You have Product Market Fit (PMF) if 40+% of your users would be 'very disappointed' if your service shut down tomorrow. Sean Ellis, who led growth at companies like Dropbox and LogMeIn, arrived at this insight after years of trying to define what Product Market fit looked like. You can read more about Sean's 'Product … Continue reading Look for ‘Despite Moments’ as you search for ‘Product Market Fit’
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Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 4

Time is flying, mentor office hours is wrapped up and we ran a successful experiment by introducing a Retreat for all our companies and program staff on the outskirts of Berlin. (You can read more about Week 3 here) Monday - Mentors and Founder Story 100 Mentor Meetings today from 9 to 12.30 Christina Fonseca … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 4
Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 3
Following on from last week, we had 3 more days of mentor meetings and 2 great founder stories this week. Exhaustion is beginning to set in and people are all beginning to share their favourite meditation tips and apps. Monday - Mentors and CEO Meeting 100 Mentor Meetings today from 9 to 12.30 CEO Meeting … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 3
Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 2 – Mentor Meetings
Following on from Week 1 Orientation, this is where we start to introduce the companies to our mentor network. This year we have scheduled 800+ face-to-face mentor meetings over three weeks. Mentoring is so critical to Techstars that our whole accelerator model is ‘mentor-driven’. (I will write more about our Mentor process in a future … Continue reading Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 2 – Mentor Meetings
How OKR’s help you succeed

Great companies and organisations are mission led. For example, at Techstars our mission is to help Entrepreneurs succeed. We use a performance management framework called ‘Objectives and Key Results (OKRs)’ to help us ensure we are all aligned to this mission. Whether it is OKR’s or another framework, most people in an organisation have some … Continue reading How OKR’s help you succeed
Behind the scenes at Techstars – Week 1 – Orientation

Techstars Accelerator Week 1 Overview
How to think about your network when it comes to startup success
Founders sometimes underestimate how a great network can help them succeed. In some cases, and in particular with deeply technical Founders with limited business experience, networking might seem like something that ’sales people’ did to gather business cards, travel around the world and enjoy long lunches at the companies expense. Not only is this wrong, but … Continue reading How to think about your network when it comes to startup success