Could Techstars Kansas City have a corporate-sponsored cousin?

Techstars, the Boulder, Colo.-based company that ran the Sprint Accelerator for three years, is open to another corporate-sponsored program in Kansas City in addition to the venture it announced last week.

“We’d love to have more than one activity here,” co-founder David Cohen said Tuesday at a kickoff event in Union Station for its new Techstars Kansas City small-business development accelerator here.

Techstars Kansas City officially gets started in January but already is looking for a location for the 10 startups it will bring here, or find here, for its 90-day program in the third quarter of next year. Applications will open next year.

Lesa Mitchell, who had been vice president of innovation and networks at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, will be the director of the accelerator program.

Techstars Kansas City will be open to any kind of business startup, unlike the Sprint-sponsored program that focused originally on health care and mobility and then only mobility.

Sprint is continuing the Sprint Accelerator with a multiple-theme approach, including digital and agriculture technology, and working with the Dairy Farmers of America and others.

This story was originally published October 25, 2016 at 6:46 PM with the headline "Could Techstars Kansas City have a corporate-sponsored cousin?."