In 2010, two co-founders of TechStars—Brad Feld and David Cohen—had the great idea to connect the top mentorship-driven, seed-stage accelerators around the world. At the time, TechStars was becoming more well-known and accelerators were popping up everywhere. Alongside the White House’s Startup America Initiative, GAN was launched to align the accelerator industry around globally accepted best pra
ctices and create a standardized model for their success. As of January 1, 2014, GAN became an independently-operated organization, no longer owned by Techstars. At this point in time, GAN had around 45 accelerators and a handful of corporate partners. As a neutral third-party in our industry, GAN is now able to identify, address, and support all members equally. Today, GAN has more than 110 accelerators in our community, running programs in 120+ cities all over the world, which have supported more than 10,000 startups. Corporate groups like Comcast, SendGrid, HubSpot, and many others are seeking to build meaningful relationships with the startups in our community. And in 2016 GAN Ventures, a new investment arm of the business, was launched to further empower startups, wherever they are.
