Techstars will stay in Kansas City after three years running Sprint Accelerator

Techstars, the Colorado company hired to manage the Sprint Accelerator for its three-year run, plans to stay in Kansas City regardless of how the accelerator program changes next year.

Sprint chief executive Marcelo Claure said Tuesday that the Overland Park-based company is seeking co-sponsors to join it in backing the program next year. Its contract with Techstars involved a three-year commitment, which ended with this week’s graduation event for the third class of startup businesses at the accelerator.

Now both sides “are figuring out what next year is going to look like,” said John Fein, managing director for Techstars at the Sprint Accelerator.

Fein acknowledged that Sprint and new co-sponsors could decide to go a different way, but he said Techstars remains committed to Kansas City.

“Techstars is staying,” Fein said in an interview Thursday. “The (startup) community has grown so much and is so strong in Kansas City that it convinced Techstars that they want to be here no matter what.”

Both Techstars and Sprint are talking independently with potential co-sponsors for programs for next year. And the two could easily remain together.

Fein said a move toward multiple sponsors follows the trend at Techstars-run accelerator programs established recently. They’ve favored a consortium of business sponsors rather than one corporate sponsor, as was the case with establishing the Sprint program three years ago.

Newer accelerators also have formed around a theme, such as the transportation-themed Techstars Mobility accelerator in Detroit backed by Ford, Honda, Michelin, Verizon and others.

The Kansas City area could target agriculture and animal health as an accelerator theme, Fein said, noting its key role in the KC Animal Health Corridor that stretches from Manhattan, Kan., to Columbia, Mo. Engineering, health care, creative and media and other themes would make sense too, he said.

Kevin McGinnis, who oversees the Sprint Accelerator and its facility as head of Sprint’s Pinsight Media+, was enthusiastic about Fein’s comments that Techstars intends to stay here.

“That’s fantastic news for Kansas City,” he said.

Sprint’s interest in next year, he said, goes beyond the accelerator program that bears its name. The Sprint Accelerator building at 210 W. 19th St. in Kansas City also hosts innovation programs, collaborations and other engagements year-round.

Sprint, McGinnis said, wants to bring in partners, not simply co-sponsors. Other area businesses could provide unique resources that would boost the accelerator program and future classes of startup businesses that attend it.

Those established businesses also likely would gain from their interactions with the startups. Sprint, for example, is working directly with several of the recent accelerator graduates, including a pilot program with Oregon-based SpaceView that Claure announced Tuesday evening.

This story was originally published May 26, 2016 at 5:32 PM with the headline "Techstars will stay in Kansas City after three years running Sprint Accelerator."