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Claire Stewart: Today's LBIdea is that there's never been a better time to start a company, but not all companies need venture investment.

Our guest today is Shay Har-Noy, managing director at Techstars Boulder. A founder and business leader, Shay is recruiting companies and working with the world's best founders as he helps Techstars relaunch in Boulder. Thanks for joining us today, Shay.

Shay Har-Noy:��Thanks for having me.

Stewart: Yeah. We'd love to start by learning more about you. Could you tell us about your background and how you got involved with Techstars?

Har-Noy:��Sounds great. So, let's start in my adult life, I guess. I did my undergraduate degree in economics and electrical engineering at Rice University in Houston, Texas. And then I moved to San Diego to do my Ph.D. in electrical engineering, doing fancy signal processing things. But one of the beautiful things about San Diego was that was the home of the launch of my first company.

So, myself and some other alumni from UC San Diego created a company called Tomnod, which means "big eye" in Mongolian, to detect objects in satellite imagery. We built the company up over a few years, and we were ultimately acquired by DigitalGlobe, Longmont-based DigitalGlobe, and that's what moved me here to Colorado.

Since then, I went and I joined DigitalGlobe. It became Maxar, and when I left that company, I went to Uber to be the site lead at their Colorado technology development facility. And since then, I've been at a couple of other companies, including Spire, which we took public on the New York Stock Exchange, and most recently, Edgybees.

And now I'm running Techstars Boulder, and that means end-to-end, raising the funds, recruiting companies, attracting mentors, finding office space, getting coffee, making sure people are well-fed and cared for, all the beautiful things that come with being a managing director and an entrepreneur.

Stewart: Wonderful. What a journey that's brought you here, and very involved in the Colorado space, so glad. So, for those that don't know, Techstars started in Boulder and then took a brief time away. It's back in the community, and we're so excited about that. What can you share, kind of, about the decision to relaunch here, and have there been any changes in the program since it's relaunched here?

Har-Noy:��That's a great question. Techstars initially shut down after some difficult years during COVID, where everybody went online. When everybody went online, it means that a lot of the city accelerators ended up looking very similar to one another.

Techstars ultimately made the decision to shut down a number of cities, most of the cities, including Boulder, and that was announced in 2021 or 2022. David Cohen came back as CEO at Techstars and made the strategic decision to relaunch in key markets, and Boulder being one of them.

And not only relaunching, going back to the original model, meaning that there's a dedicated fund specifically for companies going through the Techstars Boulder cohort. So, the companies that we graduate, the companies that we recruit, the companies that we accelerate, we have a dedicated fund to invest in those companies and to be able to support them.

That's really special because it means we have more mentors than ever who are also financial investors in the success of these companies. We have more community members than ever, and business leaders at various attractive companies that are also investors and supporters of the success of these companies.

Stewart: That's awesome. Is there anything else you want to share, kind of, as your unique differentiator about Techstars as opposed to some other groups in the area, or just nationally as an accelerator?

Har-Noy:��Yeah. So, let's talk about that a little bit. So, the Techstars deal is companies apply. We get hundreds of applications for the 10 slots, eight-10 slots we have every year, and applications are now open, by the way, for those interested in listening in. Every company that gets accepted gets a check for $220,000. It's actually a wire, not a check, but you get the point.

They get $220,000, and they come and spend 12 weeks with us. During that 12 weeks, we have a standard playbook that's worked with and been developed and refined with thousands of companies. But also, we have our own unique bend on it, and that's my own unique something that's able to equip the companies for success, based on what's needed today.

So, they come in, they get $220,000. During the 12-week accelerator, they get access to our investor network. Techstars companies have raised from thousands of investors around the country and around the world, and we have the ability to connect these companies to not just the right investor, but the right partner or the right team member at the right investor to make sure that their pitch lands in the best possible way, which is why we see so many companies that graduate from Techstars going on to raise a million dollars plus when they finish their cohort.

We also give them a bunch of software perks, so reducing their burn by giving them the ability to be cost-effective in their spend, in spend that they might have on external software. And then also we have a network. This is what we call the power of the network. There are 10,000-plus Techstars founders that are either currently running their own companies, running their Techstars companies, or at influential leadership positions at various companies around the country and around the world.

That's really meaningful. The power of the network is real. The fact that we can connect them with their target customers, we can make sure that their pitch is listened to, whether for fundraising, for selling to customers, et cetera, is what makes it special. So, ultimately, the founder gets money, support, access, network, and really what it takes in order to help accelerate them, move them forward.

