TechStars

Founded in 2006 by Jared Polis, David G. Cohen, and Brad Feld, TechStars is a mentorship-driven startup accelerator and seed fund. The mentors include Siemeon Simeonov, Dave Morin, Micah Baldwin, Wayne Chang, and many more. It provides upto $18,000 in seed funding to the selected teams in exchange for a six percent stake in the company. The incubator has now announced an optional and additional $100,000 in funding to the selected teams. It has six programs each year and has raised a total funding to the tune of $34 million from VC firms, including Foundry Group, IA Ventures, Avalon Ventures, DFJ Mercury, Softbank Capital, SVB Financial Group, and RRE Ventures. 8.7 percent of its graduated startups have been acquired, while the failure rate is just 8.7 percent.  Its famous graduates include Foodzie,CrowdTwist, OnSwipe, EverTrue, and many more.