The Techstars Foundation

Jeremy Shure is a Managing Director at Silicon Valley Bank in their Early Stage practice, and is based in New York City.

Jeremy has been an active mentor to a significant number of the Techstars programs across the United States, and believes deeply in the mantra of #givefirst.

Jeremy has a diverse background in startups, venture capital, and law, and has written on such topics for various publications, including Inc. and The Huffington Post. Prior to joining SVB, Jeremy's experience includes co-founding the Emerging Companies practice group of a national law firm, and directing the innovation practice of the world's largest privately held media agency.

Jeremy sits on the Advisory Board of the Techstars Foundation, is a member of the National Board of Directors of Active Minds, is President of the Class of 2000 at the University of Pennsylvania, is an active volunteer with Defy Ventures, and is past President of The Friends of the Israel Defense Forces, Young Leadership division.

Jeremy can be found on Twitter at @jeremyshure and on LinkedIn here.

Mary Grove is the Director of Google for Entrepreneurs, leading Google's efforts to support startups and entrepreneurs in more than 100 countries around the world. Mary is passionate about building community and has worked with groups of entrepreneurs in Pakistan, Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan, and previously led numerous international partnerships for Google. Mary earned her BA and MA from Stanford University. She is the co-founder of Silicon North Stars, a nonprofit that connects youth from the Midwest to Silicon Valley. She has served on the Board of UP Global, the Techstars Foundation and the Stanford Alumni Association.

Rod Robinson is the founder and CEO of ConnXus, Inc., a supplier diversity software platform that enables Fortune 2000 companies to manage supplier diversity compliance tracking and reporting requirements. Since starting the company in 2010, Rod has led the company through successfully raising $10 million in venture capital, 102% compound annual revenue growth, a database of 1.7 million diverse suppliers and a growing list of global customers including American Express, McDonald's, Caesars Entertainment, Coca-Cola and Cummins. Rod holds a bachelor's degree in accounting from the West Virginia University Institute of Technology and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, where he was a Dun & Bradstreet fellowship recipient. Rod was recognized by Ernst & Young as an Entrepreneur of the Year finalist in 2012.

Jenny Lawton joined Techsters as COO in September 2016. Jenny is responsible for the day-to-day management of the company including sales, marketing, business development, engineering and operations.

Prior to Techstars, Lawton served as the COO of littleBits and was responsible for the overall strategy and growth of the company, working with the CEO, Ayah Bdeir, to scale the company. While at MakerBot from 2011 until 2015, she held several positions prior to being appointed interim CEO, including president, chief strategy officer and head of people. At MakerBot, Lawton was instrumental in driving the company's meteoric growth of more than 600 percent in two years and she was one of the main architects in the merger between MakerBot and Stratasys in 2013.

As a long-time tech leader, Lawton co-founded Net Daemons Associates (NDA) in 1991, an information technology-consulting firm. With Lawton as CEO, NDA was recognized on the 1998 Inc. 500 list of the fastest growing privately held U.S. companies, and on the Deloitte and Touche Fast 50 and Fast 500 lists for 1997 and 1998. In 1999, Net Daemons was acquired by Interliant Inc. (formerly Sage Networks), where Lawton served as a senior vice president. She later worked as an entrepreneur-in-residence with Softbank and Mobius Venture Capital.

The events of September 11, 2001, were the impetus that inspired Lawton to leave the corporate world for a hiatus to become the owner of the independent bookstores Just Books and Just Books, Too, as well as Arcadia Coffee in Old Greenwich, Connecticut. After ten years running successful retail ventures, Lawton re-entered the business and technology scene, serving as COO for Rockin' Water and RAM Scientific, and senior vice president of operations for Mercury Solar Systems. In 2014, Jenny was appointed to the Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame.

Lucy Sanders is CEO and Co-founder of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT) and also serves as Executive-in-Residence for the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado Boulder (CU).

Lucy has an extensive industry background, having worked in R&D and executive (VP) positions at AT&T Bell Labs, Lucent Bell Labs, and Avaya Labs for over 20 years, where she specialized in systems-level software and solutions (multi-media communication, and customer relationship management).

