When David Cohen and I first talked about TechStars in 2006, the concept of a “mentor” was front and center. Early on, we defined TechStars as a “mentorship-driven seed stage investment program” and have held deeply to that concept from the beginning. Today, the vast majority of accelerators use a mentorship model, which is something we are really proud of and thinks serves entrepreneurs everywhere extremely well.

When I was in Cambridge, England at the end of July for the Springboard Demo Day, Jon Bradford (the Springboard Managing Director) talked elloquently about how mentorship was a key part of the program. Springboard is a member of the TechStars Network and subsequently uses the same mentorship model that TechStars uses. During the day I got to meet a bunch of Springboard mentors – they were superb and also incredibly enthusiastic about the Springboard program that Jon had created. Jon then took me for a meeting at 10 Downing Street and on the way suggested that David and I write up a “Mentor Manifesto.” I thought it was a great idea, suggested it to David, who published his Mentor Manifesto yesterday. It follows:

• Be socratic.
• Expect nothing in return (you’ll be delighted with what you do get back).
• Be authentic / practice what you preach.
• Be direct. Tell the truth, however hard.
• Listen too.
• The best mentor relationships eventually become two-way.
• Be responsive.
• Adopt at least one company every single year. Experience counts.
• Clearly separate opinion from fact.
• Hold information in confidence.
• Clearly commit to mentor or do not. Either is fine.
• Know what you don’t know. Say I don’t know when you don’t know. “I don’t know” is preferable to bravado.
• Guide, don’t control. Teams must make their own decisions. Guide but never tell them what to do. Understand that it’s their company, not yours.
• Accept and communicate with other mentors that get involved.
• Be optimistic.
• Provide specific actionable advice, don’t be vague.
• Be challenging/robust but never destructive.
• Have empathy. Remember that startups are hard.

If you’ve read Do More Faster: TechStars Lessons To Accelerate Your Startup, you’ll recognize many of these. David’s added a few more concepts and synthesized / evolved a few. In typical TechStars fashion, view this as an evolving manifesto – comments are welcome (and encouraged!)

On September 13th the Bloomberg TV Show TechStars launches.

TechStars will be having launch parties in Boulder, New York, Boston, and Seattle. If you are an entrepreneur, or part of the entrepreneurial community in any of these cities, sign up now to participate.

I’ll be in Boulder and am really looking forward to an evening celebrating entrepreneurship and hanging out with a bunch of my favorite people.

David Cohen, the CEO of TechStars, is doing a weekly show called ThisWeekIn TechStars. Episode 3 – which is now up – is the story of the making of the Bloomberg show “TechStars” which premiers on September 13th.

David interviews Elizabeth Gould, the Bloomberg Executive Producer for the show. I’ve gotten to know Elizabeth over the past few years and she’s really incredible. While I’ve been interviewed for TV plenty of times, I’ve never participated in a long form show. In this case, the TechStars show will be seven episodes that are each 30 minutes long. While I play a small part, watching the process unfold, the work required to put together a show like this, and the effort that Elizabeth and her team put into this was remarkable and really cool to see and experience.

The interview with Elizabeth is a chance for David to turn the camera on her for once. Watching the interview makes me even more excited to see the series when it comes out. As a bonus, David also interviews David Tisch, the TechStars New York Managing Director, for his feelings on the experience of being filmed 24 hours a day for three months. While it’s all it a little meta, it’s good meta.

Ever since David Cohen and I started talking about TechStars in 2006, one of our goals was to be open about everything we did in the program. We viewed TechStars as an experiment in building companies, creating entrepreneurial communities, teaching people (and learning ourselves) about entrepreneurship and what’s required to create a high growth company, and working hard at perfecting a vision David had which we now call a “mentor-driven accelerator”.

Several years ago we started getting approached to do a documentary, TV show, or reality series around TechStars. We’ve done lots of video that’s up on the web, including the awesome Founders Series (2010 and 2009) that our friend Megan Sweeney did with us.

