The Starting Gate

diasporas@miami a call to action

Saturday’s diasporas@miami event was part a celebration of Latin American diaspora entrepreneurship and part call to action. While speakers shared their entrepreneurial journeys and startups pitched their businesses, there were also strong calls for immigration reform and incentives to help startups grow and promote an entrepreneurial ecosystem. And, the participants believe, Miami shines brightly as an ideal place to bridge the worlds and launch global businesses.

The celebration, which drew representatives from the U.S. government, public-private partnerships and plenty of entrepreneurs, was also grounded in economic fundamentals. “Of the Fortune 500 companies, 40 percent were founded by immigrants or children on immigrants. Clearly there is a massive economic upside. It’s not just a social issue, it is a hard-core serious economic opportunity,” said Patrick Hidalgo, deputy director of the White House Business Council, pictured here with Susan Amat. “The numbers are astonishing -- look at remittance flows. The whole notion of national identity is changing, where people can live in between. It’s a massive force, how do we … use our assets to help stimulate this inspiring entrepreneurship coming out of the diaspora communities?”

Miami is the city with the largest percentage of foreign-born individuals in the world, and Miami-Dade County as a region is also ranked at the top in foreign-born population worldwide, added Susan Amat, founder of the Venture Hive, the new Miami entrepreneur space that hosted the event and is already full of diaspora startups, including seven Argentinian entrepreneurs, five Brazilians, three Cubans, two Venezuelans and a Colombian. “Looking at the important work that Latin American entrepreneurs have done, it’s becoming increasingly clear that Miami is going to play a critical role” as a technology hub for the Americas, she said.

Carlos Garcia, CEO of Nobox and an angel investor, agrees: “2013 is a year for Miami to leap forward in a huge way. Facebook is setting up its Latin America headquarters here – that is a very big deal. They realize they need a headquarters and that headquarters only makes sense in Miami.”

Still, there are challenges such as immigration limits, brought up during a panel (pictured here) l of Garcia, Stephen Keppel of Univision and Nicolai Bezsonoff of .CO Internet. Bezsonoff said he recently lost a great potential employee who couldn’t get her visas. “If you want to grow economy here, It’s not about closing doors, it’s letting the right people in so you can spark innovation and spark growth of the company and make it something that can hire a hundred more people,” he said, noting that knowledge transfer is critical and even securing temporary visas can be difficult. “If we want Miami to be a technology hub of the Americas, we need to import, not just export. It has to be easier for businesses.”

There are other ways government can help, the panelists said, all noting that Miami is ideal for a Latin American startup as well as for U.S. or European companies doing business in Latin America. “Incentives are going to be very important,” said Garcia, suggesting government incentives for startups to stay here and tax incentives for investing in early-stage companies make sense, he said. Providing funds for programs run by private-sector partners that help diaspora startups is another way.

 “Miami is an awesome place to be. By working with entrepreneurs in Latin America, there’s a symbiotic relationship for business and jobs and growth. We need to look for ways to work with setting up the right relationships with the federal, local and state governments and the private sector and we are on the way to doing that,” Keppel, the director of empowerment issues for Univision Network News. He noted the work Univision is doing with La idEA, a new platform to connect Latino entrepreneurs in the U.S. with opportunities and entrepreneurs in Latin America.

The event also included a keynote address by Tony Argiz, CEO of top 40 accounting firm Morrison, Brown, Argiz and Farra, who recounted his journey from Cuba at age 9, and also pitches by iMasterdata, CloudShopper, GetMyRx, NightPro, Tabber and everypost. The event was in partnership with the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance, the U.S. State Department, Univision and Venture Hive and was part of the larger Global Diaspora Forum going on this week in Washington DC, in which Amat also participated in. In addition to Miami, satellite events were also held in Dublin, Toronto, Los Angeles and Silicon Valley.

Free Diasporas@Miami will include panel, pitches by Latin American startups

This week’s Diasporas@Miami brings together Latin American entrepreneurs to share their experiences in starting and growing businesses.

Participants will learn about the entrepreneurial struggle in servicing foreign markets as well as the importance of offering solutions and support to their home countries. The event will conclude with seven Latin American diaspora startups pitching their businesses.

Speakers include Patrick Hidalgo, deputy director of the White House Business Council, Steven Keppel, director of Empowerment Initiatives for Univision Network News, Tony Argiz of Morrison, Brown, Argiz and Farra (keynote), Nicolai Bezsonoff of .Co Internet and Carlos Garcia of Nobox.     

