Waterloo Region is on the radar of the man who founded one of the world’s largest startup accelerator centres.

David Cohen is the founder and CEO of TechStars, an American accelerator centre which is considered among the most successful in North America.

Waterloo Region has its own accelerator programs – VeloCity, Hyperdrive and the Accelerator Centre to name three – but none have reached the worldwide cachet of TechStars.

An accelerator centre, or startup incubator, is an organization which connects young companies with industry expertise and connections to seed money, as well as provides assistance in marketing, accounting and other business necessities.

Cohen – whose TechStars runs programs across the United States and in the United Kingdom – knows a thing or two about how to make one successful.

He was in Waterloo Region on Wednesday as part of a two-day speaking engagement swing that also included a stop in Toronto.

Arriving earlier in the day, Cohen had a chance to tour some of the region’s tech hotspots – and he liked what he saw.

“Walking around here, you see some really fabulous companies doing some amazing things,” he tells CTV News.

“There’s an amazing reputation that’s developing for this region around entrepreneurship.”

Communitech president Iain Klugman says he sees many similarities between Boulder, Colo., where TechStars began, and the region.

“We’ve both become major beacons as far as (being) major startup locations,” he says.

“The stories of the communities are the same – a group of founders came together with a commitment to building a great tech industry.”

Klugman adds that just as Waterloo Region is a student-heavy area not far from a much larger centre like Toronto, Boulder too has a high number of students and a large neighbour in Denver.

Expanding into Canada isn’t on the immediate radar of Cohen or TechStars – but if that ever changes, he says, Waterloo Region would get a definite look.

“(We) haven’t committed to coming here, but it’s a place that we might want to come someday,” he says.

Klugman says he wouldn’t see a TechStars presence in Waterloo Region as stepping on the toes of the existing accelerator programs.

“I think there’s always room for more. There’s lots that’s yet to be done,” he says.

Billed as ‘Ask David Anything’, Cohen’s speaking engagement at the Communitech Hub was sold out well in advance of Wednesday.