An entrepreneur and investor with roots in the defunct Techstars Seattle program plans to launch a new invite-only organization and shared workspace that supports tech founders by surrounding them with fellow entrepreneurs and experienced startup mentors.
The concept might sound familiar, but it’s different, says Aviel Ginzburg, who is leading a group of entrepreneurs developing Seattle Foundations.
“The ambition here is not to start the next Techstars,” Ginzburg said in an interview this week. “I want to solve for this moment in time in Seattle, and I want to give it the breathing room to grow into something larger.”
The group plans to offer members co-working space, access to events, and private “founder circles” to spur transparent discussions about the highs and lows of building a startup. It will operate as a benefit corporation, a legal distinction designed for entities that want to turn a profit and also prioritize social and public good.
Ginzburg is still finalizing the framework of Seattle Foundations, but he’s in talks to secure a 5,000 square-foot office space in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, with plans to launch later this year. He’s also raising investment to help fund initial operations for two years and plans to generate revenue from membership fees.
A small group of founders will be accepted for a six-month membership designed to accelerate their startups and provide access to mentorship. They can use the shared office space and will be required to hit milestones in order to become permanent members.
Seattle Foundations does not plan to charge those startups membership fees or take equity as a condition of participating, like many similar programs do. However, Ginzburg isn’t ruling out the possibility of investing in the companies that take part in the organization.
Ginzburg is teaming up with three entrepreneurs — Tyler Brown, Ryan Dao, and Art Litvinau— who started a group last year called Cloud Zero that hosts regular get-togethers for founders at Startup Hall at the University of Washington.
Ginzburg knows the value of bringing together entrepreneurs, investors, and mentors in a physical space on a regular basis. He experienced it more than a decade ago inside a South Lake Union office that housed the Techstars Seattle accelerator, up-and-coming early stage startups, and a social hangout spot known as “The Easy.”
“My entire career would not exist without that space,” said Ginzburg, who sold social media analytics company Simply Measured to Sprout Social in 2017. He is now investing in Pacific Northwest startups as a venture capitalist at Founders’ Co-op, where he works with Chris DeVore, a former Techstars Seattle managing director.
Seattle Foundations is getting off the ground following the surprise closure in February of the Techstars Seattle accelerator, which attracted entrepreneurs to the city and nurtured a new batch of startups every year.
The departure of Techstars and other programs over the past decade has removed some of the easier on-ramps into Seattle’s startup community, said Matt Shobe, a longtime entrepreneur and former Techstars mentor. The gap is particularly detrimental for entrepreneurs that are new to the city or on their first startup rodeo.
“I think something should fill that void,” said Shobe.
Others have tried. Former Amazon manager Sean Sternbach and former M12 manager Ken Horenstein co-founded Venture Out in 2019 as a way to help Seattle-area tech workers leave big companies and launch their own startups.
But the pandemic threw a wrench in Venture Out’s plans, and the group is no longer active.
Communities that catered to entrepreneurs and operated physical spaces in Seattle, such as Create33 and The Riveter, also shut down in recent years.
Ginzburg is taking lessons learned from these various efforts, as well as groups he’s been a part of such as Entrepreneurs’ Organization.
“I don’t think Seattle needs its own accelerator,” Ginzburg said. “But it needs a part of Techstars, it needs a part of Venture Out.”
He added: “We believe that Seattle is a great place to build a business, but not yet a great place to found one.”
Many agree that there is a need for what Seattle Foundations is trying to build. The entrepreneurial journey is often a lonely one, and having a network to trade war stories and share advice can be invaluable.
“Seattle would really benefit from having a place where entrepreneurs who have succeeded and exited are in the same place as entrepreneurs who are deep in the trenches,” said Sarah Imbach, an active angel investor and mentor in Seattle who was an early exec at PayPal, LinkedIn, and 23andMe.
There are several other incubators, accelerators, and startup studios in the Seattle region aiming to help founders. The list includes Pioneer Square Labs, Madrona Venture Labs, the AI2 Incubator, and more.
Building a community from scratch is not easy. Attracting promising founders will be part of the challenge. Ginzburg is bullish about two trends that could drive more people to leave places like Microsoft and Amazon to launch startups: the opportunities created by the rise of large language models, and banning non-compete agreements.
Convincing more veteran startup leaders to join may be the harder task — but their participation will be crucial.
“This ecosystem needs more senior people willing to share without expectation of return,” said Vinay Narayan, a former Google and Meta product leader who recently moved from Silicon Valley to Seattle and is running a cybersecurity startup called Cypher. “How can we look out for each other just with the expectation of paying it forward? The best ecosystems have grown because of that.”
Ginzburg and his colleagues hope to have at least 100 active members at all times. They’re also focused on building “rhythms” that get people into the space on a regular basis, whether it’s events or just dropping in to get some work done.
“So much of networking is about serendipity,” Ginzburg said. “And there is not a place for serendipity to happen.”
Ginzburg wants to raise $500,000 from investors, taking individual checks up to $50,000. The initial group of investors will also become members and get equity in Seattle Foundations. Those shares could end up producing dividends, or potentially ownership stakes in participating companies.
“There could be a world where a year down the line we realize we should be investing in all these companies,” Ginzburg said.
Many say Ginzburg is uniquely positioned to lead something like Seattle Foundations. In addition to being a founder and investor, he previously spent three years as managing director of Techstars’ Amazon Alexa accelerator in Seattle. “He knows all the right people and has a great approach to building community,” Sternbach said.
Ginzburg will keep his full-time role at Founders’ Co-op and eventually wants to pass the baton to someone else to run the new organization.
He understands the challenge ahead and potential for failure. But what inspires him is remembering how these types of spaces and communities helped shape his career.
“This gives me energy,” Ginzburg said. “I feel nostalgia. Working on this initiative, it fires me up.”