Techstars raises $42 million from SVB and Foundry Group to accelerate its growth in Europe and beyond

Techstars, the worldwide network of startup accelerators and mentoring programs for entrepreneurs, has raised $42 million in a financing round led by SVB Financial Group, the holding company of Silicon Valley Bank, with additional participation from existing investors including Foundry Group. The capital will be used to accelerate Techstars’ growth in the areas of seed-stage accelerators, global startup ecosystem activations, corporate innovation, and entrepreneur-focused events.

Techstars consists of both an investment management business with $500 million in assets under management as well as an operating business that is rapidly approaching $100 million in annual revenue and is mainly focused on partnerships with cities and corporations.

The company’s investment activity now includes 49 accelerator programs in 35 cities across 16 countries, deploying $80 million into nearly 500 startups on an annual basis. Founded in 2006, Techstars current portfolio of 1,900 companies is said to attract an annual $2 billion in downstream investment from the venture capital industry. And by operating approximately 1,000 annual Startup Weekend events in 600 cities across 120 countries, Techstars seems to be on the forefront of startup ecosystems worldwide.  

David Cohen, founder and co-CEO of Techstars believes that amazing opportunities for seed stage investing exist throughout Europe, where Techstars expect to use the recent funding to continue its expansion.

“We've recently announced a new accelerator program focused on Smart Mobility in Turino, Italy, where we're also working more broadly to enhance the ecosystem with our partners at Compagnia Di San Paolo, Fondazione CRT and Intesa Sanpaolo Innovation Center.  We are already quite active in Europe and the UK with accelerator locations in Oslo, Berlin, Munich, London, Paris, Amsterdam, London, Lisbon, and Turino and we also run Startup Weekend events nearly everywhere. Our startups have generated $22B of enterprise value to date, and we're so excited to continue to bring the world's best entrepreneurial network to even more locations in Europe during the next wave of our growth here at Techstars." added Cohen.