Techstars

Techstars Central LLC, founded in 2006 and based in Boulder, Colorado, operates as a startup accelerator and venture capital firm focused on supporting early-stage technology-oriented companies. It specializes in a mentorship-driven accelerator program, selecting ten startups each summer to participate in a three-month incubation period, offering funding of $120,000 in exchange for equity. Techstars invests primarily in sectors such as fintech, artificial intelligence, blockchain, augmented reality, and IoT, while avoiding investments in medical devices, healthcare technology, and local service-oriented businesses. In addition to its primary accelerator, Techstars has various specialized programs, including those focused on music, retail, mobility, and social impact, with global reach extending to regions such as Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The firm prefers taking minority stakes, typically between six and ten percent, without seeking board representation or investor rights. Techstars has built a robust network of entrepreneurs, mentors, and corporate partners to foster innovation and growth within its portfolio, which includes over 1,000 companies with a significant collective market capitalization.

Ethan Austin

MD of the Techstars Western Union Accelerator

Max Kelly

Managing Director of Techstars London

Lesa Mitchell

Managing Director

Vijay Tirathrai

Managing Director

Mark Tortorella

Advisor

Nathanial Zola

MD

Past deals in South Carolina

Rainwalk Technology

Venture Round in 2022
Rainwalk Technology is a SaaS cloud-native platform providing pet insurance. It offers pet rating, policy, and claims services through the Rainwalk Integration Framework, which is a set of API and utilities built to make connecting to legacy systems or modern insurance tech stacks easy. In addition to these three core services, it also provides full rate, rule, and form filing services, loss ratio commitments to protect their insurer partners' combined ratio, and sales and content design support delivered to agents and marketing teams. The company is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina in 2018 by Tong Wu.

Rainwalk Technology

Seed Round in 2022
Rainwalk Technology is a SaaS cloud-native platform providing pet insurance. It offers pet rating, policy, and claims services through the Rainwalk Integration Framework, which is a set of API and utilities built to make connecting to legacy systems or modern insurance tech stacks easy. In addition to these three core services, it also provides full rate, rule, and form filing services, loss ratio commitments to protect their insurer partners' combined ratio, and sales and content design support delivered to agents and marketing teams. The company is headquartered in Columbia, South Carolina in 2018 by Tong Wu.

Atom

Pre Seed Round in 2021
What makes us different from the rest is that while Zendesk, Freshdesk, and others treat customers like tickets by connecting to inboxes, WE are focusing on helping teams sell 12x more via our Predictive Sales engine. More than 12MM+ customers have used our platform to purchase products and connect to the brands they love. We currently work with more than 50 enterprise companies; brands like Toyota, Hyundai, and GNC.

AnsuR Technologies AS

Funding Round in 2020
AnsuR, based in Norway & Spain, provides software for mission-critical satellite communication of multimedia content, reducing bandwidth by 99% and increasing efficiency by 100 times.

HelixAI

Seed Round in 2018
HelixAI, LLC develops an artificial intelligence (AI) powered and voice-enabled digital assistants for scientific laboratories. The digital assistant responds to natural language queries with real-time auditory responses. The company develops web dashboard that customizes each lab's Helix knowledge base, to give scientists the requisite information. The company's digital assistant helps in managing the inventory, setting up timers and receiving notifications on mobile phones, recording notes during experiments, adding and managing the custom content, and viewing visual results, videos and more. The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina.

Case Status

Pre Seed Round in 2018
Case Status, Inc. designs and develops a cloud-based client engagement tool for the legal services industry. It develops an application that provides solutions, including track and measure client happiness, send updates to clients, and communicate with clients. Case Status, Inc. was founded in 2017 and is based in Birmingham, Alabama with additional offices in Charleston, South Carolina.

Jessie Health

Pre Seed Round in 2018
Jessie Health is an on-demand digital clinic focused on women's health, offering a comprehensive personal health assistant service. Founded in 2016 and based in Charleston, South Carolina, the company partners with laboratories to provide genetic tests and related information to physicians. By bundling offerings from various laboratories, Jessie Health simplifies access to genetic testing resources and supports healthcare providers in delivering informed care. Additionally, the company provides genetic counseling services to enhance patient understanding and support.

Dynepic

Seed Round in 2018
Dynepic is powering corporate digital innovation, training, and engagement with its DX-Platform technology. The DX-Platform is a fully immersive app and training creation, distribution, and management platform. Founded originally as a product design firm in 2011, Dynepic had the pleasure of developing a number of products for clients, helping take them from a seed of an idea to released products. In the course of this work, Dynepic even reinvented the common handle and spun out its patented Spiral Strength grip technology to Dynepic Sports, LLC where it is the basis of a number of sporting good products.

Van Robotics

Pre Seed Round in 2018
Vän Robotics delivers robot-assisted tutoring that makes learning K-8 subjects fun and accessible. They believe that quality educational support should be available to every child. That’s why their smart robot tutor, ABii, learns how to best engage each child in every lesson to steadily improve their comprehension. The company was founded in 2016 and based in Columbia, South Carolina.

Dynepic

Pre Seed Round in 2018
Dynepic is powering corporate digital innovation, training, and engagement with its DX-Platform technology. The DX-Platform is a fully immersive app and training creation, distribution, and management platform. Founded originally as a product design firm in 2011, Dynepic had the pleasure of developing a number of products for clients, helping take them from a seed of an idea to released products. In the course of this work, Dynepic even reinvented the common handle and spun out its patented Spiral Strength grip technology to Dynepic Sports, LLC where it is the basis of a number of sporting good products.

Van Robotics

Convertible Note in 2018
Vän Robotics delivers robot-assisted tutoring that makes learning K-8 subjects fun and accessible. They believe that quality educational support should be available to every child. That’s why their smart robot tutor, ABii, learns how to best engage each child in every lesson to steadily improve their comprehension. The company was founded in 2016 and based in Columbia, South Carolina.

ReferralMD

Seed Round in 2017
ReferralMD delivers proven referral management, patient access and e-consult solutions that help hospitals, health systems, networks, and payers streamline the referral process, decrease patient leakage and improve communication between providers and patients. The enterprise platform matches patients with the most appropriate providers and closes the feedback loop between providers and patients. The solution’s powerful workflow and clinical decision support tools help healthcare providers increase revenue, drive operational efficiencies and improve customer service.