      Diasporas@Miami will be 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday, May 11, at Venture Hive, 1010 NE 2nd Ave., Miami. The event is free but registration is limited. Register at  www.venturehive.org/diasporas . The event, hosted by Venture Hive, is in partnership with the International Diaspora Engagement Alliance, the U.S. State Department and Univision.

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/2013/05/05/3381712/diasporasmiami-focuses-on-entrepreneurs.html#storylink=cpy

Open English raises Series D round of $65 million

Open English, the rapidly growing online English language school, has raised an additional $65 million in venture capital to fund its expansion within Latin America — and outside the region.

The Series D round, valuing the company at $350 million, brings the total funding raised to $120 million. "There are very few companies that have had that level of funding in ed-tech and certainly for companies in Latin America," said Andres Moreno, CEO and co-founder of the Miami-based company with offices or call centers in Panama, Caracas, Bogota and Sao Paulo. The round was led by Technology Crossover Ventures, whose investments include Facebook, Expedia, Netflix, HomeAway and others, including education technology companies.  C-Round investors Redpoint Ventures and Insight Venture Partners also participated in this round, Moreno said on Monday.

Open English, which offers live, online classes by native English speakers in 22 countries across Latin America, has grown from 5,000 students in 2010 to more 70,000 current students today. With about a year of launching in Brazil -- it’s first non-Spanish market -- the company recently enrolled its 10,000th student there. Open English employs more than 2,000 full-time, part-time and contract workers.

"We’re just really scratching the surface here. We think there is meaningful opportunity to continue to capture market share as people realize this is a better and more cost effective solution than traditional brick and mortar schools," said Moreno, who started the company in Venezuela with his partners with just $700 in 2006.

Moreno explained the $65 million round will fund expansion within Latin America, significant investments in its products, including its back-end and consumer learning platforms, and, for the first time, expansion beyond the core region.

"We will be launching in three new territories outside of Latin America in 2013," Moreno said, adding that announcements will be coming out in the next few months.

“I can’t tell you how excited we are to grow this,” said Moreno. “This is good news for the Latin American entrepreneurial ecosystem ... and it is a good thing for Miami.”

Boris Hirmas Said, entrepreneur in residence at Florida International University and chairman of Tres Mares Group who was attending the Rokk Miami event on Monday, added: "Andres Moreno and Open English are the role models Miami empowers everyday to inspire our new generation of entrepreneurs, as top valuations and serious money are a reality in our neck of the woods."

 To read the recent Miami Herald profile of Open English, go here.

 

The state of venture capital -- Americas style

From left: Juan Pablo Cappello, Manny Medina, Boris Hirmas Said, Andres Moreno and Cate Ambrose discuss the state of venture capital in Latin America at The LAB Miami. Photo by Jose Pimienta.

 

Andres Moreno, founder and CEO of Open English, said it took him more than a year to raise his first $400,000. “Every morning I’d get off my friend’s couch in Menlo Park, put on the same suit jacket and go ask for money,” explaining that he was meeting with Silicon Valley angels and sometimes raising $25,000 at a time. “I was getting really good at it.”

Fast-forward to today, and Open English -- the fast-growing Miami company that offers live online English courses to more than 50,000 students all over Latin America -- has landed major venture backing. The company has already raised more than $55 million and is in the process of raising another significant round. That will fund the expansion of Open English beyond the region.

Moreno, who started his company in 2006, was part of a panel that explored venture capital and entrepreneurship in Latin America. The panel, hosted by AS/COA and the Latin American Private Equity & Venture Capital Association (LAVCA) and held last week at The LAB Miami, also included Cate Ambrose, president of LAVCA, Juan Pablo Cappello, co-founder and board member of Idea.me, Boris Hirmas Said, chairman of Tres Mares Group, chairman of Yellow Pepper and Entrepreneur in Residence at FIU, and Manny Medina, managing partner of Medina Capital Group and chairman of the Technology Foundation of the Americas.

Panelists described the venture landscape in Latin America as way ahead of where it was just five years ago, but still with a ways to go. Some U.S. venture firms have entered the market recently and “we are seeing more Latin venture firms co-investing with U.S. firms, learning how venture capital
is done,” Ambrose said. According to LAVCA research, Colombia and Mexico’s entrepreneurial ecosystems have made great strides in the past year, outpacing Brazil by some measures. Similar to what we hear locally, the panelists said the region could use some more big exits, or success stories, to attract more venture attention.

