principle alongside two others: “Founders are our customers, and everyone else we work with is a partner,” and “Progress comes from showing up consistently, living your values, and fixing what’s broken” 9.

The single most-quoted Cohen idea is “Give First” — helping founders without expecting anything in return. In his 2021 “Give First… Build First… or Both?” post he wrote: “Give First is not about doing anything that will cause pain or stress to your business,” and “Give First is an evolving philosophy — and there’s no authoritative view yet on what it is” 14. He distinguishes Give First for established operators from Give First for early founders: “Give First is something people who have ‘made it’ can do at a different level than founders who are just starting out” 14.

On founder selection, Cohen consistently chooses team over product or market: in The Politic interview he said that based on more than 1,000 data points he picks “team, team, team” every single time, noting that a great team “will listen to customers and find product-market fit” and “figure out if timing is off and pivot when necessary” 15.

Inferred Thesis

Critical disambiguation up front. Cohen has publicly stated on his own investing page: “I do not make direct angel investments outside of Techstars” 16. This means the conventional model of an “angel portfolio” does not apply to him. Every investment he makes today flows through Techstars’ accelerator programs and associated funds 166. Reports describing him as a personal angel investor in 100+, 2,100+, or 2,794+ companies are referring to the aggregated Techstars program investments where Cohen has a leadership role, not personal checks from his own balance sheet 4616.

This is the single most important fact about Cohen as an investor and shapes everything below.

Investment vehicle is the accelerator. Techstars’ standard offer is currently $220,000 for 6% common stock equity, packaged with mentorship over a three-month program and roughly $4-5M of partner perks (AWS credits, legal services, etc.) 2. Historically the check was smaller — Wikipedia documents a $118,000 program investment, and the original 2007 cohort received between $6,000 and $18,000 13. Acceptance rates have hovered between 1% and 3% 19.

Stage discipline: pre-seed, by design. Techstars takes companies pre-product-market-fit and pre-revenue with extreme frequency. Crunchbase named Techstars the world’s most active pre-seed investor in 2023 7. Cohen reinforced this on The Full Ratchet: “Cohort sizes tend to be eight to ten companies, so pretty small compared to some groups” 13 — he reduced average class size from 12 to ~8 after returning as CEO in 2024, explicitly trading volume for selectivity 9.

Sector composition: maximally broad. Across the 22 publicly named Techstars unicorns, sectors include developer infrastructure (SendGrid, Twilio, DigitalOcean), fintech (Remitly, Alloy, Chainalysis), sales/marketing SaaS (Outreach, SalesLoft), consumer marketplace (Uber, ClassPass), healthcare/logistics (PillPack, Zipline), enterprise AI (DataRobot), gaming (Scopely), and robotics (Sphero/Orbotix) 16176. There is no thesis-narrow sector concentration; the accelerator is intentionally generalist with vertical sub-accelerators (sustainability, fintech, healthcare, etc.) underneath 218.

Geographic distribution. Techstars operates across 27 cities in 9 countries as of 2025, with active programs in NYC, Boston, Chicago, Boulder, Atlanta, London, Berlin, Amsterdam, Paris, Dubai, Tokyo, and others 92. Under Gavet (2021-2024) several US programs (Austin, Toronto, Seattle, Boulder, Norway, Sweden) were closed; Cohen restarted Chicago, Boulder, and Atlanta in 2024-2025 89.

The most distinctive pattern: Cohen optimizes for portfolio size at extreme stage, not selectivity within sectors. As of mid-2025, Techstars has invested in 2,000+ companies during Gavet’s tenure alone, and more than 4,000 cumulatively since 2006 8166. Cohen has publicly endorsed the “math behind large portfolios” framing — Techstars is run more like an index of the global pre-seed universe filtered by mentorship-mediated selection than like a high-conviction concentrated fund 19. He has also explicitly favored “seed-strapping” — founders raising as little outside capital as possible — saying on The Full Ratchet: “I try to raise as little money as possible outside the funds for the business itself” 13.

Co-investor / mentor patterns. Cohen’s longest-running collaborators are his three Techstars co-founders: Brad Feld (Foundry Group), David Brown (his Pinpoint co-founder and Techstars co-founder), and Jared Polis (now Governor of Colorado) 13. Across the Techstars network, “Mentor Magic” — the practice of bringing in dozens of operator mentors per cohort — is the explicit operational signature of the program 315.

