It turns out that the cameramen were busy creating a television show that will premiere on Bloomberg TV on September 13.
The 11 companies that participated in TechStars' inaugural New York program were told about the show when they were accepted. But most of them caught on long before that.
"The final interview for the program was strange because it was me and my co-founder sitting across from [program director] David Tisch and [CEO] David Cohen and there are like six people standing over us with a boom in our face and these giant halogen lights lighting us up from every angle," says Jonathan Wegener, the co-founder of Friendslist and participant in the program and show. "It felt very much like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"
Though Wegener says that his team probably didn't get as much camera time as those that landed $5 million of funding or lost a co-founder at the last minute, the cameras were very much a part of his TechStars experience. The crew came to his house to film him waking up and eating breakfast. They gave all the participants a flipcam (he took his to the grocery store), and pulled them aside for individual interviews.
Tisch said that TechStars has been approached about reality shows before, but it had declined offers that would enforce a dramatic voting system or otherwise change the TechStars format. Bloomberg's six-episode show will contain enough entertainment, he says, by sticking to a documentary format.
"We run a three-month, unsustainable, energy-filled, sleep-deprived process of getting your startup from wherever it is to a lot further," he says. "In that three months, a lot happens and startups do really change the course of their trajectory significantly."
Being filmed almost constantly while trying to launch 11 companies and a new program seems like it would be a bit taxing, but Tisch says the experience became "comfortable."
Neither he nor company founders like Wegener have seen the episodes yet, so how comfortable their experience feels in front of Bloomberg TV's 270-million home audience is something they'll find out starting September 13.
"I think I curse a lot and my mother isn't going to be proud of that," Tisch says. "But I think you're going to see ups and downs, and that's going to be the hardest part. ... The fear of the unknown is probably what I'm most worried about. "