Apply to the Boulder Program: Deadline is March 22, 2010.

TechStars is a mentorship-driven seed stage investment program. They run a three month long program in Boston (MA), Boulder (CO), and Seattle (WA) once each year. Applications for the Boulder program is currently open for submission. They’re very selective – hundreds of companies apply and they only take about ten companies per city. These companies get up to $18,000 in seed funding, $6,000 per founder up to 3 founders. Each program involves three months of intensive top-notch mentoring and the chance to pitch to angel investors and venture capitalists at the end of the program.

As Brad Feld puts it, “While the seed funding is nice, the real value is the advice, mentoring, and connections provided by TechStars.” They have a very laid back and friendly atmosphere, working hard late into the nights while preparing for early morning meetings. 39 companies have received investment since 2007. Getting into the program is hard and it means something special but you can’t find out if your startup is among the best unless you apply.

[About this Shoot: I worked with Andrew Hyde on this days booking for TechStars. While we originally wanted to do a group portrait of the TechStars crew here in Boulder, the logistics of rounding everyone up considering the recent launch of the application process proved to be too difficult.

My solution was this. I pulled photos of all the Boulder Mentors that advise all the startups throughout the program. I cropped, retouched, and created a contact sheet. After printing the contact sheet out including thumbnails of all the mentors, I took some foam board and cut out the TechStars logo from it. I then overlayed the the foam board on top of the contact sheet so the thumbnails of the mentors showed through. I photographed the result and retouched again to present the final piece you see here.]