Stewart: That's incredible. That's a very cool program. So, in terms of, kind of, your advice to startups and people that might be interested in pursuing Techstars, your programs, do you think venture capital funding is something that every startup should be pursuing? Is it something that should be an end goal for everyone or not?

Har-Noy:��I think it has never been a better time than today to build a company. It used to be that you needed a team of 10 engineers in order to build a prototype, in order to put something in front of customers. You can do that with AI tools out of the box. You can do that even with wrappers around AI, where you could just talk to your machine to demonstrate your proof of concept.

That doesn't mean that technology skills are not necessary and are not needed, especially for, you know, more deep-tech companies, but even for software companies and the understanding of the architecture. It's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm really saying is it's never been easier and more accessible for people who are exceptional founders, who are passionate about their problem space, who understand and empathize with their customers' pain points. There's never been a better time for them to start a company.

And so, what's interesting now is a lot of the conversations that I have with founders isn't, "Is your company a nice one or not a nice one?" It can still be something that VCs wouldn't invest in, that would still be a great company for you.

For example, when the App Store first launched, some enterprising entrepreneur launched the flashlight app on the App Store, which what it did is it turned your screen bright white. And they sold millions of copies at 99 cents each on the App Store. Amazing return and amazing impact on the market because the iPhones were growing gangbusters, and it turns out that it's really useful being able to use your phone as a flashlight.

Awesome. Never a venture-backed business. Shouldn't have been a venture-backed business, but still had a really big impact and generated a lot of value for that entrepreneur. Think about with AI today, there's a lot of apps, a lot of applications, a lot of pain points that can be solved by entrepreneurs who are passionate about that problem space and that pain point.

It doesn't mean that they need venture investment in order to have an impact on the market. So, more than ever, there's never been a better time than now to launch a company, and we hope to identify some of the companies that can benefit, that would be able to accelerate their business with venture investment and with our investment and involvement.

Stewart: Yeah. That's a great example. I mean, in terms of what you're looking at and your team is looking at, how would you assess what startups are investable today in 2026?

Har-Noy:��So, that's a really good question, and I don't have all the answers as far as what's investable and what's non-investable. I can share some hypotheses of what I'm seeing in the market. We now already have hundreds of applications to the next Techstars Boulder cohort, and looking through them and talking to some of the entrepreneurs, I'm seeing some themes.

So, first of all, we're seeing the hyperscalers and the out-of-the-box AI companies launching features at a furious pace. So, we're seeing Claude shipping out new features on a daily basis, right? OpenAI doing the same thing. And so, what that means is if you're building a wrapper around one of these companies, it's a race.

Okay. So, how can you play a different race? Either have unique insight into a customer or vertical, or some sort of use case or pain point. That's one. That's meaningful. Another one is thinking about how to build some sort of moat. It might be a proprietary dataset, proprietary training, regulatory barriers, integrations, and custom integrations, having a model where you actually suck in the customer's data in a secure way, right, so that these models are able to make better use of them.

So, in a lot of these companies that I'm seeing, specifically software-only companies, I'm looking at how defensible is this relative to the long-term trajectory. Mind you, if you're building a CRM for a specific vertical, you could still build a $10 million business, a flashlight app for that business.

I'm not disparaging it. That's awesome. That's amazing. You should do that, right? But if I have to look over my shoulder, when's Salesforce going to release the next one? I want to know that this company is well-equipped to look around the corner, and maybe it's some unique insight into that vertical which will continue to protect it. But if the vertical is interesting enough, if the use case is interesting enough, then you expect that there's going to be interest in tackling that.

And so, it's never been a better time to start a company. This is probably the seventh time I've said it on this podcast, but it's making it pretty hard to invest in these companies, right, and figuring it out. But that said, it means companies are applying with more traction than ever, with better insight into their customers and their purchasing decisions than ever. It's amazing.

Stewart: Yeah. Well, it's good news. It could be worse. If it's a good time to be starting a business, this could be worse news, you know?

Har-Noy:��You're talking to the eternal optimist right now, right? You could choose to be pessimistic about the future and, like, AI and what's it going to do, or you could be optimistic, like, "Oh my goodness, like, anybody can now demonstrate their passion and build a successful business." And it’s funny, I say "anybody." Like, the world is such that anybody can, but not everybody will, right?

Stewart: Mm-hmm.

Har-Noy:��And so, it's still a select few that are passionate enough about actually tackling and solving what they're well-equipped to do.

Stewart: So, I know that you've said, you know, you've worked with entrepreneurs that are local, national, international, but do you see any unique opportunities or challenges for entrepreneurs directly here in Colorado?

