to stay. Alright, so he gave, you know, Greg did a great job of giving my background. So I'll leave q&a for a lot of the rest. But just a quick 32nd version of it. I'm from the south side of Chicago born and raised proud to, you know, have been from there, got into Northwestern University, which is pretty incredible started two companies. While I was there, two startups, got into venture capital and private equity somehow right after that, I continued that work taught myself computer science and web development after college, ended up starting one of the very first coding boot camps called Code Academy, which became the starter League, we were acquired by full stack Academy in 2016. And then, not long after that ran for mayor Chicago, which is a fun side story applied a lot of startup lessons learned there. And then from there, I became Managing Director of TechStars. Chicago, we're now I'm investing in 10 companies per year, sometimes even in a shorter timeline than that. And having run, you know, two accelerator programs so far and been a mentor for the past decade of TechStars. I'm really excited today to talk about some of the things that I've seen and learned over the past 10 years of all the companies that I've been a part of and supported, and now going through all of the accelerators, not just tech stars, and hopefully give you all some valuable advice. So with that, the first thing I want to talk about is why you should even consider an accelerator in the first place. And you know, a lot of the times people think about this as something to do to help accelerate fundraising. Now that's true, we want all of our startups if they needed to get the capital to accelerate their progress in their growth. That being said, especially with tech stars, but I'm sure this is true for many other accelerators. It can't just be about the money. If it's just about fundraising, and you don't really want any of the other parts of the experience, you're probably setting yourself up to not have a very good time, I would highly recommend reconsidering that. And instead focusing more on talking to early stage investors who might be interested in providing more hands on and specific support that you would need. That being said, doing accelerator can be amazing. Because all those things that you would naturally do as a startup in your local ecosystem, or community or wherever you're trying to grow your business. All of that happens in a far more immersive, effective, and accelerated way. So the mentors that you get connected to the investors that you get introduced to the level of knowledge, the holistic educational experience that you gain from being a part of an accelerator, can be a game changer for so many startups that are on those early days trying to figure out and find their path. So the number one thing that we've learned from all of the feedback and NPS scores and surveys that we get from our founders, after going through our accelerator, is the most valuable component to the experience to so many of our like a majority of our CEOs is the connection that they have with their fellow like cohort members. So the whole notion here is, yeah, we can teach you how to do financial modeling and how to raise capital introduce you to like the best possible mentors that you could have for your company. But the true connectivity between the founders and the CEOs, those lifelong friendships of people going through a similar shared experience and struggling through to scale their technology companies, that is the priceless component of the accelerator in our experience, so that if that's in the wheelhouse of a reason for you for why you'd want to be a part of it, strongly encourage it. So when it comes to actually getting in, because I'm sure some of you have either thought about applying, maybe some of you have already applied to one before, or maybe you're doing it for a second time or considering it in the first place. It's all about putting true effort into your application. And it just shocks me as someone who reads through, you know, almost 1000 applications a year hundreds every every cycle, at least. I can tell you the video matters, being honest and forthcoming matters. Having clarity and being concise in what you're saying about your company also matters. These things are crucial. And so many of these applications, when I look at them are lacking in some of those areas. There's a you know, it's clear to me sometimes when people don't get like Feedback from someone else to talk about it and get you know, your thoughts on their application responses, not just people within your company as well. But like talking to other founders, maybe an early stage investor to who you trust or value the opinion of. and dare I say people less familiar with technology or your business, because writing, you know, your application responses and submitting that video, which is very important as well, to demonstrate kind of your energy and ability to present and to sell, all of that's going to matter. And you need to provide it in a way that makes it accessible to anyone who's watching. So maybe we as managing directors, or accelerator operators, kind of know your space. But sometimes we don't, sometimes what you're talking about, you're the expert in the field, and you'll have to take the time to really break that down in an accessible way that gets us excited, but also educated and wanting to learn more from you. So another component that really comes up as you're going through the application processor and accelerators, this notion of distance travel. So what we're paying attention to on our end is how far have you come? And what are the note noteworthy experiences that you've been through that actually speak to your ability to run this business successfully, and scale it. So humans are emotional creatures, you know, even the critically eyed investor like myself, and I couldn't like encourage you more than to take the time to share your journey, including the impetus and motivation for starting your business in the first place, and tug at our heartstrings a bit, right, make us feel something because it's one thing to show very impressive metrics and a hockey stick growth path. And, you know, talk about how, you know, awesome your technology is. But it's equally if not even more important to talk about the human interest side. But from a customer standpoint, which I'll get to in a minute, but namely you and your team and why you all are doing this in the first place. We don't want to take a bet on somebody who's simply doing this for the cash.