TechStars Debuts Nine Startups In Boston

Editor’s note : The following report comes from Don Dodge , who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft. TechStars is a startup accelerator program that selects about ten companies and provides funding of $18,000 per team, as well as free office space, operational support, and mentoring from top investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders. TechStars operates annually in Boulder, Colorado and Boston, Massachusetts. TechStars has now been operating for three years. Three of the original ten companies from 2007 have already been acquired ( SocialThing by AOL , Intense Debate by Automattic , and Brightkite by Limbo ). In February, we covered the news that TechStars had expanded to Boston . Today, TechStars debuted nine new startups from the inaugural Boston class. The teams presented on Thursday to about 200 VCs and Angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees. Don was in attendance today and these are his notes on the startups that presented at Microsoft's New England Research and Development Center (MS-NERD) TechCrunch50 Conference 2009 : September 14-15, 2009, San Francisco