Welcome back to the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast.

Today we bring on one of the world’s largest pre-seed investors to cover what the state of early-stage investing looks like.

We welcome Maelle Gavet, the CEO of Techstars, a leading accelerator and global investment business that works with early-stage startups. Maelle has taken a background where she’s been a CEO, COO and operator at the likes of Priceline and Compass to run Techstars as they continue to transform their business. Techstars has invested in over 3,700 early-stage startups that have collectively achieved over $98B in all-time accelerator portfolio market capitalization.

With a global reach and an early-stage perspective across ecosystems and sectors, Maelle was in a great position to share views on: 

• Why being relentless makes a great founder.
• Why, even despite more seed funds than ever, there’s still been an increase in applications to Techstars by over 2.5x.
• Why Techstars can be seen as the ultimate fund-of-funds in her view.
• Why an actively managed index of early-stage innovation can make sense for many allocators.

Thanks Maelle for coming on the Alt Goes Mainstream podcast to share your wisdom and perspectives on early-stage investing.