Adding Ohio's first Techstars accelerator can help turn Columbus into the entrepreneurial "beacon" of the Midwest, according to the serial entrepreneur hired to run it.
Tim Grace was named named managing director last month of Techstars Columbus Powered by the Ohio State University – a core program of OSU's new Center for Software Innovation.
“In five years, I truly hope there’s a reputation built that Columbus and Ohio State are a great place for software founders to start companies, to find great mentors and advisors, to find the best early hires, to meet their first investors,” said Grace, co-founder of a software startup and early VC firm in Chicago.
The Center for Software Innovation was established with an OSU-record $110 million donation from the family foundation of Ratmir Timashev, the OSU graduate and serial entrepreneur who founded Veeam Software Corp., a Columbus data backup and recovery firm.
“The pace with which things have happened has been amazing,” Grace said. “There’s been a huge commitment to realize the vision.”
Shereen Agrawal recently started as the center's first executive director.
Related story: Meet Shereen Agrawal, leader of OSU's software innovation center
The funding is designated for the building, faculty, programming support and the accelerator. Techstars declined to provide a budget breakdown for the Columbus accelerator.
Ohio State is the second Techstars university partnership after San Diego State University. Some cities' programs have industry sponsors or focus on a single niche like retail tech.
"Techstars is so super founder focused," Grace said. “I’m a founder; I want to support other founders. That’s Ratmir, too.
"He's a founder; that’s who he is in his DNA. What he wants to do with this gift, … that just doesn’t exist anywhere else."
Techstars will take 10 to 12 tech startups from around the globe through an intensive three-month business development program twice a year – with access to expertise from the combined networks of accelerator and school. The first round starts in March.
After the June "demo day" before potential investors and customers, the hope is that many will stay to grow their businesses in Central Ohio.
Applications are due by late November.
A truly global group of founders already have started applying with a broad range of ideas, Grace said.
Techstars has harmonized its programs to start at the same time twice yearly. Applicants can ask for a specific site, rank their choices of programs, or say they'll go anywhere. Grace and Ohio State leaders will choose the Columbus group.
The cohort likely will draw on the university's strengths such as medicine, and the entrepreneurs will work closely with students and faculty. They might even find a co-founder in the university, Grace said.
Over time the accelerator will have helped launch dozens of companies working alongside thousands of students.
“Whether they stay or go, they’re going to evangelize for the experience they had,” Grace said. “Being able to say this was a great place for me to accomplish X, Y, Z – that is what our combined efforts will project into the world. Those benefits will compound.”
Grace's background with Techstars
Grace himself went through Techstars Chicago in 2016, which changed his life. Since then he's mentored startups going through the program.
Brian Luerssen, then managing director in Chicago, became a close friend and later left Techstars to co-found Draftbit with Grace as COO in 2017. He’s still CEO of the Chicago-based platform for developing mobile apps without the need for much prior coding knowledge.
The two also are among co-founders of LongJump, a Chicago VC fund for pre-seed stage startups that's among those still active even in this year's lull, Chicago Inno reports.
Launched in 2021, LongJump's thesis is to back new entrepreneurs at the earliest stages, a stage chronically lacking in capital. Grace was managing director and will remain involved.
“We can be the ones who have conviction to step in and back those founders, who didn’t necessarily come from backgrounds of privilege and don’t have a lot of personal wealth to get through those really early, sticky, experimental phases of figuring out your business,” Grace told Chicago Inno then.
Grace will keep his Chicago home, but stay in Columbus throughout the 13-week Techstars programs. The 46-year-old grew up in rural Illinois near Champaign-Urbana, and also has the family farm there.
He also has personal connections to mid-Ohio – his brother works at Kenyon College and sister-in-law is in Columbus. He also knows several Columbus founders.
“I don’t come into this opportunity without any sort of context of how great this ecosystem is and can be,” Grace said.
“I’ve been immersed in the Techstars ecosystem all of my most-recent professional life,” he said. “When this opportunity came up, I was honestly jumping at it. Not only was this an opportunity to pay forward all the things I’ve gotten from Techstars over the years, but this opportunity was unique.”
