TechStars founder David Cohen.

Hm, odd that this item isn't #1 on Y Combinator's Hacker News! A survey of VCs, angels and accelerator graduates shows the original TechStars incubator is more effective than Paul Graham's venerable Y Combinator. TechStars-Boulder was ranked first, beating Y Combo by a "narrow edge," Tech Cocktail writes.

The rankings weighed qualified financing events (i.e. companies that got funded after completing the program) as 25 percent of the accelerator's score but the rest of the methodology was more subjective. Twenty-five percent was determined by "accelerator program characteristics (i.e. money startups receive, equity accelerator takes, with a bonus for the size of the alumni base)" and 50 percent by the "success of the companies that came out of an accelerator... Additionally, these rankings were supplemented by interviews with classic VC’s, investors and past accelerator participants to better understand the perception and reputation of the various accelerator programs in the industry."

Aziz Gilani from DFJ Mercury, working in partnership with the blog Tech Cocktail and the Kellogg School of Management as a part of his field work for the Kauffman Fellows Program,. Assisting in the evaluation effort were Professor Yael Hochberg and MBA Candidate Kelly Quann from Northwestern University. Together there were numerous interviews with VC’s, Angels, and program graduates performed and then the data was aggregated. This is the first high-level published report of the findings – Aziz Gilani will be sharing a more detailed look at the findings in July, so stay tuned.

The New York TechStars chapter is too new to be included, but NYCSeedStart, a 12-week summer program funded by Contour Venture Partners, Comcast Interactive Capital/Genacast Ventures, NYC Seed, Polaris Venture Partners and RRE Ventures came in at #12.