Active investor signal: strong. Cohen returned as CEO in May 2024 and remains in the seat as of mid-2025; Techstars announced a plan to invest in approximately 300 startups over 2025-2027 9. He should be treated as a fully active investor through Techstars.

Portfolio

The table below lists notable Techstars portfolio companies — every entry is a Techstars program investment (or, in a few cases, a Techstars Ventures follow-on), not a personal angel check from Cohen. Cohen does not invest personally outside Techstars 16. The “Year” is the year the company went through Techstars unless otherwise noted.

Company Year Stage Status Source
SendGrid 2009 Techstars Boulder IPO 2017; acq. Twilio 2019 (~$3B) 16
Uber 2009 Techstars Ventures angel round IPO 2019 (NYSE: UBER) 16
Twilio 2009 Techstars Ventures angel round IPO 2016 (NYSE: TWLO) 16
Sphero (Orbotix) 2010 Techstars Boulder Active 1620
Zipline (Romotive) 2011 Techstars Boulder Unicorn; active 16
Scopely 2011 Techstars Ventures (angel debt round) Active (gaming) 16
Outreach 2011 Techstars Seattle Unicorn; active 16
Remitly (BeamIt Mobile) 2011 Techstars Seattle IPO 2021 (NASDAQ: RELY) 16
DigitalOcean 2012 Techstars Boulder IPO 2021 (NYSE: DOCN) 16
ClassPass 2012 Techstars NYC Acq. Mindbody 2021 16
PillPack 2013 Techstars Boston Acq. Amazon 2018 (~$1B) 16
DataRobot 2013 Techstars Cloud (San Antonio) Unicorn; active 16
SalesLoft ~2012 Techstars (Atlanta-adjacent / Atlanta later) Unicorn; acq. Vista Equity 2022 46
~unknown Chainalysis — Techstars portfolio Unicorn; active
~unknown Alloy — Techstars portfolio Unicorn; active
FullContact 2011 Techstars Boulder Active 4
Bench Accounting — Techstars portfolio Restructured 2024-2025 1
Sketchfab — Techstars NYC Acq. Epic Games 2021 1

This table is a curated subset of Techstars’ 4,000+ portfolio companies and is not comprehensive 6. The “first eleven Techstars unicorns” are documented by Cohen in his own September 2020 retrospective 16, which serves as the primary source for the 2009-2013 entries above. Several later unicorns (Chainalysis, Alloy, SalesLoft) are named in Cohen’s bio and on the Silicon Flatirons page but the exact accelerator class and date were not independently verified in this profile 46.

In Their Own Words

On Techstars as a co-founder, not a passive investor (Mixergy):

“We literally pitch Techstars as we’re like a co-founder in the business.” — David Cohen 12

On the current investment structure (The Full Ratchet, ep. 494):

“We become essentially a co-founder to the companies that go through our program, and we have a 5% common stock interest.” — David Cohen 13

On the 2025 strategic direction:

“Bigger isn’t better. Better is better, right? It’s just a focus on quality.” — David Cohen, The Full Ratchet ep. 494 13

“Founders are our customers, and everyone else we work with is a partner.” — David Cohen, “One Year Back as CEO,” June 3, 2025 9

“Progress comes from showing up consistently, living your values, and fixing what’s broken.” — David Cohen, “One Year Back as CEO” 9

“After 18 years, we are just getting started.” — David Cohen, “One Year Back as CEO” 9

On Give First:

“Give First is not about doing anything that will cause pain or stress to your business.” — David Cohen, “Give First… Build First… or Both?”, September 30, 2021 14

“Give First is an evolving philosophy — and there’s no authoritative view yet on what it is.” — David Cohen 14

“Give First is something people who have ‘made it’ can do at a different level than founders who are just starting out.” — David Cohen 14

On what makes great companies (The Politic interview):

Based on more than 1,000 data points, Cohen picks “team, team, team” every single time — noting a great team “will listen to customers and find product-market fit” and “figure out if timing is off and pivot when necessary.” 15

On building independently of macro cycles (Venture Voice):

