Every year, Colorado Startup Week brings the state’s founders, investors, and mentors into downtown Denver for a week of building community. This year, PBS12’s Business of Colorado used the moment to catch up with Techstars Founder & CEO David Cohen, who sat down with executive producer Franny Matthews for their second annual conversation.
A lot had happened since the two last talked. David had just received the Colorado Technology Association’s lifetime achievement award, an honor he called humbling. “For me, it’s always hard to sort of feel like you’re being celebrated,” he said. “I think it’s always about the community, but it was a fun night.”
From there, the conversation moved through the state of the Boulder accelerator, what Techstars looks for in founders, why Give First still matters, and how AI is reshaping the odds for startups and incumbents alike.
The conversation was just one part of a bigger presence for Techstars at this year’s Colorado Startup Week. The organization also packed three separate events into a single day: a fireside chat with David, a look back at Techstars Boulder‘s history with Shay Har-Noy and former Managing Director Nicole Glaros, and the reveal of the newest Techstars Boulder cohort followed by a happy hour with the broader community.
Bringing Boulder Back
Techstars got its start in Boulder before growing into a global network. When David returned as CEO two and a half years ago, reviving the hometown accelerator was near the top of his list.
“It’s been such an important part of the Colorado startup ecosystem and community,” he said. As the interview was recorded, Techstars Boulder was on day two of its current class, with Managing Director Shay Har-Noy running the show. “The community is really excited about it.”
The Moment of Acceleration
Asked what Techstars looks for in a company, David described a specific inflection point: a startup that has real traction but hasn’t yet built the network or capital around it to take off. That’s where Techstars sees its opening.
“We can meaningfully accelerate them by bringing our network to bear,” he said, “this global network of all these people that could use their product, or share it with others they know, or invest in it… We call that the moment of acceleration. That’s what we’re looking for.”
The dollars Techstars puts in are modest by design, typically a few hundred thousand rather than millions. The real value, David said, is everything the network unlocks: mentors who show up exactly when a founder needs help with a go-to-market plan, a pitch, or a board. He described it as a just-in-time model, a group of mentors who function like a SWAT team, arriving with exactly the help a company needs in that moment.
Give First, Still the Secret Weapon
Matthews asked whether Colorado’s startup community really is as collaborative as it feels, or whether that’s just local pride talking. David didn’t hesitate.
“It’s special, but it’s been noticed and it’s being replicated,” he said, pointing to Give First as the secret weapon behind the world’s most successful startup communities. He traced the feeling back to his own move to Boulder in 1995, when founders who could have treated him as competition instead took the meeting anyway. Brad Feld later wrote a full book about the idea, and Techstars has built Give First into a core value everywhere it operates.
David also connected that human element to the current AI moment. As more founders spend their days talking to agents instead of people, he said, human trust becomes even more valuable, and harder to build without a strong network behind you.
Where Colorado Stands on Capital
The two also discussed how much venture capital actually reaches Colorado companies relative to the coasts. David’s take: the state does better than most people assume. Colorado isn’t first or second nationally for venture investment, but it consistently lands in the top 10. Strip out the handful of mega-rounds going to a small number of Bay Area AI infrastructure companies, he said, and capital is far more distributed across the country than the headline numbers suggest.
“We do have a lot of great businesses. We do attract a lot of capital compared to a lot of places,” he said. “We have a pretty good business environment. People want to live here. They want to be here. They want to build their businesses here, raise their kids here. That’s a real advantage that a lot of places don’t have.”
Startups, Incumbents, and the AI Moment
A year after their last conversation, David said the pace of change has been remarkable. Techstars rebuilt its entire internal platform in that span simply because the tooling now made it possible. That same shift, he said, cuts both ways for founders.
Incumbents sitting on decades of data and customer relationships can now put that history to work in ways they couldn’t before, giving them a real edge if they’re willing to change. The ones standing still, he said, will get passed by. For startups, the opening comes from something proprietary: unique data, a physical foothold like hardware, or a network of humans whose trust and expertise still matter, whether that’s mentors at an accelerator or doctors in a hospital.
David pointed to a new role emerging inside larger companies: an internal orchestrator who understands the business deeply enough to know where AI can rebuild it from the inside, someone who can’t simply be hired in from outside because that institutional knowledge takes years to build. He described doing a version of that work himself at Techstars, contributing code to internal systems even though engineers still make it real. “My knowledge allows me to do that without writing any code,” he said.
He compared the moment to the early internet, a shift so fundamental that most people alive today will only see something like it two or three times in a lifetime.
Staying Optimistic
Asked what he’s most optimistic about, David didn’t overthink it. “In this line of work, you have to be optimistic about everything,” he said. “We invest in a couple people, a dog, and an idea… that they’re so early, and you just have to be an optimist.”
He sees Colorado rising, challenges and all, and believes the state is approaching them the right way. Even the bigger risks that come with AI don’t shake that outlook. Humanity has faced existential technology risks before and found a way through, he said, and he expects the same will hold true this time, as long as people stay focused on getting it right.
Watch the full conversation from PBS12’s Business of Colorado.