I think that's a mistake. It's hard for programmers to work in such an environment, and it makes the founders start to feel like employees.
One of my rules of thumb for dealing with startups is to use Viaweb as a test case. And even if I'd have been willing to do it myself, there is no way I could ever have gotten Robert to dutifully show up and work in our investors' offices.
Don't know if I would like being required to work in a big room around a desk with a bunch of other people.. Good solid brainstorming is useful, but not when I'm actually coding. For that I like to be in my own world with the headphones on.
Sounds like TechStars is more like an incubator setup in this regard.
I think they should leave each team to figure out their dev. process. Not all teams work well under a conference room type setup. The should allow teams to choose if they want to work under that setup or not.
https://www.gtldna.net/