Ryan Kuder

Managing Director,Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator, powered by Techstars 

We met Ryan Kuder during CES week in Las Vegas in January 2015. Kuder conducted a presentation and panel discussion at the coworking space Work In Progress on the upcoming Robotics Accelerator. Kuder’s background in start-ups and entrepreneurship combined with his witty candor inspired and motivated the audience.

Ryan Kuder’s “career” as an entrepreneur started at a young age. In his words: “I started my first business when I was in fourth grade. Our teacher gave out points for good behavior. We’d track these points on little pieces of paper and when you got enough points, you’d get extra recess or lunch at Burger King or something. The problem with the paper point sheets was that they weren’t awesome. So I made wipe off point sheets decorated with awesome things like footballs and pirates and sold them to other kids in exchange for points. I got a lot of extra recess that year.”

Techstars hired Kuder in December 2014 to direct the Robotics Accelerator. Kuder explains this exciting opportunity in his own words:

Back in 2009, I was part of a team that won a coding competition called the Rails Rumble. Our prize was a No Expenses Paid trip to Boulder, Colorado to meet David Cohen and the Techstars mentors and spend a week working on our project at the Techstars Bunker, which at that time was in a basement under a shoe store. The mentors and companies working in that space were among the most creative and driven I’d ever met. They did more faster than any startups I’d ever seen.

Throughout my career, I’ve been a founder of a handful of tech startups, been through a couple of exits and more than a couple of failures. I’ve seen just about every phase of the startup stack from two guys working in my living room to multi hundred million dollar exits. Along the way, I’ve learned a lot about starting up, and I’ve spent a lot of time working with founders helping them see the things I’ve already seen.

So a few months ago, when Techstars approached me with the opportunity to build an accelerator to help founders (whoo!) in my home town of San Diego (rad!) partnered with San Diego’s biggest company and industry innovator Qualcomm (wow!) to help robotics startups (ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!) it didn’t take much to convince me.

I’m humbled to join the Techstars team and work with Qualcomm to build the Qualcomm Robotics Accelerator powered by Techstars. The revolution in robotics is just getting started and by bringing together Techstars’ great history of helping founders build great companies and Qualcomm’s tradition of innovation and invention, we’re excited to be building the future of robotics right here in San Diego. [Original post found here]

We are thrilled to have Ryan Kuder on the Entrepreneurial Mindset!

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