Last year we decided to work with Bloomberg on a six episode project documenting the first TechStars New York program. Rather than describe it, I encourage you to watch the trailer.

TechStars Trailer 8/01 from Vortex Media on Vimeo.

David Cohen talks more about it on the TechStars blog titled TechStars on Bloomberg TV. The first episode is launching on 9/13 at 9:30 EST on Bloomberg TV (and the web). We are going to have a bunch of events around the launch – look for more info on them in the coming days.

This was an amazingly fun project to be involved in. Our goal with it was to give a deeper view into the experience of creating a company from scratch. Having spent a lot of time with the Bloomberg folks who worked incredibly hard on this, I’m optimistic about the outcome.

August 3 and August 4 are busy days in Boulder for entrepreneurs and early stage investors. On the evening of August 3 is Open Angel Forum #4. In the morning of August 4 is TechStars Boulder Demo Day. These two events show off the cream of the crop for new early stage tech companies coming out of the Boulder entrepreneurial ecosystem.

If you are an angel or VC investor I still have a few golden tickets left for each event. The best way to get them is to email me.

If you have an iPad, go look at Feld Thoughts in the browser on it right now. I’ll wait. If you don’t have an iPad, it looks like the following.

My friends at Onswipe did that. In one minute. All it took was one line of Javascript. Onswipe was in the TechStars NY program and did an awesome job. Not surprisingly they’ve put together an awesome investor group including Spark Capital and Betaworks.

As someone who loves magic services that dramatically improve my content, Onswipe is the king of the iPad so far. The key for me is that it be trivial to set up and work flawlessly. In this category, Onswipe has nailed it. And it’s beautiful – way better than trying to read my blog in Safari on an iPad.

They’ve launched with a bunch of publishers. If you are a VC that looks at PEHub, go take a look on an iPad. Or check out Slate on your iPad. And there are a lot more coming.

If you are a publisher and you want your site to be beautiful on the iPad in one minute, go sign up for the Onswipe beta now.

I’ve been spending some time with the current TechStars Boston class. This feels to me like the strongest class we’ve had in Boston so far and might be the one of the strongest TechStars classes overall. This class of companies in Boston is thinking big and is very diverse.

It’s been incredibly energizing watching each of the four TechStars cities (Boulder, NYC, Seattle, and Boston) up their game every single year. In Boston in particular, Katie Rae has done a great job engaging many great new mentors. I was lucky enough to have the chance to meet many of them on my last trip to Boston, and they all seemed very excited to be involved. They were feeding off of the energy of the companies in the program, just as it should be.

If you’re an angel investor or would like to become one, there’s a great two-for-one coming in Boston soon. June 15th is TechStars Demo Day, where the new crop of companies there will show their stuff for the first time in front of several hundred investors. If you’re an angel investor or a VC and you’d like an invitation, just drop TechStars a note. If you’ve never been to a TechStars Demo Day event before, you’re really missing out on something special. The day before, on June 14, Jon Pierce has put together a great event called Angel Boot Camp where those interested in learning more about angel investing can spend the day learning from those who do it well. It’s a great opportunity to learn and then see some great new TechStars companies the next day as well. Oh, and just in case you want to be really cool, don’t miss Coolio at the TechStars after-party on June 15th.

Who said March Madness was only for college basketball fans? I’m a proud nerd, am pretty good at basketball, but my college team (MIT) never ahem did much in March so I missed out on the whole March Madness thing in college. So, I’m psyched that I get to play TechStars 2011 Startup Madness this march.

We are picking 64 companies to participate. To qualify, you must enter by March 9th and meet the following requirements.

• Haven’t raised funding of $250,000 or more and haven’t generated revenue of more than $250,000 in a single year.
• Have a live, usable public site or an accessible demo on their home page
• Have not already been in the TechStars program – this is not for TechStars companies or alumni companies
• Must be an internet, software, or hi-tech company

You can nominate a startup on the Startup Madness page or just tweet out the following (replace @ENTRANT with the twitter handle for the company.)

