Earlier this year when Des Moines-based startup Bawte relaunched its platform to focus more heavily on customer support, former Hatchlings team member George Jurgens posted the product on ProductHunt. 

At the time, Bawte co-founder John Jackovin says he’d never heard of the site and was surprised when Bawte was quickly voted to the top.

A week or so later, Jackovin was scrolling through his junk email folder when an address caught his eye. The email was from Nicole Glaros, Techstars’ managing director. 

“I said, ‘Well, wait a second. This is from Techstars.’ So I called (Nicole) and talked to her for a bit,” Jackovin (right) told SPN Monday.

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Glaros asked Jackovin if he had ever thought of applying for a Techstars accelerator. He said no, he hadn’t really considered it before. But after their call, he started to consider it. 

In retrospect, Jackovin says he “totally needs to buy George a turkey or something.” 

Today, less than six months later, Techstars announced Bawte will be one of the 13 companies participating in the 2014 class of its Boulder accelerator. 

After his phone call with Glaros, Jackovin says he completed the application process, made the first cut and got an interview for the program, which he was told could be via Skype or in person. 

“I knew this could be really huge and I would have hated to have the thing that eliminated us be that I wasn’t there in person,” Jackovin said. “So I bought a ticket and basically got there 10 minutes before my pitch, walked into a room and pitched for four minutes, answered questions for four and walked out.

“It was only nine minutes of my time, but I flew all the way to Boulder for it because it felt right.”

Again, Bawte made the cut and Jackovin returned to Boulder to meet with Glaros and talk about his company. Ultimately, Glaros and the Techstars organizers liked the company enough to accept them to their program. From there, things began to move even more quickly.

“We found out about three weeks prior so I’ve been running around like a chicken with my head cut off,” Jackovin said. 

Monday Jackovin was in Boulder for the start of the program with Bawte developers Thomas Murphy and John Shelley. He says that in two weeks developer Spencer Herzberg will be joining the team out west with the potential for another team member to join them at the accelerator. 

The Techstars program provides $118,000 in seed funding for 7-10 percent equity in each company. Jackovin and his team will wrap up the 90-day program with a demo day scheduled for early October.