By Nancy Dahlberg
ndahlberg@miamiherald.com
To Morten Bjoern, launching a company in Miami that
provides business intelligence solutions to the marine industry seemed a
no-brainer, with its cruise line headquarters, world-class ports and a sea of
wealthy investors. But landing the funding he needs has not been so easy.
Bjoern’s Intellocorp offers cloud-based subscription software to distill fuel optimization and other important maritime data onto an online dashboard that can be accessed anywhere, anytime. Within a month and a half of launching his products this spring, he landed a big customer, Erria A/S, a Danish operator of 43 ships that use Intellocorp’s products. He has a couple of ships in trials and is talking with other large cruise and maritime companies, as well as the Navy and U.S. Coast Guard, a potential $5 million market for him.
The maritime industry can be conservative and slow moving, but Bjoern expected that. And since he signed his first customer, arranging meetings with other target companies has been much easier.
But he never expected having so much difficulty attracting funding. He’s had more interest from investors in Brazil, Norway, San Francisco and New York than in Miami, the cruise capital of the world. “So far it is all talk,” he said of his encounters here, where he was led to believe there was interest but it went nowhere. “Show me — actions speak louder than words.”
So far Bjoern, a Danish marine engineer with an extensive industry background, has mostly self-funded development with $350,000. He needs $1.5 million more, he said, to develop Intellocorp’s third product, a vessel performance system, and add developers and marketers to his six-person staff.
“Investors here want to see an ROI [return on investment] in 12 to 24 months. They don’t understand what it’s like to be a growth company,” said Bjoern.
South Florida is teeming with bootstrapping start-ups seeking funding like Bjoern’s, and experts say developing a robust angel and venture capital network is a regional challenge that must be overcome to grow and sustain a healthy technology ecosystem.
While South Florida is home to great wealth, it’s not necessarily the kind that goes into startups. Many investors here have never invested in early-stage companies and don’t want to take the risk. And even when they do, it’s not necessarily “smart money,” leaders here say. Ideally, robust tech ecosystems are rich with investors that share their tech expertise as well as their wealth to get startups going.
Isaias Sudit is founder CEO of GridGlo, an energy-related technology start-up in Delray Beach. He is also a member and mentor with the South Florida chapter of Entrepreneur’s Organization, one of the nation’s largest chapters. For GridGlo, his fourth start-up, Sudit has so far raised $1.2 million — from a research institution in the energy space in New York.
In New York, he says, entrepreneurs can find multiple levels of funding — and multiple levels of sophisticated help. “That part is missing in Florida,” said Sudit. “It’s frustrating. I see some really good companies, and I see how much they struggle to convince the few angels we have here.”
Brian Garr knows that
struggle well. In early 2010, he founded Boca Raton-based LinguaSys to
develop a sophisticated language translation software service. He started with
Japanese to prove it worked and then moved on to Thai.
He also spent the good part of his first year in business “driving all over the state meeting with angels.” Not fruitful, but he persisted. The only Florida group he found receptive was Gulf Coast Venture Forum in Naples, and he eventually was able to raise his first $300,000 from two angels in that group and three investors in the Washington, D.C., area.
Now, 2 1/2 years later, the news is sweeter for Garr, whose company now has nine employees on four continents and about 10 Fortune 200 customers. He has just closed on $750,000 from “a well-known billionaire” investor in the tech space, he said.
To be sure, there have been other funding success stories. Open English in Coconut Grove, Carecloud in Miami and OrthoSensor in Sunrise have all raised in the tens of millions of dollars from venture capitalists in Silicon Valley, New York and other places. Third Solutions, based in Miami Beach, has raised $4.5 million, and Senzari, with offices on Brickell, has raised $4 million.
On the angel front, there are a few formal and informal groups in the area — and more are forming. Accelerated Growth Partners — co-founded by investors Juan Pablo Cappello, Jonathan Mirabito, Andrew Sturner and Marco Giberti — came together this spring, and now has about 45 members. The group meets monthly and invites start-ups to present, and members decide individually whether to invest. Cappello said all but one of the invitees so far received some level of funding — some received in the hundreds of thousands of dollars.
Not all AGP investments are locally based, but South Florida startups LiveNinja, My Mela and Bescover received funding, said Jose Ignacio Rasco, also an investor in the group. Sturner also invested in Third Solutions. Separately, Cappello said he hosts “Wall Street in the Tropics” dinners so that investors in the community can meet one another and learn what is going on.
