TechStars founder David Cohen raising $150M for his own VC fund

“Power angel” David Cohen must be feeling bullish about his investment strategy — he plans to raise $150 million for his personal investment fund, Bullet Time Ventures.

This new fund would be more than 5 times larger than Bullet Time II, which closed last year with $29 million.

Cohen is a cofounder of accelerator program TechStars and an influential figure in the tech community. He founded (and sold) a couple of companies in Boulder, Colo., and established TechStars in 2006 to create a stronger support network for local startups. 

TechStars is now one of the most well-known accelerator programs out there. It focuses on and nurtures companies outside of Silicon Valley, with locations in Boston, Boulder, Chicago, New York City, London, Seattle, and Austin. Each location graduates two classes a year of about 10 companies — selected from upwards of a thousand applicants.

Cohen is also an extremely active angel investor, claiming to have a few hundred investments under his belt. He raised the first Bullet Time Ventures fund in 2009 so he could have even more capital to put into startups. 

Bullet invests in the seed and follow on rounds of TechStars companies, new companies founded by TechStars alums, and outsiders. The fund invests $50,000 – $200,000 in each company, and about half the investments go into TechStars participants.

Cohen’s notable investments include SendGrid, Next Big Sound, Orbotix, SimpleGeo, Torbit, GroupMe, Twilio, and Uber.

Mark Solon, the former managing partner of Highway 12 Ventures (based in Boise) is also listed on the filing.