Har-Noy:��So, I think Colorado is a really special place. My goal is to make Colorado, to put it back on the map, and to help contribute to it being on the map, to be the best place in the country to build a company. Okay. There's places with more investors.

There's places on the coast with more entrepreneurs. I've lived in both of these places, okay? I think what we have is an amazing ecosystem of business leaders, of mentors, of entrepreneurs, where the culture is such that we are working closely to make these companies successful. And I haven't seen that in many or any other place, where there's just the right density of talent, just the right density of funding, and absolutely the right density of mentorship and support for these companies, and that's unique to where we are.

Now, there's challenges. So, there's a lot of early-stage funds. There's fewer later-stage funds, right, to support companies. I can say the bull case and the bear case. The bull case is, "Hey, it doesn't matter where these funds are located. By the time you're ready for your Series C for a more meaningful chunk of capital, you already have enough traction, metrics, and momentum that you're able to attract money from wherever it might be."

And that's true. If you look at the latest reports, the OEDIT reports on venture capital investment, I think it was something over 70% of the venture capital deployed in Colorado came from out of state. That's not a surprise to me, right? It's because of the larger rounds being able to pull that in.

However, that is a consideration, and I look forward to seeing how the industry continues to evolve. Another bull-case interpretation is that, you know, so we're in the early-stage game, and just like it's never been a better time to start a company, we're going to see companies stay smaller longer. You're able to achieve much greater traction with fewer, less and less resources.

So, we are seeing three-person billion-dollar companies, and that will continue to happen. And so, maybe this middle ground, right, of the more early-stage growth-type investments, maybe with the way the industry is going, we're going to be able to skip over that. And so, these are more hypotheses, we'll see, right, as the world's changing and as investments are being made and capital's being deployed.

Stewart: So, you're talking a little bit about the, you know, ecosystem of Colorado, and that has, kind of, been an opportunity for entrepreneurs here. So, that leads into the discussion of the ���ӽ紫ý recently announced partnership with Techstars. What do you see that partnership looking like, and how do you see that strengthening Colorado's innovation economy?

Har-Noy:��So, on the surface, my job is pretty simple. I'm trying to attract the best companies to apply. One. Two, I'm trying to select the best companies. And three, I'm trying to give them as much jet fuel as possible to get them going, right? That's what I'm trying to do from a high level.

And if you look at what we're doing at ���ӽ紫ý, I think we are able to touch on all three of those things. So, one, I'm trying to get the best companies to apply. There are so many amazing graduates from CU, whether graduating with special insight or special technology from their lab, or undergrads that are just cranking hard in their dorm room, right?

So, that is an amazing talent pool that I want them to consider Techstars as being an amazing place for them to go with their company, with their enterprise, okay?

Two, how do I select the best people? By having a close relationship and knowing these companies earlier, or having insight about them from their journey from earlier. And this is why the relationship with CU is having close connective tissue to venture partners and various entities within the university. I'm able to get insight into what makes these founders tick. I'm able to get insight into, "Hey, these folks are pretty smart. You should spend some time with them," right? And that's really insightful.

And then finally is the acceleration bit. And so, once they come into my cohort, how do I give them as much chance of success as possible? Now, there's a Techstars playbook, there's Shay's playbook, there's what we do, but there's also leveraging resources. If there's an actual technical problem, being able to lean on CU faculty members, right, who might have some insight that might help overcome some of those challenges.

This is especially true as Techstars Boulder is not just software as a service, right? It's not just software companies. It's also companies that have solved deep technical problems that are bringing them to market.

And so, now you're like, "Hey, if you squint really hard, Shay's got three jobs, right? Attract, select, and accelerate, right? One, two, three." And this is how CU can help me with the talent pool and with the applicant pool, with the selection, and with the acceleration.

Now, not every company, CU company, will get into Techstars, and that was never the intent, but it would be awesome if my deal flow actually includes some really meaningful CU companies that are graduating.

Stewart: Great. And that's great advice for other universities and business schools in particular that can play a part in supporting entrepreneurs and working with groups like Techstars to, kind of, put companies like this in front of the...

Har-Noy:��Yeah. Absolutely. And I think that, to be tactical, there's a number of tactical things we're doing, from supporting judging various campus competitions. New Venture Challenge, for example, was last week. Also being guest lecturer at the business school, at the law school, at the engineering school, being able to support companies as they're spinning up, giving them direction and insight.

So, for example, I get asked a lot of times, "How can we make our application more competitive?" or "How can we make it more compelling?" It's not a secret. I'll tell you, right? I'll tell you now on air, right?

So, I want to attract founders that are able to think in terms of hypotheses because that's ultimately what we end up doing, right? In 12 weeks, we're iterating like crazy around our KPIs. What should we measure? How can we move them?