 

2014 eMerge Americas conference aims to help make Miami a tech hub

By Ina Paiva Cordle, Miami Herald Staff

With a vision of establishing Miami as the technology hub for Latin America, a local non-profit group is planning to launch a major, annual conference here, beginning next year.

Called “eMerge Americas,” it’s created by the Technology Foundation of the Americas and expected to bring the leading information technology companies in the world to South Florida to showcase their offerings to thousands of technology industry insiders from across the hemisphere.

Scheduled May 4-6, 2014 at the Miami Beach Convention Center, the conference will serve as a platform for hundreds of innovative entrepreneurs and startups from throughout the region to network with investors and industry luminaries, according to the Technology Foundation of the Americas, a non-profit firm spearheaded by Manny Medina, who serves as chairman. Medina is also founding and managing partner of Medina Capital, a private equity firm that invests in technology companies.

“Our overall goal is to create Miami as a technology hub ... for Latin America, just as we are the financial and tourism hub for Latin America,” said Medina, who sold the company he founded, Terremark, in 2011, for $2 billion and founded the Technology Foundation of the Americas to develop the technology ecosystem in South Florida.

Medina plans to formally announce the conference, and the vision it represents, Wednesday evening at an invitation-only soiree in Miami Beach.

Medina is aiming for eMerge Americas to offer attendees a place for the flow of substantive information, plus an opportunity for networking with peers, as well as a social gathering that will be fun, complete with musical performances.

He is hoping to attract more than 5,000 participants from all over the world — particularly from Latin America — to the event, which is projected to cost $5 million to $6 million to put on its first year.

Already Medina said he has raised more than $1 million, including more than $500,000 from Medina Capital and $250,000 each from Miami-Dade County and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

“The moment that Manny announced that he wanted to do a technology conference based in Miami, we were obviously thrilled,” said Matt Haggman, the Knight Foundation’s Miami program director. “We’ve been involved since the very beginning of this, and this is a key part of our entrepreneurship initiative in Miami.”

The conference will build on the momentum already gained in Miami from such entrepreneurial-focused efforts as Endeavor, Start-up City: Miami and The LAB Miami, Haggman said.

“A big part of a startup community is technology, so having a conference focused on technology is really important,” he said.

The plan for eMerge Americas is that major information technology companies will showcase solutions in the areas of cloud computing, cyber security, big data, mobile applications, and social networking to leaders in the technology sector in the Americas.

“For Knight what is so important about this is it creates opportunities for connections; it creates opportunities for shared learning; it creates opportunities for really focused attention and changed perceptions in showing that in many ways there is much more here than people realize,” Haggman said.

In fact, Medina’s goal is to elevate Miami to be on par with other such tech communities as Silicon Valley, Boston and Austin, Texas, which hosts the annual music/film/interactive conference South by Southwest (SXSW). EMerge Americas will play an important role, just as Art Basel Miami Beach has helped cement Miami’s status in the art world.

To garner support for the conference locally, Medina said he has met with academic institutions like Florida International University and the University of Miami, which have applauded the effort.

“It’s a fabulous idea,” said Tom LeBlanc, the University of Miami’s provost. “It’s an opportunity to put technology on the map in South Florida in a very visible way.”

Likewise, David R. Klock, dean of the College of Business at FIU, called eMerge Americas “an exceptional idea,” and touted Medina’s effort at furthering technology and the Miami community at the same time.

“This should become a must-attend annual conference for people all over the world to know what is the state of the art,” Klock said, “and a place to be to get ideas, to get interactions and also, for recognizing Miami as the gateway to the Americas for technology.”

 

A technology brew is percolating in Peru

By Jerry Haar

Say “Peru” to a lot of people and what comes to mind? Copper, ceviche and Macchu Pichu. Yet bubbling beneath the surface — and already emerging — is an ecosystem of startups that will soon hold its own in South America with those in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia.

A recent trip to Lima, to moderate a session at an international business conference, afforded me the opportunity to spend time with one of the panelists —Juan Francisco Rosas, executive director of Wayra Peru. In his assessment: “Technology entrepreneurship is experiencing a highly favorable climate for access to venture capital. The past 18 months have seen the emergence of incubators like Wayra that provides $50,000 for each startup we select, as well as government programs like Fidecom and Fyncit.” There is, indeed, an awakening among VCs that high risk investments can also yield very high returns.

