Accelerating Startups: Techstars leaders and founders share perspectives and experiences from the trenches
Tim Grace
Managing Director of Techstars
Tim is Managing Director of Techstars Columbus powered by The Ohio State University, where he leads investment strategy and founder programming for the accelerator.
Prior to joining Techstars, Tim was a Co-Founder & the Managing Partner at LongJump, a first-check venture fund based in Chicago, run by active founders, designed invest in overlooked companies at or near day 1. During his leadership, LongJump has backed 34 pre-seed stage companies in the Midwest in the past 2+ years, with 95% of the founding teams having at least founder coming from an underrepresented background.
Tim previously co-founded Draftbit, a no-code, collaborative product development tool focused on mobile apps, backed by YC. He also held early-team roles in product leadership at Trunk Club, Signal, Apartments.com and Cars.com. Sometimes he run marathons.
Shirley Romig
Chief Accelerator Investment Officer at Techstars
Shirley Romig is the Chief Accelerator Investment Officer at Techstars, the world's most active pre-seed investor, where she oversees the selection, funding, and mentoring of entrepreneurs globally. She is a consumer technology and operations executive with over 20 years of experience in scaling high-growth businesses and leading large-scale operations. Ms. Romig has held senior leadership roles at Lyft, Equinox, and Saks Fifth Avenue. Prior to Techstars, Shirley was the co-Founder and CEO of Mixo, a content creation platform for food, where she gained firsthand knowledge of the journey of a startup entrepreneur. Ms. Romig is a public company board director at Lovesac (NASDAQ: LOVE) and Mama’s Creations (NASDAQ: MAMA). Ms. Romig holds an M.B.A. from the Darden School of Business and a Bachelor of Science from the McIntire School of Commerce, both at the University of Virginia.
Brooke Yoakam
CEO & Co-founder at AvidAI
Brooke is the CEO and Co-Founder of AvidAI (Formerly GiftPocket), a SaaS platform designed to help Shopify Brands take the guesswork out of customer acquisition through AI-generated popups and promotional gift cards built to optimize conversions on brands' websites. AvidAI just launched and already has 15 brands signed up. The platform was inspired by the 8 years Brooke spent working in the gift card industry where she took her former company, GiftPocket, through Techstars Boulder in 2022 and worked with brands such as Chipotle, ASOS, Nasty Gal, boohoo, etc. Brooke has also been featured and recognized in Business Insider, Bloomberg QuickTakes, and TedX Talks.