Techstars vs Y Combinator

Five Techstars Portfolio Companies Make the 2026 Sifted 250

Five Techstars portfolio companies landed on the Sifted 250, the annual ranking of Europe's fastest-growing startups by revenue. Two of them cracked the top 10.

Inside Colorado Startup Week: A Conversation With Techstars Founder & CEO David Cohen

At the 2026 Colorado Startup Week, Techstars Founder & CEO David Cohen sat down with PBS12's Business of Colorado to talk about Boulder's comeback, the Give First philosophy, and what AI means for the next generation of founders.

Abacum launches Modeler for agentic financial modeling

Abacum, an AI-native financial planning and analysis platform, has launched Modeler, an AI agent that enables finance teams to create business models using natural language or existing spreadsheets. Modeler transforms initial inputs into fully functional real-time models, building them in minutes instead of weeks. The agent selects structures from proven model plans, matches them with connected company data, and exposes the complete logic for review. It allows teams to describe a plan, upload an Excel file, approve variables, and trust the deterministic calculation engine. Modeler is available to all Abacum clients at no extra cost. The company has over 500 clients in 40+ countries and is backed by over $100 million in investments.

• Abacum launched Modeler, an AI agent for financial modeling.
• Modeler builds models in minutes from natural language or spreadsheets.
• Modeler is available to all Abacum clients at no extra cost.

Ex-Microsoft Engineer Quits $200K Job to Build AI Startup

Junead Khan, a 25-year-old former Microsoft engineer, left his six-figure job in August 2025 to focus on his AI-powered financial coaching startup, Treasury. Having earned over $200,000 in 2024, Khan felt his role became less exciting due to a shift towards security and stability, and he was eager to learn new AI coding tools. He built Treasury as a side project for two years, waiting for his stock options to vest and bonus to clear before resigning. After being rejected by Y Combinator, he chose to go solo, using AI tools like Claude Code and Codex, without co-founders or venture capital. Living off savings, he documents his journey on social media, growing his following to about 30,000. Treasury now has paying customers and revenue exceeding $6,000.

• Junead Khan left Microsoft in August 2025 after two years to build AI startup Treasury.
• Khan earned over $200,000 at Microsoft in 2024 including stock and bonuses.
• Treasury is an AI-powered financial coaching tool built by Khan solo without co-founders or venture capital.

75% of European Founders Start Solo: Cherry Ventures Report

A new report by Berlin-based VC fund Cherry Ventures, titled 'Heartbeat', analyzes 10,000 European startups in their first 18 months, spanning 10,000 founders across 89 cities and over €5 billion in capital raised. Key findings reveal that 75% of startups are solo-founded, with only 10.1% of founders being female. Master's degrees are 4.3 times more common than MBAs, and co-founders are typically met at work. Only 7% attended accelerators, with Y Combinator most common. Amsterdam and Zurich lead per capita, while London leads in absolute numbers. AI-first software has overtaken classic SaaS as the largest category (22.5% vs 20.9%). Munich is Europe's hardware capital. The report highlights a brain drain: 72% of San Francisco founders were educated in Europe, and U.S. degrees correlate with double initial funding.

• 75% of European startups are solo-founded; only 10.1% of founders are women.
• Master's degrees are 4.3 times more common than MBAs; in deep tech, doctorates outnumber MBAs nearly 10 to 1.
• AI-first software is now the largest startup category at 22.5%, surpassing classic SaaS at 20.9%.