Universities are doing their part, with entrepreneurship centers, engineering and computing programs and labs, and long-standing incubators like Lima Valley and organizations like Startup Academy are fostering many more.

One of Peru’s strategies to grow its tech startup sector is to adapt the winning practices of other countries, particularly neighboring ones like Chile and Colombia. From the former, a key success factor is “co-investment” — private capital matched or often doubled from the public sector. However, that by itself may not be sufficient. As Wayra’s Juan Rosas notes: “Countries like Chile, Peru and Colombia are relatively small for attracting venture capital and private equity. These three nations should think about an integrated ‘regional’ zone for tapping investment, given the competition from large single markets such as Brazil and Mexico.”

Recognizably, obstacles are present. The Peruvian higher education needs to improve quality, access, and physical infrastructure — especially labs — and faculty and the private sector need to develop a much closer relationship, one that meets the needs of local and multinational technology firms. The availability and ease of access to funding for start-ups are other areas that most be addressed. Finally, the paucity of angel investors (there are only ten at present!) must increase by a factor of ten to make a real impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystem in technology.

Nevertheless, Peru indeed possesses some very significant advantages. These include first-rate IT talent, high growth among industries that place a premium on technology and innovation, and a favorable geographic position with neighbors Chile and Colombia that are also faring very well economically and have cultivated excellent talent for their knowledge-based industries.

Peruvian tech startups, valued at over $3 million, were unimaginable 5-10 years ago.

Today, notable startups like Cinepapaya, Plaza Points, Arte Manifiesto, Face Me, and Ando Ayudando are garnering attention from investors and consumers and making their mark in the marketplace. Cinepaya, in particular, has been the darling of investors. Pitching at FIU’s third Americas Venture Capital Conference (pictured) and the first Wayra Global Demo Day — both held last December — Cinepapaya has raised funding from 500 Startups and has its eye on markets beyond its border.

As with all other nations, government plays an important role in Peru, as well. Late last year the Ministry for Industry announced plans to allocate $20 million for a fund to assist technology startups get off the ground. Modeled after Start-Up Chile that invests $40,000 in entrepreneurs from all over the world that move to Chile to develop and launch their endeavors, Peru hopes that spreading the word on campuses (targeting science, math and engineering students) and promoting Peru’s technology ecosystem regionally and globally will achieve the intended results.

The future is bright for technology startups in Peru and the economy overall. One can only hope there will be many more Cinepapayas on the horizon.

Jerry Haar is associate dean, professor and director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center.

 (Photo shows Gary Urteaga of Cinepapaya pitching at the AVCC in December. Photo provided by FIU College of Business.)

From Miami to India and back: Life-changing experiences from Geeks on a Plane

Adam Boalt, CEO and founder of Boalt.com who has launched several startups over the years, including RushMyPassport.com and GOSO (short for Go Social) and is now at work on another startup,  returned to Miami a year and a half ago after half a  decade living and working in Washington, DC, and has settled into Pipeline, a co-working space on Brickell. Recently he returned from a Geeks on a Plane trip with about two dozen other geeks to India, organized by 500 Startups founder Dave McClure. The group made stops in Bangalore, known as the Silicon Valley of India, New Delhi and Mumbai . In his five accompanying blog posts, he takes us to several startups in Bangladore, including YourStory.in, India's most comprehensive platform dedicated to promoting the startup ecosystem, as well as a  Startup Weekend, and he gives us a ring-side seat at the Bombay Stock Market (above Boalt, right, with McClure), all the while sharing his thoughts about conversations about technology, investing and fostering an ecosystem he had with McClure, fellow Geeks on the Plane and the Indian entrepreneurs he met. Afterward, he shared some thoughts on his trip as well as takeaways for Miami’s ecosystem and his own businesses.

By Adam Boalt

Every minute of the trip I felt like I had sensory overload. Interacting with fellow geeks and Indian entrepreneurs was amazing and a huge learning experience.

