It was brought up in a past discussion that TechStars are not exclusively seeding-stage and have close ties to VCs, which is something to be very wary about. If you take a look at their application, it's near-idenical to Y Comb's. If they can't be bothered to write their own _app_, I'm not convinced that their program is anywhere near well thought-out.

Plus, YC understands young hackers and the startup community like no other group of individuals I've ever come across. We're solely focused on applying to them as far as seed funding goes.

I know very little about techstars, but it might be worth taking pg's advice, since "Bad Location" is #2 on the 18 Mistakes that Kill Startups:

http://paulgraham.com/startupmistakes.html

There's a reason YC is only Boston and Bay Area.

However, in "How to be Silicon Valley" he singled Boulder as a place with most of the ingredients for being a startup hub even though it currently isn't. So there are probably worse places to be. Still at best a distant third, though.

I know a guy here in Italy who ran a startup from there, and did quite well by himself, to boot. Now he's set and he can come spend his time here hassling with Telecom Italia trying to get his DSL line working.

It seems like a decent program. The location threw me off though. I'm not interested in moving to Colorado anytime soon. But I'm pretty sure it's a decent place to start a business even though other locations such as Silicon Valley of Boston would be better.

It will be interesting to see which of these two programs produces more successful startups in the long run.

I think it will only be interesting if Techstars produces more successful startups than Y Combinator. Techstars is a clear underdog.

Indeed that would be interesting. Regardless of their ultimate success, as the co-founder of a startup I have a soft spot for any underdog.

I've applied to it. Waiting to hear back. Has some pretty smart people behind it.

-Zaid