“The macro economy has very little to do with how your startup’s going to do. If you build a great company, it doesn’t matter when you build it, it’s going to work.” — David Cohen 19

On seed-strapping (The Full Ratchet ep. 494):

“If I can do that with just a few people or without having raised a lot of capital, that might be better.” — David Cohen 13

“I try to raise as little money as possible outside the funds for the business itself.” — David Cohen 13

On quantum (The Full Ratchet ep. 494):

“Quantum is not just faster or better. It enables compute against things that we… can’t do today.” — David Cohen 13

On Brad Feld’s early angel posture (Venture Voice / Substack interview):

“I’ll invest $50,000 and help you out as long as you’re not a crook or a flake.” — David Cohen, paraphrasing Brad Feld’s early-Techstars approach 19

What Founders Say

No independently sourced founder testimonials of the quality this section requires were found in dedicated searching. Cohen’s blog post “A review of the first eleven Techstars Unicorns” attributes one quote to Remitly co-founder Matt Oppenheimer: “none of this would have been possible without Techstars” 16 — but this is Cohen quoting Oppenheimer on his own blog, and the original source could not be located via independent press in this research pass.

LinkedIn recommendations on Cohen’s profile contain testimonial language (e.g., “David is one of the minority investors who finds his success not in just picking winners, but helping to create winning teams”) 21, but per the Seedlist standard, LinkedIn recommendations are not strong primary sources for founder experience and are not reproduced as quotes here.

This section should be revisited; Techstars alumni speak about Cohen frequently on Twitter/X, podcasts, and in alumni blog posts, but verifying each quote against a primary source was beyond the scope of this initial research pass.

Connections

Techstars co-founders 13: - Brad Feld — Co-founder of Techstars (2006); managing director of Foundry Group; co-author with Cohen of Do More Faster. Brad Feld profile exists at data/investors/brad-feld.md. - David Brown — Co-founder of Techstars (2006); also Cohen’s co-founder at Pinpoint Technologies (1993). Author of No Vision All Drive: What I Learned from My First Company 5. - Jared Polis — Co-founder/early backer of Techstars (2006); later US Congressman (2009-2019); current Governor of Colorado (2019-).

Techstars current executive team (verified on About page, 2025) 2: - Andrew Cleland — Chief Investment Officer - Jonathan Geehan — Chief Financial Officer - Sabrina Kelly — Chief People Officer - Tarun Reddy — Chief Technology Officer - Shirley Romig — Chief Operating Officer - Ryan Spillane — Chief Commercial Officer - Melissa Westbrook — General Counsel

Boards and advisory roles: - Founding Board Member, Endeavor Colorado 610 - Co-Founder & Advisory Board Member, Techstars Foundation 610 - Advisor, Silicon Flatirons Center, University of Colorado Boulder 10 - Director, SendGrid (served on the board until the company’s 2017 IPO) 16

Long-running collaborators: - Brad Feld (Foundry Group) — Co-author of Do More Faster; Cohen frequently cites Feld as a key mentor for his investing philosophy 1115. Foundry Group was a primary funder of early Techstars program companies including SendGrid and MakerBot 16. - David Brown — Co-founder of Pinpoint (1993), Techstars (2006); 30+ year working relationship 51.

Community & writing: - Author/co-author: Do More Faster (2010, 2nd ed. 2019) with Brad Feld 11 - Blog: davidgcohen.com (active blog since at least 2009) 416 - Podcast appearances: Mixergy 12, The Twenty Minute VC 22, The Full Ratchet (eps. 166 and 494) 1323, Venture Unlocked 19, Outsider Inc. 24, A New Angle, CXOTalk

Sources

  1. Wikipedia, “David Cohen (entrepreneur),” accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cohen_(entrepreneur) ↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  2. Wikipedia, “Techstars,” accessed May 2026. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Techstars↩↩↩↩↩↩

  3. Startup Grind, “The Techstars Story: How an Accelerator Used the Power of Giving to Conquer the World,” accessed May 2026. https://www.startupgrind.com/blog/the-techstars-story-how-an-accelerator-used-the-power-of-giving-and-conquered-the-world/↩↩↩↩↩↩

  4. davidgcohen.com, “Obligatory Bio,” accessed May 2026. https://davidgcohen.com/bio/↩↩↩↩↩↩