As I traveled from Bangalore to Mumbai, I found that entrepreneurs in India were extremely open-minded to embracing change and willing to work on solving relevant solutions to challenges in their locale. In India there are a lot of issues with infrastructure, such as the electrical grid, and financial means, but a lot of startups were working around those challenges and working on solving local problems related to the challenges. An example of this was the Embrace startup we visited in Bangalore. They were building a product to prevent neonatal deaths in rural areas in developing countries: http://boalt.com/blog/goap-day2/

I think that Miami has a lot of opportunities in Latin America and Miami has become the gateway that connects us for so many other industries. It would be great for us to encourage growth in these emerging markets. I am also a Cuban-American so I'm always on the pursuit of innovation in the Hispanic market. I'm a big fan of the emerging opportunities in mobile and included two examples of opportunities that could be applied in Latin America on my last post: http://boalt.com/blog/geeks-wrapup/

As I traveled through different areas through India, I realized that hosting events such as 'Geeks On A Plane' by 500 Startups is essential to foster startup growth in a community. Bringing like-minded individuals together to collaborate is a great way to create a sustainable ecosystem for innovation. Miami is so fortunate to already have the infrastructure and has a lot to offer from a lifestyle perspective for startups. It was nice to learn that a fellow geek on the trip, Bruna Maia, Events Director at 500 Startups, was originally from Brazil and grew up in Boca Raton (she attended Pine Crest  Elementary and Spanish River High School) She thinks that Miami has the potential of being great with so much culture and hopes to see it flourish.

In the short time that I was there I've already started to incorporate another geek’s API, Keen.io, into Sales360, a Salesforce.com application I'm developing to measure the response rate of direct mail in real-time. We also changed our tag line from "Interactive Business" to "Digital Business Strategy," which was inspired from a conversation with another geek, Crystal Rose.

 I think that every day I'm disseminating bits and pieces of the trip and applying my learning experiences to my business and life in Miami. This will be a life experience that I will never forget.

My series is here:

• Geeks On A Plane: Overview
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 KickOff
• Geeks On A Plane: Bangalore
• Geeks On A Plane: StartupWeekend
• Geeks On A Plane: Mumbai
• Geeks On A Plane: India 2013 WrapUp

Photos show Dave McClure of 500 Startups, having a fireside chat with Shradha Sharma, founder of YourStory.in, a platform for the indian startup ecosystem, and some of the Geeks on a Plane at the Bombay Stock Exchange.

 Adam Boalt is a serial entrepreneur and emerging technologies evangelist and an interactive strategy, user experience, search marketing, search optimization and social media enthusiast. Follow him on Twitter @boalt. 

Q&A & profile on power team behind Open English

Andres and Nicolette Moreno are co-founders of Open English. Here they are shown in the company's Coconut Grove headquarters. Photo is by Patrick Farrell of the Miami Herald.

 Andres and Nicolette Moreno founded founded Open English, a super fast-growing Miami company that offers English instruction through online classes, which is profiled in this week's Miami Herald Business Monday section. Nicolette shared some thoughts with me about what it's like to found a company with your husband, menorship and being a women in tech. 

Q. What has it been like to found a company with your husband? Can you share any strategies on how you make it work?

A. It's been beautiful, rewarding and a lot of work! What we have is uniquely complex, but works in  all directions. In the early days, we didn't know the meaning of balance and we'd often work 20-30 days in a row without taking an afternoon off. At this stage we've been fortunate enough to have attracted a talented senior management team that allows us to get out of the weeds and spend more time thinking about long-term vision and the strategic direction of the company.

 Working with your husband day and day out is an intense experience, but I've found that it fosters a deep sense of unity between us. We've been in the trenches together and needed to rely on each other's skills and commitment to get to the next stage. We don't have kids, but I'd imagine it to be a similar experience in the sense that you are both working full time to create the best future for your
child, and in our case, the company.

Q. You said your investors weren't totally keen on a husband-wife team at first? How did you turn them around?

A. In the early days, some investors took pause in the fact that we were married. This dynamic shaped our work ethic by demanding that we go above and beyond to continuously prove yourselves to colleagues and investors. Still today we keep the habit of giving each other feedback as we drive back home from work. We really don't cut each other much slack during these daily sessions, which is valuable for our professional advancement but tough to turn off once we get home. We are still
working to improve this; hopefully we'll get it right in the next "release" of our marriage. :)

Q. Do you have a mentor and if so how has he or she been helpful?

A. Yes. I've had several people that believed in me before I believed in myself.

Mike Hooper (former boss) has been my rock for the last decade. Funny enough, we end up talking more about life than work. He's been at the crossroads with me in some of the big decisions that've shaped who I am today. I can call him day or night and he always helps me gain clarity.

Two of the people that have most influenced me are John McIntire, our Chairman, and Thomas Wenrich, our COO. What I've learned from John is the power of bringing people together, as well as how to deal with adversity. From Tigre, how to get things done and how to protect the castle.

