Techstars CEO Maëlle Gavet shares insights on building a stronger entrepreneurial ecosystem
Maëlle Gavet is Chief Executive Officer for Techstars, and she was a speaker at last week’s “Chicago Venture Summit” where the city’s promising start-ups are introduced to coastal investors. In an interview with Crain’s Chicago Business, she explains why start-ups fascinate her, how Techstars finds underrepresented founders, and why she thinks Chicago is the third-most-competitive startup market in the U.S.
The application process for the new “Techstars Industries of the Future Accelerator” in Knoxville ends this week, and the hope for those funding the program is to create a similar success vibe in the Knoxville region. In that vein, we took particular note of Gavet’s response to a question about new Techstars locations: “We’re an investment business so we look at where we believe there’s going to be the most traction and the most interesting investment. What’s the current population like in terms of education and engineering background? How many entrepreneurs have already emerged from this environment? How many VCs are there?”
You can read the full interview with Gavet here.
