TechStars is a mentorship-driven entrepreneurial bootcamp. We accept about 10 companies per location (Boulder and Boston) and stuff the 25 to 30 founders of those 10 companies into a very large blender with 60-80 industry-tempered mentors and hit the ‘liquefy’ button!  The result is that after the three month, 500+ hours-per-week program (stop reaching for your calculator, a week is 168 hours) these 10 companies leave TechStars as super-clued-in, super-connected, super-networked, entrepreneurial superheroes who are well on their way to building amazing game-changing businesses. Applications for the summer program are open only until March 21st. More information about Techstars, and the application, can be found on our web site http://www.techstars.org/.

The second organization is MITX (Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange), which is holding its 6th Annual MITX Technology Awards Ceremony in June and is putting out a call for entries for recognition of start-ups, emerging companies and enterprises.  This year’s categories include: Analytics and Business Intelligence, Cloud Computing, Devices, Enterprise Technologies, Gaming, Marketing/Customer Relationship Technologies, Mobile, Online Advertising, Rich Media, and Social Media.  The submission entry deadline is Friday, April 3^rd and you can find out more and enter at: http://www.mitxawards.org/technology/.