VentureSpur was the featured accelerator in this morning’s Dallas Morning News story exploring venture capital investment in accelerators.

Talking to the managing partners of Trailblazer Capital, a Dallas-based tech venture capital fund, the story by Hanah Cho, discussed the big advantages that accelerators provide to VC firms looking for high quality dealflow:

“Our main fund will have eight to nine investments. The accelerators will have 100 little investments. So it’s really neat to have that exposure to all those different things. That way, we’re less likely to miss the next Google,” managing partner David Matthews said, laughing. “It’s like building a very strong foundation that I think will be critical to reviving venture in North Texas.”

The story also talked with some of the participating startup companies, including SPARXlife, a 2013 VentureSpur accelerator participant that has attracted significant attention:

Shannon Meairs, co-founder of Sparxlife, one of the four Dallas startups, agreed.

“Looking at where we were, we made more progress in the last 12 weeks than the last 12 months,” Meairs said, crediting mentors and others who have invested in the company.

 

Having access to investors like Trailblazer Capital also has been critical because Meairs and her co-founders could have candid discussions with the firm’s partners.

 

In fact, such relationships were the biggest contributor to Sparxlife’s decision to relocate to Dallas from Los Angeles after graduating from VentureSpur.

 

“We’ll forever be a changed company because of our experience in VentureSpur,” she said.

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Kraettli Lawrence Epperson

Managing Director at JumpPhase Ventures

This blog is dedicated to providing advice, tools and encouragement from one entrepreneur to another. I want to keep this practical and accessible for the new entrepreneur while also providing enough sophistication and depth to prove useful to the successful serial entrepreneur. My target rests somewhere between the garage and the board room, where the work gets done and the hockey stick emerges.

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