Startup accelerator TechStars has acquired UP Global, the company behind Startup Weekend, Startup Week, Startup Next and Startup Digest programs.

The acquisition isn’t hugely surprising given the two have had a long and illustrious relationship, with Startup Weekend having come out of a confab at TechStars back in 2007.

“Together, we’ve built programs and resources for every stage of the entrepreneurial journey – from community catalysts who are focused on early stage grassroots community development to entrepreneurs looking for more formal opportunities that provide education, a powerful mentor network, acceleration, funding and beyond” TechStars’ David Brown said in a blog post.

Under the acquisition deal, UP Global programs will remain “open and independent in their execution at a community level.”

TechStars noted that the programs will continue to run as they do now, and that with their ownership involvement, they plan to expand UP Global’s programs to a wider audience.

“We’re excited that Google for Entrepreneurs will continue to partner with us by powering the Startup Weekend and Startup Next programs” Brown added, before noting that “Furthermore, effective immediately, fees previously associated with Startup Next, UP Global’s pre-accelerator program, have been eliminated – enabling more entrepreneurs to take advantage of that resource to help them scale.”

A good deal

TechStars, along with YCombinator, are early stage tech incubators that depending on where you stand are great for the tech startup community, or vice versa, the pedophiles raping early stage startups for a shit ton of equity in brilliant ideas for sweet f**k all of an investment.

Putting aside that Fred Wilson is a mentor at TechStars, a person who regularly advocated for the writer of this posts employment to be terminated in a previous position (and by regularly, demanded constantly,) realistically they mostly do good, even if some members of their broader community have the ethics of an alley cat.

Buying UP Global is a good fit, and particularly within Boulder, Colorado, where they are based, the buy could only in theory help further facilitate early stage startups, including, potentially, the big startups of the future.

Image credit: bouldair/Flickr/ CC by 2.0