Hey @TechStars, I nominate @ENTRANT for the @StartupMadness Tournament http://tsta.rs/sumadness

And yes, there are awards – a lot of them. Over $25,000 worth. Again, go to the Startup Madness page to see them.

Bring March Madness – of a different kind – to nerdville.

It’s TechStars Boulder application time again. If you apply by Thursday (February 24th) you will be considered for TechStars for a Day, a great way to get introduced to the TechStars program as well as increase your chance of getting selected for the program.

When TechStars first started in Boulder, most of the applicants were what we like to call “pre-seed”.  They were typically a couple of smart co-founders with a rough prototype who probably hadn’t even formed their company yet.  Today the average TechStars company looks much different.  They range from pre-formation to profitable businesses with real revenue and investment.  This is a true testament to TechStars world class mentors; companies at all early stages can benefit from the intense and deep focus of mentorship.

It’s been awesome to watch TechStars grow from one office in Boulder to four offices across the country, a book called Do More Faster, and the recent TechStars Network in just a few short years.  TechStars Boulder’s Managing Director Nicole Glaros tells me applications are rolling in quickly and are shaping up to be the best we’ve ever seen.

Apply now – you can always update your application prior to the final deadline on March 16th.

On Tuesday, I spent the day at TechStars New York. After spending Monday in Washington DC for the launch of the TechStars Network, it was really fun to spend the day and go deep with the first TechStars NY class.

By the time I got to NY on Monday night I was exhausted. My day started at 5am with email, followed by a run, a few conference calls, and then the big announcement at the White House. Several other meetings followed with a final event at the Case Foundation. David Cohen and I then hopped on a train, cranked on emails and interviews all the way to New York, and then I finished the night (after some more email) with a one hour lecture by Skype to a class of San Diego based students.

I usually have no trouble getting up at 5am, even when I’m tired, but on Tuesday I couldn’t pry my eyes open so after a few tries I just slept until I had to get up for my first call. By 10-ish I was at TechStars. I then spent 20 minutes with each company doing what I call the “top of mind drill.”

Having met with every TechStars company at least once, I’ve found that it’s not terribly useful for me to have the team members spend the 20+ minutes we have in our first meeting introducing themselves. I’m already familiar with the companies through the selection process and I just want to get into the mix with them. It’s week four so by now they’ve had tons of mentor meetings (my understanding is that at least 70 mentors have rolled through the TechStars NY offices at this point – thank you mentors!) So – I look for a quick under five minute introduction (“just explain what your business does and how it works”) and then spent the next fifteen minutes talking about whatever is top of mind.

I love the top of mind drill. It starts off with the simple question from me: “What’s on the top of your mind?” Some of the TechStars founders get it immediately and dive into a very specific issue that they are wrestling with. Others ramble around for a few minutes at which point I stop them and suggest they focus on what they think their biggest current issue is. They almost always get it the second time and we end up with ten solid minutes on one or two things that I can give them actionable feedback on.

I was planning to come back on Friday but I decided to detour to Miami Beach to spend the weekend in the sun with Amy. As a result, we cranked through all 11 companies during the day. I bought a purse on ToVieFor (don’t tell Amy – it’s a surprise), agreed to be an early alpha publisher for OnSwipe, and overall had a great time. I’m super psyched about all the teams I met – it feels like the TechStars New York program is very high quality and off to a great start.

We finished up with me giving a talk and doing some Q&A. Given that I had just been at the White House for the Startup America Partnership, we talked about that some. I gave my view of the overall cadence of the TechStars program now that the first month was coming to an end, and then I finished with a story about one of my biggest failures (Interliant) and some of the lessons that I learned from that experience.

I’m writing this from a plane Thursday night heading to Miami where I’m going to try to catch my breath after four deliciously intense days. You’ll hear about the other two – my whirlwind tour of Upstate New York – in a future post.