Investor directory

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.

Focus

Pre Seed RoundSeed RoundArtificial IntelligenceMachine LearningSeries AShow more
http://techstars.com/ventures
https://crunchbase.com/organization/techstars
https://facebook.com/techstars
https://linkedin.com/company/techstars
https://twitter.com/techstars
https://www.capitaliq.com/CIQDotNet/company.aspx?companyId=431767203
https://www.privateequityinternational.com/database/#/profile?id=14977

Ethan Austin

MD of the Techstars Western Union Accelerator

Mark Tortorella

Advisor

Nathanial Zola

MD

Past deals in Digital Marketing

Insent

Seed Round in 2021
Insent is a conversational marketing platform.

PeakMetrics

Pre Seed Round in 2020
PeakMetrics delivers insights to create actionable, real-time predictions of how messages will develop and spread online. We do this by aggregating both social and traditional media and then utilizing machine learning to extract behavioral trends from the millions of unstructured, cross-channel datasets. PeakMetric’s is battle-tested on some of the most complex media issues today – from crisis management situations to combating state-sponsored disinformation. Our clients include some of the world’s largest brands, advertising and government agencies.

Binaize

Pre Seed Round in 2019
Binaize helps small and medium sized e-commerce companies increase conversion on their website. We provide an easy to use visual interface for the digital marketers to rapidly test various website designs, messaging and pricing. Our AI/ML models, using continuous feedback from website visitors, optimize the website in real-time to achieve higher conversion up to 300% and 70% faster than the existing solutions. The digital marketer also gets actionable insights to add or delete strategies.

Saara AI

Pre Seed Round in 2019
AI-powered returns management solution for eCommerce businesses, retailers and D2C brands

Insent

Pre Seed Round in 2019
Insent is a conversational marketing platform.

StreetMetrics, INC.

Pre Seed Round in 2018
You wouldn’t pay for digital advertising without receiving analytics and actionable performance data. We think the same principle should apply for Moving Out Of Home (MOOH) ads. That’s why we developed a suite of measurement and attribution tools specifically for the MOOH industry. StreetMetrics bridges the gap between the physical and digital worlds for MOOH marketers. We enable marketers to plan, track, and prove the impact of their MOOH ad campaigns with our digital measurement and attribution tools.

Speeko

Pre Seed Round in 2018
Automated voice analytics and digital communication coaching

Acquisitionly

Seed Round in 2018
Acquisitionly is an automated marketing solution that gets you more customers. They build you ads and landing pages--they literally do it all for you. You get a simple dashboard which shows you just what you need to see.

Epinium

Seed Round in 2017
In 2016, the world’s top 500 consumer brands spent over $800 billion extending, developing, commercializing and marketing their products. Almost 80% of these same companies experienced a decline in market share that year. Global brands need a faster, more effective and less expensive way to make data-driven marketing decisions in an omnichannel world. Epinium lets brands discover their next best seller based on Big Data and Machine Learning. They are their personal CDO (Chief Data officer), driving commercial decision-making faster with less risks and higher probabilities of success.

Hurdl

Pre Seed Round in 2017
Hurdl is changing the landscape of live event marketing and experiences by identifying and communicating directly with audiences in venue. With a simple text to activate, each fan connects their unique LED wearable "Pixl" to Hurdl's patented data-driven experiential (DDX) marketing system. By replacing impression based experiential marketing with direct-to-consumer messaging, Hurdl captures up to 75% more first party data on fans in venue, driving 95% survey response rates and 99% click through rates, resulting in 3x higher conversion rates to purchase than other d2c methods.

Pollen

Seed Round in 2016
Pollen is a developer of an advertising platform aimed at assisting small and medium-sized online retailers in acquiring new customers through targeted advertising. The platform utilizes consumers' browsing, buying, and abandonment behavior to serve highly relevant ads across Facebook and Display networks. By leveraging actual browsing data, Pollen enables retailers to engage effectively with potential customers interested in their specific products, ultimately enhancing customer acquisition and boosting revenue.