So, for example, I might get introduced to a founder who's really proud of the fact they've never spent any money on digital marketing, and they still managed to get 300 users or whatever, 3,000, 30,000, I don't care, right? That's awesome. That shows there's some sort of traction.

But more compelling is, "Hey, we have 30,000 users. Most of them came from our free channels, and this is what we've learned from the five paid channels we've had. We spent $100 on each of these five paid channels." Why? Because the organic channels oftentimes don't scale, right?

I want you to not get 30,000 users or 3,000 users. I want you to get 300,000. I want to get you to three million, and I can't do that if it's all through organic channels, right? "Oh, but my TikTok's really popular." I can't have you TikTok harder, right? Like, how much harder can you TikTok? How many more posts can you do, right? It's saturated, right?

So, yes, it shows hustle. Do it. Get it done. Absolutely. But also think in terms of hypotheses. This is an example of one of the pieces of feedback I gave to a recent CU company, for example.

Stewart: Yeah. That's great. So, anybody listening that's interested in applying, you got some insider information here. So, if you can share it with the group, is there any type of groups you're hoping that will apply? Any type of businesses or type of industries you're looking at? Or are you just, kind of, open to anything that comes your way?

Har-Noy:��So, I'm keen on attracting the best founders to apply and to come into Techstars Boulder cohort. That's regardless of which specific industry they're coming from, and so I'm hoping companies with a technical moat apply and get whether it's robotics or some clever use of AI that builds a proprietary dataset or proprietary defensible advantage.

I like hard technical problems. I also like people who really understand the pain point that they're solving. So, think about somebody who spent their career working a certain domain, a certain industry, and just couldn't take it anymore and left to go start their own company. I think that's amazing, and oftentimes those are the ones with the best recipe for success.

If you look at, for example, SendGrid is one of the unicorns that Techstars graduated. They went through Techstars Boulder and ended up building a really meaningful company, went public, joined Twilio, et cetera, had a really big impact on the ecosystem here.

When they started, they were called SMTPAPI, S-M-T-P A-P-I. And they were so nerded out about email protocols. They were so smart about them. How do spam filters work? How do you get redirects?

Now, at the same time, all e-commerce was dependent on email. Every time you bought shoes, it went through email. All redirects, the retargeting, the remarketing, all these things were going through email.

Wow. We should have a standardized way of sending email, tracking which ones get blocked, which ones get flagged as spam, making sure that our emails get to the destination, understanding who's opening it, who's not, how do we leverage our content, making sure it doesn't get lost in the noise.

That seems really useful, right? But it wasn't obvious when they first applied, right? It was, kind of, like these two vague things, really, really smart about this really complicated topic, and market really, really big and growing really fast, with a lot of dependence on this communication channel.

Wow. Why don't we lean into that and see if we can make something happen? And so, I'm looking for these sorts of opportunities with markets that are not just big but that are growing because that shows that they're willing to accept new solutions.

Stewart: Great. So, as you mentioned, you're an optimist right now. It's a great time for business owners, for business entrepreneurs. What are you most excited about for Techstars, kind of, leading into this next chapter for your organization in the next few years?

Har-Noy:��So, I've always looked up to Techstars and the impact it's had on the community. What's beautiful is you have companies coming through, you support these entrepreneurs, and when they exit, when they get acquired, when they IPO, not just... I mean, I celebrate them and their success, absolutely, but also I celebrate how much they actually put back into the ecosystem.

And so, a lot of my investors in Techstars Boulder are Techstars Boulder graduates or mentors or Techstars Boulder graduates who are now mentors who are now also investors, right? This notion of having successful outcomes continue to nurture and reinvest in the community is something that's really meaningful.

And I think that was the beauty of Techstars Boulder when it started, and Techstars when it started, and it was a bit lost when they aggregated the funds of all the cities into one larger fund that then invested and spawned new cities. It was great for investor returns, but it removed some of those economic incentives and financial interests away from the community.

And what's amazing is seeing that recycling of capital. So, that's what I'd like to see on the fund basis because that ultimately creates more angel checks, more angel investors, and allows more companies to succeed.

I'd also like to see our mentors getting out of their Zoom basement nonsense. Oh my goodness, I get it. I know it. I was there, too, right? But we have so many talented people who got used to just being connected to their screens, and it's amazing having them sitting shoulder to shoulder.

So, it was a strategic choice that I made in this role as managing director at Techstars Boulder. It was a strategic choice to be in person. I was asked, "Are you going to do online? Are you going to do in person, or are you going to do hybrid?" And there's a trade-off to each.