The Miami Innovation Fund, 20 accredited investors who meet monthly, hear pitches from very early stage South Florida companies and decide as a group whether to fund them. The Micro Venture Capital Club brings investors and entrepreneurs together regularly at open-to-all meetups in the Miami Beach Chamber conference room for pitching and networking.
Other sources of capital are opening up. The new Launch Pad Tech Accelerator, run by University of Miami’s Launch Pad, an entrepreneurship career center, will be giving grants of $25,000 in seed capital to its companies that are accepted into its classes. Incubate Miami, which is now conducting programming for its fourth class of startups in downtown Miami, began offering investor funding as an option for the first time this fall. The Technology Business Incubator in the Research Park at Florida Atlantic University is exploring adding an investment fund, where any returns would be incorporated back into the incubator, said Andrew Duffell, president and CEO of the research park.
There are a few established angel funds in the area that invest in early-stage companies, including the 35-member New World Angels in Boca Raton. The fund has invested in nine South Florida companies since 2005, including VirtualWorks, Citrix co-founder Ed Iacobucci’s newest venture, and Aplicor, said Rhys L. Williams, co-founder and president. There are some newcomers like Caerus Ventures in Palm Beach County. The Florida Venture Forum, started in the ‘80s to promote entrepreneurship, produces an annual Early Stage Conference to shine a light on Florida startups.
Local angel and VC networks are important because they track the market and will often partner with investors from Silicon Valley or other areas. Once more funding networks form — or outside networks put offices here — others will follow.
“There should be 20 angel groups," said Cappello. “If that happens, the funds start to compete for deal flow and that makes it a sellers market, an entrepreneurs market.”
Peter Kellner co-founded the global nonprofit Endeavor that accelerates entrepreneurship in emerging markets. He also founded Richmond Global, a venture fund investing in early-stage software technology, in 1999, now with offices in Miami Lakes, New York and San Francisco. Though the fund invests around the world, some of its biggest holdings right now are in Asia, Kellner said. He succumbed to Miami’s lifestyle attractions and moved here from New York six months ago.
“We’re hoping to do something in venture and technology in South Florida so I have been learning as much as I can since getting to town,” Kellner said. “I’m quite aware what is happening in South Florida, I think it is wonderful, I think it is timely. It’s an exciting time.”
He believes once Miami shows it has a few “big wins,” the venture money will follow.
“Capital formation is not something you should worry about ... It begins with identifying those high-potential entrepreneurs and getting a handful of them to scale, and if we can do that, every thing else is going to fall into place.”
(Photo of Intellocorp's Morten Bjoern is by The Miami Herald's Marsha Halper. Second photo of LinguaSys's Brian Garr, with Andrew Duffell of the Research Park at FAU, by Charles Trainor Jr.)
Follow Nancy Dahlberg on Twitter, @ndahlberg
By Nancy Dahlberg
Until about five months ago, Rob Strandberg was a bored
semi-retired tech executive living in Central Florida, and his golf game wasn’t
improving either. His three kids were off on their own and the public companies
he had been a director of had been sold. “I realized I wanted to get back into
the business of helping tech companies,” he said.
That’s why the job at the helm of the nonprofit Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida was appealing to this former CEO of Xytrans, PSC Inc., and DATAMAX. EDC’s mission: to dramatically improve the chance for success of science and technology start-ups in Palm Beach, Broward and Dade counties by offering a wide range of valuable services.
“I have learned the hard way what does and doesn’t work and I hope to provide the type of advice and assistance I wish I had received early in my career,” said Strandberg, who started as president and CEO of the EDC in May.
The Miami Herald met with Strandberg at the C. Scott Ellington Technology Business Incubator in Boca Raton, which the EDC manages, and followed up with questions by email.
Q. What are your top goals for the EDC?
A. Our primary goal is creating successful enterprises, and in doing so, create high value jobs. To do this, we are quickly expanding the services we offer and, most importantly, the quality of these services — whether it is providing advice from strong, experienced mentors to providing broader access to business services such as legal, financial/accounting, marketing/sales, go-to-market strategies and, most importantly, provide actual assistance in fund-raising.