Nozzle

Seed Round in 2016
Nozzle is a digital marketing platform that helps businesses automate marketing data collection / reporting and provide intelligent recommendations, they are initially focusing on helping marketing agencies give better service to more customers with fewer people They're not the first to dream of an integrated marketing platform, but nobody has achieved that goal yet. The rapid change of both search and social landscapes make it difficult for the full marketing software incumbents to pivot to face new realities. Similarly, other competitors were built either as niche SEO or social platforms and are finding it hard to adapt.

Big Data for Humans

Seed Round in 2014
Big Data for Humans Ltd. is a London-based company that focuses on providing a customer marketing platform tailored for supermarkets, fashion and luxury retailers, and airlines. Established in 2014, the company has created an automated customer insights engine that leverages network analysis to help businesses understand their customers better. This platform enables management, marketing teams, and data scientists to develop personalized marketing campaigns and execute them across various channels. By democratizing customer insights, Big Data for Humans empowers business leaders to stay attuned to their customers' needs, facilitating the generation of actionable insights and smarter trading strategies. The company's solutions aim to enhance revenue generation and promote agile data management practices.

Shareable Social

Seed Round in 2014
Shareable Social is a content marketing platform that helps businesses build their brand through social media. We create a consistent online presence for our clients by posting daily content on their Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. It's basically like putting your social media content on auto-pilot. This active social media presence provides our clients with increased visibility, web traffic, client engagement and brand awareness.

Good Audience

Seed Round in 2014
Good Audience provides online services to reach and get the brand, product, or service in front of various active social media users. Its services include campaigns, intelligent targeting, social strategy, active content posting, and cross promotion. The company is based in the United States.

Crowdly

Seed Round in 2013
Crowdly is an advocate marketing platform empowering large consumer brands to build a base of authentic advocates, activate them, and learn from their behavior to increase word-of-mouth promotion and brand advocacy. It specializes in the fields of finance, social media, advertising, and social media marketing. The company was founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

SimpleRelevance

Seed Round in 2013
SimpleRelevance Inc. offers a marketing technology platform designed to enhance personalized digital marketing efforts for businesses. Founded in 2011 and based in Chicago, the company specializes in providing automated marketing recommendations across various channels, including emails, digital advertisements, social media, SMS, and mobile applications. SimpleRelevance utilizes machine learning technology to analyze customers' behavioral, demographic, and psychographic data, allowing businesses to tailor their marketing messages with precision. This personalization extends to aspects such as the timing of message delivery, subject lines, and product recommendations, ultimately leading to improved conversion rates and return on investment. The platform serves a diverse clientele, ranging from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies across sectors such as media, finance, and retail. In December 2015, SimpleRelevance became a subsidiary of Rise Interactive, further enhancing its capabilities in the marketing technology space.

Linksy

Seed Round in 2012
Linksy helps busy marketers tap their employees, customers, and fans to spread their message on social sites.

frintit

Seed Round in 2012
frintit allows direct mail advertisers to serve targeted ads to potential customers based on their interests and likelihood of purchase, thus raising conversion rates from <0.5% to 13%

Crowdly

Pre Seed Round in 2012
Crowdly is an advocate marketing platform empowering large consumer brands to build a base of authentic advocates, activate them, and learn from their behavior to increase word-of-mouth promotion and brand advocacy. It specializes in the fields of finance, social media, advertising, and social media marketing. The company was founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.

GoChime

Seed Round in 2011
GoChime allows brands to leverage their first-party data to run smarter and more unified advertising campaigns across Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and Google. Brands sync their ESP and CRM platforms to GoChime and can bridge the data that lives there to outside social advertising platforms. This approach allows brands to use several channels to automatically move customers through a specified journey or conversion funnel, reach customers who do not open or otherwise engage in email marketing, and then easily create lookalike audiences of their best customers to find more great customers outside of their own lists.

Crowdly

Seed Round in 2010
Crowdly is an advocate marketing platform empowering large consumer brands to build a base of authentic advocates, activate them, and learn from their behavior to increase word-of-mouth promotion and brand advocacy. It specializes in the fields of finance, social media, advertising, and social media marketing. The company was founded in 2011 and headquartered in Boston, Massachusetts.