Mr. Chung (Photo: TechStars)

In December, after reports about an impending downturn in the accelerator boom, some local investors expressed concerns about the future of TechStars New York. Would the next Demo Day be the same parade of oversubscribed startups when much-hyped graduates were still stuck in beta? Were the lessons learned in TechStars enough to prepare companies for life outside the bubble?

David Tisch's departure as managing director added to that uncertainty. But TechStars CEO and founder David Cohen dismissed those worries, pointing to "heavy inbound interest" in the role. Today, he announced his new hire from the 35 candidates interviewed: Eugene Chung, a former venture capitalist with New Enterprise Associates. 

NEA has been making a number of high-profile investments in New York startups, including leading Buzzfeed's recent $19.3 million Series D. Mr. Chung was "instrumental in managing" investments in BuzzFeed and Bedrocket. The Harvard MBA also has experience as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley and an energy investor at Warburg Pincus. In a prior stint at Pixar, he programmed an app that automated analysis of a film's story development.

Mr. Chung has already been mentoring TechStars companies, including Poptip, Moveline, Bondsy, Condition One, Classtivity, Wander, and Pickie and wrote about how accelerators were disrupting venture capital for the Harvard Business Review. Not too shabby as far as cover letters go.

Interim managing director Nicole Glaros, who was shipped in from Boulder to take the helm, will co-manage the spring class and be based here for the duration.

Mr. Cohen told Betabeat he expects to announce the companies selected by the end of March, before the program starts on April 2. Interest was at an all-time high, with 1,700 startups applying.

You can read posts about today's announcement from Mr. Cohen, TechStars cofounder Brad Feld, and Mr. Chung himself.

Ms. Glaros. (Photo: NearlyNicole.com)

TechStars NYC has been quiet since August, when managing director David Tisch announced that he would be stepping back from his day-to-day role at the accelerator program. Almost exactly a year ago, we profiled Mr. Tisch's rise to prominence in New York's startup scene largely through his role in building a satellite program for TechStars, which entered the local market just when it could benefit from a little infrastructure.

(Early observers will recall that the first class of TechStars New York was filmed for a reality show, but managed to escape the humorless vitriol directed at Randi Zuckerberg--probably because the TechStars version was for Bloomberg instead of Bravo, and involved about 100 percent fewer toga parties.) Over the past few years, Mr. Tisch has become a prolific angel investor through Box Group, and his name frequently shows up in seed funding rounds for New York companies--TechStars and otherwise. Thus finding a replacement who is as well-versed in the scene might be tricky.

But accelerator season waits for no man. Today, TechStars founder and CEO David Cohen announced an interim replacement for Mr. Tisch. Serial entrepreneur Nicole Glaros, who has been managing director of TechStars in Boulder since 2009, will be moving out East for the spring. With a new figurehead in place, applications are officially opening today for the program that starts April 4. In a blog post, Mr. Cohen, who will also be "partially based" in New York this session, wrote:

Of all of our Managing Directors nationally, Nicole has the most experience with the culture and heart of TechStars and has run five TechStars programs since 2009. She’s been responsible for funding and working with many great companies such as Ubooly, Cloudability, Mobiplug, Orbotix, and dozens more. Once we name a new permanent Managing Director for NYC, Nicole will be on site to train that person alongside her during the program next spring.

In an email to Betabeat, Mr. Cohen said "we think the permanent Managing Director in NYC will be someone from that area." As for the program's criteria, it's the same as it ever was. "We're simply looking for the best founders that we can meaningfully help," he said. "We've funded very diverse things in the past, and we'll continue to go after big ideas. I think our recent Boston class was as good example of that."

In the meantime, Ms. Glaros, who says she "love[s] people, but hates crowds," might want to steel herself for the subway-riding experience:

@leithstevens yes, excited! I'll be a little fish in the worlds biggest ocean. :-)

— Nicole Glaros (@nglaros) November 19, 2012

This post has been updated to include comments from Mr. Cohen. 

Mr. Tisch. (Photo: We are New York Tech)

David Tisch has just announced that he is stepping down from his position as managing director of TechStars NYC. Word came via his blog, where Mr. Tisch offered little in the way of explanation, other than to say that "the time has come for me to move on to the next challenge and take a step back from my day-to-day role."