Lucy is a recipient, along with NCWIT Co-founders Robert Schnabel and Telle Whitney, of the Computing Research Association's 2012 A. Nico Habermann Award. She has been inducted into the Women in Technology International (WITI) Hall of Fame and is a recipient of the 2013 U.S. News STEM Leadership Hall of Fame Award. Lucy received her BS and MS in computer science from Louisiana State University and the University of Colorado Boulder, respectively.

David Brown is a co-founder and co-CEO of Techstars.

David is a serial entrepreneur who has founded three startups and been involved with two others. He is one of the original founders of Pinpoint Technologies, Inc. which is now part of ZOLL Medical Corporation and provides solutions to the emergency medical services market. He was President of the company from founding through over $50M per year in revenue and over 250 people.

David later co-founded Techstars along with David Cohen, Brad Feld, and Jared Polis. He has been an investor and advisor to Techstars since inception. In 2013, he joined Techstars in a more active role as Managing Partner and now co-CEO.

David has a B.Sc. degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from McGill University in Montreal, Canada. As a ski instructor in the past, David still enjoys hitting the slopes on a good powder day.

Follow @dbrown

David Cohen is the Founder and co-CEO of Techstars.

David has been an entrepreneur and investor for his entire life. He has only had one job interview in his career, successfully got that job but then quit shortly thereafter to start his first company. Since then, he has founded several companies and has invested in hundreds of startups such as Uber, Twilio, SendGrid, FullContact, and Sphero. In total, these investments have gone on to create more than $80B in value.

Prior to Techstars, David was a co-founder of Pinpoint Technologies which was acquired by ZOLL Medical Corporation (NASDAQ: ZOLL) in 1999. You can read about it in No Vision, All Drive. Later, David was the founder and CEO of earFeeder, a music service that was sold to SonicSwap. He also had what he likes to think of as a "graceful failure" in between.

David is the co-author (with Brad Feld) of Do More Faster; Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup. David also enjoys reading non-fiction books and playing tennis. He is married to the coolest girl he's ever met and has three amazing kids who always seem to be teaching him something new.

You can find David tweeting at @davidcohen and blogging on the web at DavidGCohen.com.

Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over 20 years.

He lives in Boulder, Colorado and Homer, Alaska with his wife and is on a quest to run a marathon in every state in the US.

Brad has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur since 1987. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group, he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures. Brad is also a co-founder of Techstars.

In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chair of the National Center for Women & Information Technology, co-chair of Startup Colorado, and on the board of Path Forward. Brad is a nationally recognized speaker on the topics of venture capital investing and entrepreneurship and writes the widely read blogs Feld Thoughts, Startup Revolution, and Ask the VC.

Brad holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in Management Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Nicole has entrepreneurship in her blood. As a second generation American, with both her father and grandfather starting companies, she learned at a young age that being an entrepreneur means being in charge of your own destiny. She got her entrepreneurial start in the 4th grade, orchestrating cousins into theatrical plays and charging neighbors admission. Since 2002, she's been mentoring and funding early-stage web software companies. Most recently, Nicole is Chief Product Officer at Techstars, a global ecosystem for entrepreneurs based out of Boulder, Colorado. She's been with Techstars since its early days in 2009, has run 8 programs and has close to 90 companies in her portfolio. She's on the Board of Directors for SimpleEnergy, Owlet, and the Entrepreneur's Foundation of Colorado. She was named one of the "Coolest People in New York Tech" and an Extraordinary Woman in New York Tech by Business Insider, Marie Claire named her one of the "NewGuard", and Entrepreneur Magazine named her One of the Most 7 Powerful Women to Watch. You can see her at various speaking engagements like SXSW.

Nicole graduated with her Master's Degree in Sport Psychology from the University of Florida and has learned that the same principles of sport apply to startups. She is married to the love of her life and has 2 young children under 5 who keep her honest, humble, and acutely aware of how short and precious life is.

Follow Nicole at www.nearlynicole.com.