Last chance to apply (deadline is Saturday)

As a final reminder, the TechStars deadline is Saturday night at 11:59:59pm Mountain Standard Time.

We hope to see your application soon, if you haven’t already submitted it.

Things are getting exciting here at TechStars, as we count down to the application deadline of March 31st.

I’ve gotten a couple of questions lately asking if late applications are unlikely to get accepted. I want to let everyone know that this is not the case. It’s true that earlier applications have received additional consideration, but that’s really just because we’ve had more time to look them over. We’re expecting some great applications to roll in at the last minute, so gets yours in today. None of the ten companies will be selected until after the deadline.

The Boulder County Business Report has a good summary of TechStars, synthesizing some of the stuff we are trying to do. The application deadline is coming up (3/31/07) - there is still time to apply if you are interested.

David Cohen and I recently did a video interview with the Boulder County Business Report. We talked about the value that TechStars provides and a bit about what the summer will be like.

Here’s the video.

David had an ear infection that day, which is why I sat as far away from him as possible.

Denver’s own PocketFuzz and TechStars threw THE party of the night at SXSWi last Monday night. At one point around 2am, the line wrapped around the building and down the block. As Andrew Hyde pointed out to me: “if there’s a line, the party’s cool.” I bailed “early” at about 3:15 in the morning, and I’m told the 200 breakfast burritos being delivered right when I left didn’t last long. Sounds like things wound down around 5:30am.

Lots of great people stopped by the party to say hello. It was fun to meet Micki Kremmel (of Mickipedia and community director at Revver) who was hanging with the cool kids as usual. Nick Douglas (Mr. Valleywag) was there hanging out by the house Wii quite a bit. SXSW draws some really interesting folks from around the country - I met dozens more like this. It’s a different kind of web conference - people are there to have fun and to hang out and get to know each other. You can also tell it’s different because the usual webset of 96% while young male geeks was more like 60/40 at SXSW. All in all, it’s a nice change of pace and scenery and makes SXSW unique.Dennis Crowley of Dodgeball was also at the party and I had to ask. With all this Twittering going on everywhere, did he have to laugh? Lots of people (even me) were calling Twitter “dodgeball simplified”. Dennis is right when he told me that Dodgeball is an application and Twitter is just a microblog. I doubt the Dodgeballers who are getting very specific functionality would jump ship for something like Twitter, which doesn’t really “do” anything. I tried to comment on Fred’s post about how annoying Twitter is in everyday life, but the comment post kept timing out on me. Basically I wanted to tell him that it is totally useless, unless you’re at something like SXSW where it’s good to really be kept up to date where your friends are and what’s happening. I thought it was really cool to know who was sitting in row 8 in the same panel room (especially when I was in row 100).
I also got to meet some more of the great guys who work for the TechCrunch network (thanks Mike for letting them know to look for us there). I went to a few sessions today with Steve Poland, whose Techquila Shots blog I instantly loved when I saw it. Steve has documented 40 startup ideas so far, and he’s on a tear. I think he had one or two in the hour I sat with him. Blake Robinson (of CrunchGear) had literally lost his voice by the time he showed up at the party. We thought about sitting there and emailing each other on our Blackberrys, but we wanted to look cool so instead I just talked and he nodded alot.

Lots more pics of the party over on Flickr. Danny, Austin, and the PocketFuzz guys did a great job with this party. I gotta know who did the paint job on the silver bullet. So sweet.

The TechStars application deadline is quickly approaching - March 31st.

Remember to get your application in as early as possible for maximum consideration.

I was talking to a journalist today about entrepreneurship. I told him my theory that the myth of creativity is that it all happens in one, giant “Eureka!” moment.

You know the image: The idea comes to mind and you freeze. Its brilliance strikes you. It’s going to change the world! Tears start streaming down your face….I’ve got it! you say to yourself.

Yeah, right.

This myth makes some people think they aren’t capable of creativity because they never have earth shattering bursts of inspiration.

In fact, I would argue most eureka moments happen iteratively; that is, one small creative burst leads to another which leads to another and slowly you start to piece together a meaningful idea. A complete idea is a mosaic of bits and pieces — it’s not a brilliant painting done in one hour.

“OK Ben, I kind of agree,” the journalist replied, “But don’t you still think that somewhere in the process of entrepreneurship a light bulb goes off, that moment where the entrepreneur realizes he or she is really on to something?”

“Sure,” I said, “At some point you think your idea has legs and you start evolving it more seriously. But, the light bulb almost surely changes colors several times in the process. It’s very rare for an idea on day 1 to be entirely the same on day 30. Ask any founder of any successful business more than a couple years old and he’ll probably tell you the business model of today is much different than the business model of two years ago.”

Agreed?

I’ve gotten a few questions lately about our investor day which occurs near the end of the summer.

We expect to have somewhere around 100 investors present, and it’s by invitation only. Our companies will get about 30 minutes each with this audience to show off their stuff and pitch their ideas (we’ll help you prepare for that, don’t worry).

The investors will consist of angel investors with strong reputations, as well as top local (Colorado) and coastal VCs. We already have commitments from VCs in Boston, Silicon Valley, etc. to attend. There will be no shortage of all-star investors to look at the companies emerging from TechStars at the end of the summer.

If you are an investor or VC, and would like an invitation to the investor day, please contact us.

I’m heading down to South by Southwest Interactive on Monday, just for a day and a half. If you’ll be there too please let me know - maybe we can meet. Or better yet, stop by the PocketFuzz.com / TechStars party on Monday night the 12th for some great music and good times.

If you know anyone that might be interested in TechStars around Austin (within one standard Texas unit - 3.5 hours), please let them know that I’ll be there and would love to talk to them.