It feels more like their franchising. Find a local incubator/ seed/ VC opportunity with good local roots, and brand a program there for 3 months. It benefits both sides, TS portfolio grows and the local shop gets a big nod of legitimacy from outside their market.
It adds momentum to the local scene, expands their portfolio with minimal costs, and hasn't seemed to drastically water down their image. Or maybe it has - I'm not quite sure... There are many times I would have loved to go through TechStars, but I feel that the key benefit of the program is the networking & 'friction' with other great entrepreneurs & the top VCs, I'm not so sure how it will keep scaling without degrading those key aspects. As in, I imagine it was easy to get the most high profile mentors or VCs to Boulder or NYC once/ twice a year. Now, they're supposed to hit up like 7+ programs? Different demo days...