Q. What advice do you have for other women entrepreneurs?

A. The advice I give to other women entrepreneurs is to look at our challenges as opportunities. It's
certainly a challenge to be a woman entrepreneur because there are fewer of us out there and the start-up ecosystem is dominated by men, all the way from programmers to venture capitalists. Having said that, that's also our biggest opportunity because women have a unique optic on a host of social and professional issues that have not been solved yet.

The same is true for Open English. U.S. investors often ask why no one created an online English
school before we did. Our answer is always that if U.S. entrepreneurs would have had to learn English as a second langage, there would have been a number of competitors in our space well before our time. Our advantage was simply that we had personal insight on our market opportunity.

 Check out this Geeky Beach video that features Nicolette and other successful South Florida tech entrepreneurs -- of the female kind: http://geekybeach.com/miami-tech-scene/geeky-beach-women-in-tech/

Following is the profile on Open English that was published in this week's Business Monday.

Profile: Open English expands across Latin America

BY JOSEPH A MANN JR., josephmannjr@gmail.com

Back in 2008, Open English, a company run from Miami that uses online courses to teach English in Latin America, had just a handful of students in Venezuela and three employees. Today the company has more than 50,000 students in 22 Latin American countries and some 2,000 employees.

To fund this meteoric expansion, the founders of Open English — Venezuelans Andrés Moreno and Wilmer Sarmiento and Moreno’s American wife, Nicolette — began with $700. Over the last six years, the partners have raised more than $55 million, mostly from private investment and venture capital firms.

Their formula for success? The founders rejected traditional English teaching methods in physical classrooms and developed a system that allows students to tune into live classes every hour of the day from their computers at home, in the office or at school, and learn from native English-speaking teachers who may be based anywhere. Courses stress practical conversations online and the company guarantees fluency after a one-year course, offering six additional months free if students fail to become fluent.     

“We wanted to change the way people learn English,” said Andrés Moreno, the 30-year-old co-founder and CEO, who halted his training as a mechanical engineer and worked full-time at developing the company with his partners. “And we want students to achieve fluency. Traditionally, students have to drive to an English academy, waste time in traffic, and try to learn from a teacher who is not an native English speaker in a class with 20 students.”

Using the Internet, Open English offers classes usually with two or three students and a teacher, interactive videos, other learning aids and personal attention from coaches who phone students regularly to see how they are progressing.

Courses cost an average of $750 per year and students can opt for monthly payments. This is about one-fifth to one-third of what traditional schools charge for small classes or individual instructors, Andrés noted.

“We work at building confidence with our students and encourage them to practice speaking English as much as possible during classes,” said Nicolette Moreno, co-founder and chief product officer, who met Andrés in Venezuela while she was working there on a service project. “Students are taught to actively participate in conversations like a job interview, traveling and talking on a conference call,” said Nicolette, who previously lived in Los Angles, worked with non-profits to create environmentally friendly products and fight poverty in emerging markets, and was head equity trader at an asset management firm. “Students need to speak English in our classes, even though it is sometimes difficult. They learn through immersion.”

Open English has successfully tapped into an enormous, underserved market. Millions of people in Latin America want to learn English to advance in their jobs, work at multinational companies, travel or work overseas and understand the popular music, movies and TV shows they constantly hear in English. Many of them take English courses at public and private schools and learn little if any useful conversational English. While students at private schools for the upper middle class and wealthy often learn foreign languages extremely well from native English-speaking teachers, most people can’t afford these schools or courses designed for one or two students.

Forget ROI; What's our ROC -- Return on Community?

Startup and City have been separate conversations for too long -- it's time to explore their intersection, said Richard Florida, the urban affairs expert. And that's what happened at Start-Up City: Miami.

When Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh set about to lead a transformation of Las Vegas' downtown (yes, there is one of those in Vegas), he said he was guided by the 3Cs --collisions, community and colearning. In everything you do, he says, the question to ask is what is the ROC -- Return on Community?

"It’s the local entrepreneurs and residents that are suggesting how the neighborhood should evolve. Were pretty anti-top down. Focus on getting people talking to each other and that is how innovation happens,” Hsieh says. 

Hsieh says he learned a lot about this building a culture at Zappos. "Culture is to company as community is to a city," he says. For instance, he believed the company and its 2,000 employees were too spread out over three buildings in the suburbs. He found when exits were shut off so everyone had to funnel through one door, it got people talking. As he moves the company to downtown Las Vegas, the density will be tighter to spur more collisions, he says. For more on Hsieh's Downtown Project, see a related post here.

