Interview with Nicole Glaros, Cheif Investment Officer at Techstars.

About Nicole Glaros

Nicole is an entrepreneur and has been mentoring, supporting, and investing in entrepreneurs for over 15 years. Nicole got her entrepreneurial start in the 4th grade, orchestrating cousins into theatrical plays and charging neighbors admission. While earning her masters degree at the University of Florida, Nicole co-founded a tech startup that retailed products to the property management industry. It was there she developed her lifelong passion for supporting tech entrepreneurs.

She took her learnings of how to scale and applied it to CTEK, an incubator in Colorado supporting tech startups in 2002, before accelerators existed. She helped grow CTEK from 1 to 5 offices across the state, and was an early catalyst in developing the startup ecosystem in Colorado. Most recently, she is the Chief Investment Strategy Officer at Techstars – a global network and investor in early-stage web software startups. She’s been with the company since it’s earliest days, helping build the company around her and rising through from a Managing Director to Chief Innovation Officer and Partner. She has been instrumental in its growth from one office in Boulder, CO to a global powerhouse, featuring 45 investment offices in 18 cities worldwide, events in over 500 cities globally, with ~ $500M in capital under management, more than 2000 companies in the portfolio collectively worth over $7B. Through Techstars she’s invested in over 100 startups, most of which she still supports to this day.