Q. More broadly, why does South Florida need an EDC?
A. My first answer is an easy one: In this current economic climate, any successful efforts by the EDC are more important than ever. A consequence of this prolonged recession is that there has been a creation of a whole wave of experienced technology entrepreneurs. And this avalanche of talent thankfully has occurred more or less simultaneously with the emergence of numerous exciting technologies that promise to change our lives in many extraordinary ways. The endless opportunities created by social media, mobile/wireless technologies, accelerating medical breakthroughs, big data apps, cloud computing, web enabled commerce, etc., etc., etc, is occurring exactly when our economy could really use the economic jolt from start-ups — This is why EDC is needed. We know we can help many, many entrepreneurs succeed and grow despite these challenging times; full stop.
Q. Are you planning another Emerging Technology Business Showcase this year?
A. Yes, and the date is Nov. 30. We have a growing list of some great start-ups, some of which are already raising significant capital. And our focus of panel discussions and speakers will be hearing from entrepreneurs who have had successful raises — what works, what doesn’t.
Q. What is the region’s biggest challenge right now in growing a thriving and sustainable tech ecosystem?
A. I would highlight three items: 1. Efficient access to quality, relevant business advisors. 2. Access to start-up and later stage capital. And 3. Having been a CEO and director of tech companies throughout the US and knowing Boston, New York and California tech communities quite well, we need to do a far better job of attracting corporations. I believe that we must attract many more corporations to South Florida by highlighting our world-class assets - quality of life, great educational institutions, international culture, easy access to the emerging economies of Latin America, etc. Corporations are unquestionably the best source of entrepreneurs — they provide engineers and key functional talent — the necessary raw materials for a tech ecosystem. Also, a large corporate community offers entrepreneurs career “safety nets”, should their start-up plans derail.
By Nancy Dahlberg
Fashionistas and geeks in stilettos and sneaks packed the snug-but-artsy co-working space called LAB Miami in Wynwood one evening last month, celebrating the launch of SewLove.co, a fashion company co-founded by sisters Sabrina and Silvia Scandar that uses crowdsourcing.
By day, Sabrina is a laptop-toting “LAB rat” herself, who became a member as soon as it opened in June. When it came to finding a venue for her big event of about 100 friends and supporters, the LAB was a natural choice.
That community center feel is exactly what the LAB co-founders — Wifredo Fernandez, Danny Lafuente and Elisa Rodriguez-Vila — are going for. The trio met at Ransom Everglades, went away to different colleges and made their way back to Miami to start the business.
They want the space to be an inviting gathering place for the creative class, with space for
entrepreneurs of all types to open up their laptops and collaborate by day, and come together for classes, parties and other community events, too. Their space — LAB stands for Love Art Business — has a creative and social entrepreneurial vibe, attracting members in education-focused start-ups, nonprofits, Web design, photography, fashion, film production and improv. “The place needs to breed creativity,” said Lafuente, sitting at the communal work table they built themselves, with local art hanging around the room.
Yet, their 720-square-foot space was always designed to be Version 1.0. Now it’s time to scale. What’s ahead: a 1,289 percent expansion.
The LAB team, backed by a group of investors, plans to open its 10,000-square-foot space this winter, with event space for meetups, classrooms and phone booths. And it’s not leaving in the neighborhood: “We feel this is the best place in the world to experiment,” said Fernandez.
“Our goal with LAB 2.0 is to truly be a campus for social innovation by providing a robust educational platform, access to mentors and experts, funding opportunities and a collaborative work environment.”
LAB is not the only company bullish on co-working. About a dozen co-working spaces — all with different personalities but all geared largely to the entrepreneur — have either opened in the few months or are in the plans for South Florida, most of them in Miami. They join two of the first to open their doors to entrepreneurs: MiamiShared downtown, which has hosted many tech events over the last two years, and Buro Miami in Midtown.
Most spaces charge around $200 for membership to use communal desks, tables and lounges with full wifi and plenty of amenities, all designed so an entrepreneur can move in immediately without hassles. Most don’t require leases — an attractive feature to bootstrapping start-ups, and will offer a free day to try the space out. All these spaces offer far more than a virtual address.
A couple of miles south, for instance, on the 11th block of the glitzy Brickell corridor, workers are in high gear putting finishing touches on Pipeline’s co-working space. Step off the elevator at the 8th floor and look west, and you are greeted with floor-to-ceiling windows offering sweeping views of downtown.
The co-founders of Pipeline Brickell, Philippe Houdard and Todd D. Oretsky, first began talking about their business several years ago but didn’t think the time was right. Now it is, they believe, with both the number of independent workers and interest in entrepreneurship exploding. “Working at home can be an extremely lonely experience. When you step into this place, you do start to build your pipeline, your network.” said Houdard, who previously founded SkyBank Financial and Developing Minds Foundation. “If you are an entrepreneur, it really helps to have the veterans around.”
