Richard Grote, courtesy photo.

RealCo, the San Antonio-based accelerator that launched last year, announced this week plans to expand into Austin and Boulder and the hiring of a new managing director.

Richard Grote, who lives in Boulder part-time, will become the new managing director.

Grote has spent the “past 18 years building and mentoring startups, as well as nurturing the now thriving startup community in the Boulder/Denver area,” according to a news release.

“I’m incredibly grateful for and humbled by the opportunity to join RealCo as Managing Director,” Grote said. “This team and community of mentors, founders, and investors have created a truly amazing program to help startup founders build real, VC-ready companies.”

Previously, RealCo was known as the RealCo Seed Fund. Michael Girdley, co-founder of Codeup and co-founder of Geekdom Fund, headed it up with Teresa Evans, co-founder of San Antonio Science and associate director of Alamo Angels along with Chris Saum, co-founder and director of business development of MUD Geochemical. Evans has left. Saum lives in Austin and will lead RealCo’s expansion into that market.

RealCo, based at Geekdom, is a 15-month long program that focuses on getting startups ready for a Series A round of investment. It provides networking, capital, mentors, co-working space at Geekdom, access to investors and more. Startups in the program receive $100,000 in funding. It currently works with seven startups: Dauber, dearduck, FileThis, FunnelAI, MR Presta and two more startups in stealth mode.

“RealCo is built around the idea that startups today are part of a global ecosystem from day one,” Girdley, founder of RealCo and managing director of the Geekdom Fund, said in a news release. “Having partners geographically distributed reflects the reality of successful company-building today.”

RealCo will host an AMA, Ask Me Anything, with Grote on Thursday, April 12th. at the Geekdom Event Centre in San Antonio.

Silicon Hills News did this Ideas to Invoices podcast with Saum and Evans about the RealCo Seed Fund Program last year.