After five years and six accelerator programs at Techstars Boulder, Managing Director Natty Zola is stepping away to focus on running his venture fund, Matchstick Ventures.
“It felt like with everything going on in my life, I was getting stretched quite thin,” he said in an interview with Colorado Inno.
Zola joined the Techstars network in 2009, first as a founder in the program with his startup Everlater, before transitioning into the managing director role five years ago.
Reflecting on his time with the organization, Zola said he was most proud of the way Techstars Boulder grew its program to focus on more than just business achievement.
“We continued to evolve the program into a place where we combined personal growth with professional achievement,” he said. “We brought that humane view of entrepreneurship into the program.”
Zola is not leaving Techstars immediately, as he is helping find and hire the next managing director for Techstars Boulder. He anticipates he’ll step down from his current role sometime in the next month or two, though he’ll stay active in the Techstars community.
“I’m really not going far, I hope to be pretty involved,” he said.
He’ll shift into a mentorship role for Techstars as he remains in Boulder and focuses more on Matchstick.
Zola joined as a minor partner in Matchstick’s first $5 million fund in 2017, going full-time as Matchstick planned a second fund in 2018.
After months raising the fund, Matchstick announced in September that it has closed Fund II at $30 million as it looks to support early-stage software companies in rapidly growing, yet underserved startup ecosystems.
With Fund II, Matchstick will initially invest $500,000 in companies, and selectively follow on with investments of $1 million to $2 million.
So far, Matchstick has been active locally, backing Stackhawk, Zestful, Pana, Halp and Soona in just the last year. The firm has been making about one investment per month as part of the latest fund.
Going forward, Zola said he’ll use this newfound time to focus on initiatives to help grow Colorado’s startup and entrepreneurship reach. Primarily, he’ll look to grow the region’s diversity and help increase awareness of local companies to coastal VCs.
“I’d like to take some more leadership roles in other parts of the entrepreneurship ecosystem,” he said.