Think about it. That clever entrepreneur from Virginia with an awesome company whose mom is sick may not be able to move. I get it. That brilliant entrepreneur in Dallas whose team is soldering circuit boards may not be able to move. I get it. I get it.

But in the days where you can get information, or at least an estimate of the information from these chatbots, ChatGPT, from Claude, it's more important than ever to have companies sitting shoulder to shoulder and learning from each other and failing together and succeeding together and making sure that we all make a new set of mistakes every day rather than repeating the same ones that our colleagues have made.

And that's really special. It's freaking lonely running a company. Being the CEO of a company, being a founder of a company is lonely. You read TechCrunch, and you're like, "Oh, it's off to the races." Nonsense. It's lonely, and it sucks so often. But you are so determined to make what you have work, and that you see the people depending on you, that that becomes the driving force that allows you to push through. It's hard. It's not easy. It's not easy, right?

And being able to build a community where you're able to be supported in that journey is amazing. I talked to a mentor the other day who had a company that exited, made some money, but the more important part, he's like, "Shay, I'm not interested in being a mentor. I don't have time for that. I've got my other stuff going on right now. But I had a liver transplant when I was a CEO, a venture-backed company, and it was really hard.

So, if you ever have a company whose founder or founder's spouse or somebody in their direct family is going through health issues, and you want me to talk to them, I'd be more than willing to." Pause and think about that, right? You're like, "Oh, what's the likelihood of that?" Well, if I do easy math, 10 companies per year times four, that's 40 companies. Three founders on average, per, that's 120 founders plus their spouses, it's 260 potential people, 200 people, let's say, right? 1%, meaning I'll have a couple of people call that person from our community, right?

And that's different, right? That's different than talking to a therapist or talking to a VC or talking to your sibling or talking to your parent, right? That's somebody who's been in your shoes and understands the pressure that you're placing on yourself.

So, not to dwell on that too much, but being able to connect them with the right level of support to make their business successful and to make them be successful. I like to say not every Techstars company will be successful, but just about every Techstars founder will be.

And so, pause and reflect on that, right? A. We're attracting really capable people, and we're giving them tools, support, and a network that allows them to realize that potential or that accelerates that potential. That's really awesome.

Stewart: Yeah. That's a great reminder. Yeah, that's an amazing story about the founders, kind of, knowing what struggles that others could be going through and knowing the help that they needed when they were in that position. So, it's great to know.

Before we wrap up, I did want to, kind of, call back to something you were talking about earlier about your background and your experience and how you got to where you are. Your background is a little bit of a combination of business and engineering, which here at Leeds, we're teaching students, kind of, use both sides of their brains when they're working with both business and engineering.

How do you think that working in both of those spaces has helped you be successful today?

Har-Noy: “Why is this hard?” is the key question that all business leaders need to try to understand. And I used to tell that to my product managers at Uber. You need to have empathy for understanding why something is hard, because then you either build a business around solving it or know how to avoid it to keep your engineering team productive. But you need to have empathy to really understand why something is hard.

And when I talk about engineering and business, that's the key thing that I'm getting out of engineering. I'm not building amazingly beautiful software or soldering circuit boards right now, but what I'm able to do is I'm able to have that confidence to dig in and understand, “Why is it hard to build a rocket with this delta V of these specs? Oh, I get it, because metal melts if you go too hot, right?”

That's probably a bad example, right? But still, it, kind of, captures being able to empathize why something is difficult, right? Why is what we're building meaningful to be built and solves a real problem? And that allows you to be a better leader, a better business owner, and ultimately a better entrepreneur.

Stewart: That's wonderful. So, if people want to learn more about Techstars or connect with you, what is the best way for them to get connected and learn more about the application process that's coming up?��

Har-Noy:��Yeah, go to techstarsboulder.com, or if you're short on keystrokes, just go to techstars.com and search for the Techstars Boulder page, and we hope to be in touch. As I was saying, our applications are due June 10th, and the cohort starts in September. We're going to have some of the best entrepreneurs in the country coming here to Boulder, Colorado, to go through the Techstars Boulder cohort, and we're going to have a big impact here on the community. So, thank you.

Stewart: Incredible. Thank you so much for talking with us today, Shay. We are excited to have you and Techstars back in the Boulder community, and we're looking forward to what's next.

Har-Noy:��Sounds good. Thanks for having me.

Stewart: Thank you again for listening to Leeds Business Insights. Make sure you're one of the first to hear every episode by subscribing to the show wherever you get your podcasts. The Leeds Business Insights Podcast is a production of the Leeds School of Business and produced by University FM. We'll see you next time.