Andres Barreto’s history with Techstars goes back more than a decade.
When the program was first getting off the ground in Boulder in 2007, Barreto and his company Grooveshark were encouraged to apply to the program by founder David Cohen.
He didn’t take that opportunity, but reconnected with the global accelerator a few years later in New York with his new company, Onswipe.
Following that experience, Barreto said he began to embrace the concept that great companies don’t have to start on the coasts.
“You can build a great startup anywhere, and with that mentality, along with give first, I started advising and mentoring entrepreneurs,” he said.
He became an angel investor in 2013, building a portfolio of 85 companies. He followed that up by building a nonprofit, Coderise.org, that teaches underprivileged children and adults to code.
Earlier this year he was working with his native country of Colombia in Silicon Valley, meeting with a handful of accelerators and incubators. He saw an opportunity for Techstars to launch a program in Latin America and reached out.
While working through options for potential accelerator programs, Covid-19 hit and the conversations were paused.
Then, as physical location became less important for accelerators, an opportunity arose and Barreto was offered the managing director role at Techstars Boulder.
Barreto takes over for Natty Zola, who left the company after five years in charge to focus on his venture firm, Matchstick Ventures. Zola will shift into a mentorship role for Techstars as he remains in Boulder.
While he’s only been with the company for a week, Barreto said the new role is a perfect chance to build on his work in the startup world.
“It’s a continuation of the goals I’ve had in my career. Talent is everywhere, opportunity is not, if you can just bridge that talent and opportunity,” he said.
As applications for the next cohort close on Oct. 11, Barreto said the remote nature of the accelerator opens up opportunities for startups around the world to apply.
“I’m grabbing this opportunity with full force and conviction to look for entrepreneurs that, pre-pandemic, would not have considered Boulder as an ecosystem,” he said. “Now that it’s remote, we have access to entrepreneurs anywhere.”
The primary qualifications, he said, are that startups are located in a similar time zone and are focused on a solution for the Americas. Apart from that, he’s eyeing founders that have an obsession and intimate knowledge of their customers pain, as well as the ability to execute quickly.
“With those two things, founders are already ahead of 90 percent of other applicants,” he said.
