Veterans give so much in their service to our country, it’s always an honor to be able to give something back no matter how small. That’s why at TechStars we’re very excited to be offering another TechStars Patriot Boot Camp from July 17-19 at George Washington University in Washington D.C.

This will be the second year for the event, an intense three-day program designed to teach and mentor Veterans and Service Members about entrepreneurship and help them build and develop innovative technology companies.

Patriot Boot Camp will include presentations and one-on-one mentoring from the TechStars team and alumni, technology industry leaders and experienced entrepreneurs and investors. As a participant, you’ll have the chance to interact with other motivated entrepreneurs, learn more about the process of building a successful technology startup, meet with successful D.C. startups, and receive helpful feedback from mentors and peers.

Through presentations, guidance and coaching, you can solidify your business idea, focus your fundraising pitch, improve your accelerator application or refine your product concept. Wherever you’re at in the entrepreneurial process, Patriot Boot Camp can help move you forward. As Tak Lo, a participant from last year, writes in this blog post: “I owe a lot to the experience that essentially kickstarted my entrepreneurship journey.”

Participants traveled from 20 states and 3 foreign countries to take part in last year’s Patriot Boot Camp with 77 participants, 67 companies and more than 50 mentors. Since then, many of these founders have used what they gained from the experience to propel their companies toward greater success: Nexercise was accepted to TechStars Chicago. Tak Lo is now an associate at TechStars New York. Seven teams moved on to RisingStars. Fotopigeon and VocalTap are currently at the NewMe Accelerator in San Francisco. And four of the teams went to the VictorySpark accelerator.

Veterans, spouses of Veterans, Service Members, or companies comprised of at least 50 percent Veterans are encouraged to apply to Patriot Boot Camp. To facilitate a productive match between mentors and participants, candidate selection will focus on technology-oriented companies and teams. These will generally be high technology or software companies and concepts that have national or worldwide reach. Individuals with a keen interest in technology startups and entrepreneurial education will also be considered and are encouraged to apply.

There is no cost for Veterans or spouses of Veterans to participate, but all participants are responsible for their own travel and accommodations. Patriot Boot Camp 2013 is made possible by our generous sponsors: SoftLayer, Kauffman FastTrac, Slice of Lime, PivotDesk, Silicon Valley Bank, SendGrid, and George Washington University. We are also grateful to all of our speakers and mentors for graciously volunteering their time and expertise.

As David Cass points out in this post about his experience at last year’s Patriot Boot Camp, Veterans make excellent entrepreneurs. They’re disciplined and motivated, committed to the mission, accustomed to working as a team, comfortable with taking risks and stepping up to lead.

So go ahead, seize the opportunity and apply today. You can submit your application any time from now until the final deadline of May 31. Applications will be reviewed and decisions made on a rolling basis, so the sooner you apply, the better.

And if you’re an experienced entrepreneur, angel or VC who would like to mentor at the event for either a half or full day, please let me know.

I’m incredibly excited about the recent launch of TechStars Austin. Austin is a natural fit for TechStars, and we’re looking forward to having an ongoing presence in this strong, active and growing community.

We all know how great Austin is from our annual trips to SXSW, but in fact the city has a vibrant startup scene all year round. There’s just so much happening there, with many successful companies like Indeed, HomeAway, Bazaarvoice and Spiceworks, along with plenty more promising newcomers.

As always, we’re starting this new TechStars program with a solid foundation of support already in place. Local tech groups in Austin have been enthusiastically supportive, and we have a bunch of talented mentors and investors involved, including Sam Decker (Mass Relevance), Rony Kahan (Indeed), Jeff Dachis (Dachis Group), Brett Hurt (Bazaarvoice), Tom Ball and Mike Dodd (Austin Ventures), Lori Knowlton (HomeAway), Kip McClanahan and Morgan Flager (Silverton), Ned Hill and Aziz Gilani (Mercury Fund) and Rob Taylor (Black Locus)–just to name a few. Josh Baer and Bill Boebel of Capital Factory, where our offices will be located, have been instrumental in bringing TechStars to Austin, and I greatly appreciate all of their help and support.

The Managing Director of TechStars Austin is Jason Seats, a successful entrepreneur, techie and angel investor. Jason founded Slicehost, which was later acquired by Rackspace, and then joined TechStars in 2011 as Managing Director of TechStars Cloud. He brings so much to the table with his valuable technical skills, experience as a founder and investor, and a strong network. In his new home in Austin, he’ll definitely play an important role in the growth of TechStars and the entire startup community there.

To learn more about TechStars Austin, check out these articles from TechCrunch, VentureBeat, Xconomy, The Next Web and PCMag. Applications are now open for the inaugural TechStars Austin program, which kicks off in August. Discover how three intense months of mentorship, along with seed funding and a powerful network, can help you grow your business and develop as an entrepreneur. Apply now, or see the full schedule for more details.

TechStars Seattle is on fire. Haiku Deck recently announced a new $3M in funding from Madrona and others, for a total of $3.9M in funding. Everymove is now at 6.1M in funding after a recent 3.5M new round. Romotive recently raised 6.5M from investors including Sequoia. And Tred has raised 1.7M from Maveron, Chris Sacca and others. In total, the 29 past TechStars companies from the Seattle program have raised nearly $40M in venture capital so far. Of course it’s not all about fundraising. These 29 alumni companies employ more than 160 people now as well and have a chance to build real sustainable businesses in time. They’re also an incredible peer group to each other, as well as part of the global TechStars alumni network.

We often hear that companies feel they are “too far along” for TechStars. The data is now very clear that TechStars adds tremendous value both at the very early stage and after early seed funding and traction. No matter your stage, do yourself a favor and apply. It takes just a few minutes and you can always learn more later. The option to have an extra $118,000 in funding and to surround yourself with unbelievable mentors for three months while building your global business network can make a huge difference for your company.

The early application deadline for TechStars Seattle 2013 is Friday, May 3. Apply now because applicants who apply before the final deadline of May 31 have more opportunity to network with us and will receive additional consideration.

The TechStars office will be hosting the next Open Angel Forum in Boulder on Thursday, May 2nd. The application deadline for entrepreneurs is on Monday, April 22nd.

Open Angel Forum is special because only very active angels are invited, and there are never any fees to present. Generally this draws angels who travel to Boulder for the event, as well as most of the serious active local angel investors.

Signup to attend as an Angel here, or apply to present as an Entrepreneur here.

The Boulder Open Angel Forum is organized by PivotDeskers, Rob Delwo and Alex Newmann, SendGridder Tim Falls and yours truly.

Are you in Boulder and interested in Big Data? It’s way better than medium data or small data if you ask me.

Are you amazed at how the big data technologies of the last few years have transformed the way you look at data? Are you interested in what the next “big thing” is in big data? If you answered yes then you have to come to the Februrary Boulder / Denver Big Data meetup on 2/13 @ 6:00 PM at CU ( ECCR 265 ) .

Ted Dunning, Chief Architect at MapR Technologies and contributor to the Drill project, will be presenting on Drill. Drill, a technology that has its roots in the Google dremel paper, is an interactive query platform that promises 10x-100x query performance over current Hadoop options. For more information look here. It’s a great group and a really good opportunity to network with others with an interest in big data.