Florida says good urban density doesn't mean just a bunch of luxury towers. it's mixed-use urban nighborhoods like the Design District and Wynwood.

Here are a few other takeaways from Start-Up City: Miami. 

On scaling up and making success stories: Fabre Fernandez, president of Endeavor, said he asked people in Miami and in all communities Endeavor considers entering this question: Can you name the top five entrepreneurs in the last five years? "The biggest problem in Miami is scaling, not starting companies. These are the same challenges as emerging markets we are in." Juan Diego Calle, CEO of .CO Internet agrees: "When I say I am from Miami I get this weird look. Maybe it's ego but I want to abolish that. I want to put Miami on the map in technology. We have to build the community, we have to bring back the talent that has left and we have to have a few stars, a few big exits, to show to the world.”

On finding startup capital in one of the wealthiest cities on the globe: “There’s capital here but it is very disorganized. We have to keep creating collision opportunities," said Demian Bellumio, COO of Senzari and an investor. "The money is here, but it is hiding behind palm trees. The investors here are investing elsewhere," said Melissa Krinzman of Venture Architects. She said her company is launching the Venture Architects Investor Network this week,  which aims to match investors in New York and Miami with companies. Juan Pablo Cappello, a lawyer, entrepreneur and investor, said in the next three to six months, he wouldn't be surprised to see a big-name VC firm finally putting an office here, perhaps relocating from Brazil, where investors are finding a tougher market than they thought. Once one does, others will follow. 

On the opportunities in excess capacity: Think unused real estate, vehicles, spaces at universities. There are opportunities in finding ways to get a return on investment from idled resources, says Robin Chase, co-founder of Zipcar and founder of Buzzcar, a peer-to-peer car sharing service. Take car ownership. We spend maybe 5 percent of our time in them and they sit idle for the rest. Yet they can cost 18-40 percent of our income. Don't we have better things to do with that money? And where are there other opportunities to employ excess capacity?

About cool ideas: In New York, the iconic phone booths could be artsy tech booths. In Las Vegas, there's a weekly podcast about everything going on and an ongoing TED-like speaker series. In London, leaders would regularly ask entrepreneurs what do they need to grow, and the suggestions would be funneled to 10 Downing Street. This led to policies such as entrepreneur visas and tax breaks for startups and startup investors.

Tips for entrepreneurs: Find a mentor who was an entreprenuer, says Fabre. Read everything you can, network, attend events, and give back, says Krinzman. Seek diversity in everything you do, homogeneous things fail.

Tips for communities/governments: Open your local government and tourism data to hack on, said Neil Kleiman of NYU. Look at what happened when the weather service did that -- all those weather apps.

On immigration: Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and chairman of Startup America, says: "Imigration isn't a problem to be solved, it's an economic opportunity," adding that nearly half of the companies in Silicon Valley were started by imigrants. We need reform to continue winning the battle for global talent, he says.

On disruption: Three industries that are ripe for disruption, Case says, are healthcare, education and transportation. 

 

Start-Up City: A community forum on 'urban tech,' building a hub

By Nancy Dahlberg, ndahlberg@miamiherald.com

Can Miami become one of the great cities of innovation?

Richard Florida, an urban-affairs expert and now a South Florida resident much of the year, brought in an all-star lineup of national and local thought leaders Wednesday to explore how to build a robust technology community in Miami — and learn from the experiences of other hubs.

More than 1,100 people registered for Start-Up City: Miami, a free, day-long seminar presented by The Atlantic magazine, Atlantic Cities, and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation. It was held at the New World Center in Miami Beach, where the main performance hall was full and lobbies were buzzing much of the day. Watch parties took place in Miami and around the country.

“Look at what’s happening in San Francisco, Berlin, Tech City in London, New York. The shift to urban tech is happening. Cities are incubators of innovation,” said Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class. “In Miami, we’ve made these investments in arts and culture. Now is the time for the next step.”

The conference builds on the momentum to accelerate the Miami tech community. The Knight Foundation’s Miami office, led by Matthew Haggman, pictured at left, has already committed several million dollars to projects aimed at fueling entrepreneurship, including bringing in the global nonprofit Endeavor; investing in the co-working campus LAB Miami; and sponsoring dozens of events around town, including Start-Up City. Miami-Dade County and the Miami Downtown Development Authority have invested $1.5 million in Launch Pad Tech, a new downtown accelerator.A wave of co-working spaces catering to entrepreneurs has swept into Miami’s urban core.