However, he's not departing the program entirely:

"So with a deep level of appreciation for the experience and sense of pride, I have chosen to take this less-active role to focus on starting and building new projects. I will continue to be actively involved in TechStars NYC, as a Co-Founder, investor, mentor and participant in the company-selection process."

Mr. Tisch didn't reveal much about his plans, other than to say that he's continue angel investing through Box Group and he's "excited to share more about what is next shortly."

Now, could we please pause the Friday afternoon news dump? It's August, folks--go to beach and wait ’til Monday.

Ms. Johnson (Photo: twitter/jennifernyc)

In March, TechStars NYC announced that it had selected 14 startups from an applicant pool of more than 1,600 for the chance at 13-weeks of mentorship and $100,000. But only 13 companies will be presenting at tomorrow's Demo Day at Webster Hall. Betabeat has learned that StockTouch, which described itself as "revolutionizing finance with mobile data visualization," did not participate in the program.

Managing director David Tisch would only say that the decision was mutual. We have reached out to StockTouch for comment and will update the post when we hear back. StockTouch CEO Jennifer Johnson was one of five female CEOs (and six female cofounders) accepted into the spring 2012 class.

StockTouch's website says the app was created by Visible Market, "a company dedicated to inventing the world’s best financial information products for mobile devices." In January, Visible Market filed a Form D indicating that the company had raised a $500,000 equity round from six investors.

In an article in April, Mashable described StockTouch as a "vibrant" and "easy-to-read" heat map that covered stocks displaying the top 100 U.S. and top 100 global companies in nine industry sectors. The heat map shows stocks that are gaining value in green and stocks losing value in green, giving users the chance to zoom in to an individual stock for a performance graph.

ITunes included StockTouch as a "new and noteworthy" app the week of March, 15, 2012, shortly after the TechStars decisions were announced. A screenshot from that time on the StockTouch press page shows that the app had five stars from 241 ratings. The current version of the app in iTunes, which was last updated in April, has a rating of two-and-a-half stars.

Last year, TechStars NYC funded 23 companies, 21 of which went on to raise $50 million after they graduated. According to Mr. Tisch, you can expect even bigger things from this class. The common element among all 14 newbies? "They all take big swings," he said. "I think the ideas are all going for something big.  I don't think there are  lot of safe bets or small bets."

That ambitious streak applies to the founder themselves. "They're all obsessed founders," said Mr. Tisch. "I think if you looked at all of them, they've spent a lot of time working in that industry or were really obsessed with it." Although there's a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old in the program, "I think it goes more to people who have deep experience in their space, whether older or younger," he noted.

Now that the TechStars brand is well-established in New York City, did the caliber of candidates go up? "Yeah, I feel like all these things feel real," said Mr. Tisch. "It feels like it's a super different, exciting group." This class was chosen from 1,500 applicants. Six of the companies have a female founder (and of those five hold the CEO title--including Markover CEO Kelsey Falter, who won Betabeat's web series The Pitch). Nine of the companies have already been operating out of New York City, two are international (from Amsterdam and Vancouver), and five are relocating to New York. "Founders range from an angel investor in Twitter to a senior at Notre Dame, an Oscar nominee, a four time founder and a 3-time applicant of the program," added Mr. Tisch.

Without further ado, say hi to the new kids on the block:

• 10Sheet:  automated bookkeeping as a service
• Markover: collaborative feedback system for creatives
• Bondsy: the social network of things
• Moveline: decision engine for moving
• Classtivity: discovery engine for recreational classes
• Pickie: social commerce
• Condition One: immersive video technology for tablets
• Rewind.me: creating present value from your past actions
• Droptype: simple content publishing
• SmallKnot: local social lending
• Karma: simplified mobile provider for travelers
• StockTouch: revolutionizing finance with mobile data visualization
• Lua Technologies: project management and communication platform
• Wander: keep wondering

Class isn't officially in session until March 14th. But we trust we'll be hearing plenty from them before Demo Day in mid-June--going back to the beginning at Webster Hall. In the meantime, there's Tips @ Betabeat.