  5. Amazon, “No Vision All Drive: What I Learned from My First Company” by David Brown, accessed May 2026. https://www.amazon.com/No-Vision-All-Drive-Techstars/dp/1119632803↩↩↩↩

  6. Silicon Flatirons, “David Cohen — Techstars,” accessed May 2026. https://siliconflatirons.org/people/david-cohen-2/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  7. Techstars blog, “Celebrating 20 Years of Techstars,” accessed May 2026. https://www.techstars.com/blog/innovation-in-action/celebrating-20-years-of-techstars↩↩↩

  8. TechCrunch, “Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet is out,” May 22, 2024. https://techcrunch.com/2024/05/22/techstars-ceo-maelle-gavet-is-out/↩↩↩↩

  9. Techstars newsroom, “One Year Back as CEO: What We’ve Built, and Where We’re Headed,” June 3, 2025. https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/one-year-back-as-ceo↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  10. Techstars newsroom, “David Cohen Returns as CEO of Techstars,” May 2024. https://www.techstars.com/newsroom/david-cohen-returns-as-ceo-of-techstars↩↩↩↩↩

  11. Amazon, “Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup” by Brad Feld and David G. Cohen (Wiley, 2010; 2nd ed. 2019), accessed May 2026. https://www.amazon.com/Do-More-Faster-TechStars-Accelerate/dp/1119583284↩↩↩

  12. Mixergy, “How TechStars Is Launching Startups Across The Country — With David Cohen,” accessed May 2026. https://mixergy.com/interviews/techstars-david-cohen/↩↩↩

  13. The Full Ratchet, “494. The Techstars Refresh, Why Bigger Isn’t Better, Investing in the Seed-Strapping Era, and Why Quantum May Dwarf Every Tech Shift (David Cohen),” accessed May 2026. https://fullratchet.net/494-the-techstars-refresh-why-bigger-isnt-better-investing-in-the-seed-strapping-era-and-why-quantum-may-dwarf-every-tech-shift-david-cohen/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  14. davidgcohen.com, “Give First… Build First… or Both?”, September 30, 2021. https://davidgcohen.com/2021/09/30/give-first-build-first-or-both/↩↩↩↩↩

  15. The Politic, “An Interview with David Cohen, Techstars Founder and Managing Partner,” accessed May 2026. https://thepolitic.org/an-interview-with-david-cohen-techstars-founder-and-managing-partner/↩↩↩↩

  16. davidgcohen.com, “A review of the first eleven Techstars Unicorns,” September 19, 2020. https://davidgcohen.com/2020/09/19/a-review-of-the-first-eleven-techstars-unicorns/↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩↩

  17. Techstars blog, “Unicorns,” accessed May 2026. https://www.techstars.com/blog/unicorn↩

  18. Techstars, “About,” accessed May 2026. https://www.techstars.com/about↩

  19. Venture Voice (Substack), “David Cohen’s Techstars” by Gregory Galant, accessed May 2026. https://venturevoice.substack.com/p/david-cohens-techstars↩↩↩↩

  20. KoreaTechDesk, “Techstars David Cohen: The investor who believed in success of startups like Uber, Twilio, Sphero,” accessed May 2026. https://www.koreatechdesk.com/techstars-david-cohen-the-investor-who-believed-in-success-of-startups-like-uber-twilio-sphero/↩

  21. LinkedIn, “David Cohen — Techstars,” accessed May 2026. https://www.linkedin.com/in/davidgcohen/↩

  22. The Twenty Minute VC, “20VC: Techstars Founder David Cohen on Why Seed Investing Is A Different Asset Class To Venture, What Makes The Best And The Worst Board Members & Why Every Company Has To Have A Pessimist In The Room,” accessed May 2026. https://www.thetwentyminutevc.com/davidcohen2/↩

  23. The Full Ratchet, “166. Techstars: What Worked, What Didn’t, What’s Next (David Cohen),” accessed May 2026. https://fullratchet.net/cohen/↩

  24. Outsider Inc. Substack, “Building Better, Not Bigger: Mentorship, Networks, and Startup Communities w/ David Cohen, Co-Founder & CEO, Techstars,” accessed May 2026. https://outsiderinc.substack.com/p/building-better-not-bigger-mentorship↩