“We need to stop thinking of landing an IBM, and instead think about incubating the next group of entrepreneurial startups who will create the technology and solutions of tomorrow,” said Manny Diaz, former mayor of Miami, in his opening remarks.

When it comes to building startup communities, the keynote speaker, Tony Hsieh, the CEO of Zappos.com, knows a thing or two. He has been on a mission to build one in downtown Las Vegas — what he calls the “the anti-strip.”

Hsieh, pictured at right, has committed $350 million, mostly his own funds, to help make Las Vegas one of the world’s great cities and a technology hub. For a city almost entirely dependent on tourism, and one that was a poster child for the housing crash, these goals might seem ambitious. Sound familiar?

As part of The Downtown Project, Hsieh is moving his own company — the giant shoe retailer — from the Las Vegas suburbs to the former City Hall. Nearby, he told the crowd, he is also amassing other real estate for co-working and traditional office space, more affordable housing, retail and restaurants — all to ensure an “entrepreneurial energy” and places for “serendipitous collisions.”

Some of the projects in Las Vegas have included a shipping-container park, bike-sharing and car-sharing, 60 furnished apartments for visiting entrepreneurs, and an “Inspire Theater” that hosts thought-provoking speakers throughout the day.

Hsieh has also established a $50 million fund to help tech startups — just two years ago there was no startup scene in Las Vegas, he said. He’s also investing in the arts and small business.

For Hsieh, the goal is to create entrepreneurial density for the resulting “collisions’’— serendipitous meetings. “We want to open-source what has worked and what hasn’t. Just think, we are doing this in this place where you would least expect it.”

Throughout the day, other entrepreneurs talked about building thriving startup communities in their cities — Boulder, New York, and London among them. And local and national leaders discussed what might work in South Florida and took questions from the audience. “It’s about economic gardening,” said Neil Kleiman, director of Wagner Innovation Labs at New York University. “How do you capitalize on what you have here? How can tech be applied to the industries you are strong in?”

Speakers agreed that Miami has many of the ingredients needed for a dynamic “startup city”: a vibrant urban corridor from Brickell to Midtown, new accelerators and co-working spaces, the lifestyle benefits that come with living in the sun and fun, and as, a result of the housing crash, areas with affordable housing. The region’s role as the gateway to Latin America should be celebrated, the panelists said.

“We could be the capital of Latin America” for tech, said Manny Medina, founder of Terremark who spearheaded creation of the Technology Foundation of the Americas to create a major tech conference in Miami. “We have a fantastic opportunity. ... The conditions are ripe.”

He hopes that conference, planned for May 3-7 of 2014, will spark and anchor a vibrant Tech Week that attracts thousands.

Some of the discussion revolved around removing barriers in zoning and improving digital connectivity, the appropriate role of government, and the small steps groups and individuals can take to help.

“All of us need to get together and make this the place for entrepreneurs and investors to meet and make magic happen,” said Adriana Cisneros, vice chairman and director of strategy for the Cisneros Group.

Sustainability is also key, as panelists noted Miami’s notorious booms and busts including in tech. Several panelists said the area needs more success stories.

“Florida has more micro-businesses than anywhere in the country. The issue is getting some of those to scale and grow,” said Susan Amat, founder of Launch Pad Tech, which is accelerating its first class of startups now. "We have to think bigger."

Fernando Fabre, president of Endeavor, said that’s the mission of his global nonprofit, which selects high-potential entrepreneurs and helps them scale quickly and create jobs. Endeavor recently announced it will open its first U.S. office in Miami later this year.

Building an entrepreneurial ecosystem doesn’t happen overnight, Steve Case, co-founder of AOL and chairman of the Startup America partnership, reminded the audience. “It takes a concerted effort, it takes a networked effort, it takes collaboration.”

See related post here with more takeaways from the event.

(Photos by Michelle Kaanar, Miami Herald. Top photo shows a panel that included Sam Arvesman of Kauffman Foundation, Adriana Cisneros of Cisneros Group, Eric Toone of Duke University and Brad Feld, author and co-founder of TechStars via Skype, moderated by Alexis Madrigal of The Atlantic. Bottom photo is entrepreneur Adam Boalt asking a question during an interview session with Robin Chase of Buzzcar and Richard Florida.)