There are plenty of amenities at Pipeline to draw the veterans as well as start-ups. The 14,000-square-foot space includes 25 private offices of various sizes, generous shared desk spaces, a lounge, a cafe, conference rooms, phone rooms, a kitchen, even a row of swings in front of a “garden wall” to take a break. “There’s a lot you can’t see such as plenty of soundproofing and special lighting. And the A/C — there are no hot spots or cold spots,” adds Oretsky.
Pipeline will seek a curated membership of several hundred people that is a mix of start-ups and professionals. Although the space is not set to open until later this month, the team has been signing people up steadily. Like the others, Pipeline plans to offer entrepreneurship-oriented workshops with speakers and social events like wine tastings, as well as discounts from local vendors.
Membership for shared space at Pipeline starts at $199, and private offices, some with sweeping bay views, start at $849. In between there are options for dedicated desks with lockable storage. Unlike some of the other spaces, Pipeline will be open 24/7.
“One of our most important strategies was to be on Brickell, a professional address in the urban core. We designed it with an eye to the professionals but also to be creative and energetic,” said Oretsky, a serial entrepreneur and lawyer. “We believe professionals and start-ups should come together. This is a way to get people plugged in, to get them to know the community,” he added. More Pipelines are in the plans.
Also betting on the Brickell area: Straat Investments, a holding company for several companies including .CO Internet. It is planning to open a co-working space next year, perhaps as soon as April, says Jose Ignacio Rasco, Straat’s managing director. Straat bought a three-story building on Southwest 8th Street in the West Brickell area and is gutting and renovating the 16,000-square-foot space. Building — that’s the name of it — will be anchored by .CO Internet and other Straat companies, which will take up about a third of the space.
“It will be the new corporate headquarters with a co-working twist,” said Rasco. “We can be a start-up-tech community center, a rallying point for the community, rather than a typical co-working business model.”
Rasco said he looked for the right property and the right deal for two years. “What I loved is it is a warehouse style building and that’s how we are going to build it out.” In the plans — a rooftop garden.
RightSpace2Meet plans to open a 2,500-square-foot co-working space at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park in Miami’s Health District this month, joining its two other entrepreneur-focused co-working spaces in Coral Gables and in the Brickell area. The park itself is beginning to gain traction as a hub for tech and biotech — about 200 people attended the weekend-long AT&T Mobile App Hackathon that took place there in August, for instance — and a co-working space was always part of the plans. Just across the lobby from the co-working space, on the ground floor of the complex, is a new Balans restaurant; others are around the corner to keep the young and connected nourished.
The space itself features desks and tables, communal areas, bleacher seating and a treadmill. Monthly membership will start at $200 a month, with day rates available. Annette Reizburg of RightSpace2Meet, which is running the co-working space for the park, said as entrepreneurs outgrow the spaces, the park offers ample office options, including labs for science companies.
The co-working wave isn’t limited to Miami. The entrepreneurs behind the new 11,000-square-foot Caffeine Spaces, next to Florida Atlantic University and complete with a green screen podcast room,
recently launched a crowdfunding campaign on Indiegogo for its furnishings. And while it may seem like a lot of spaces for one region, there are dozens of them in San Francisco, Seattle, New York and Austin, Texas, for instance.
“The catalyst to get the ecosystem to start spinning is more interaction, getting those people to talk, to start working in the same areas, exchanging ideas and thinking of stuff and starting stuff,“ said Juan Diego Calle, founder and CEO of .CO Internet. “We all need to be part of the solution — it is not about creating competition among co-working spaces. There are so many people interested in working together in the same place. That is the essence of it.”
(Photos are by Peter Andrew Bosch of the Miami Herald staff. Top photo is the team of LAB Miami -- from left, Wifredo Fernandez, Elisa Rodriguez-Vila and Danny Lafuente. The second photo is the team behind Pipeline Brickell, Philippe Houdard, holding the rendering, and Todd D. Oretsky.)
By Nancy Dahlberg
The vision: Entrepreneurs find many places to meet and mingle, maybe run into an investor or two. Accelerators accept the best and the brightest start-ups, which in turn stay and grow their businesses in South Florida. Tech companies and serial entrepreneurs open their doors to mentor others. Robust university systems supply the talented technologists and entrepreneurs in the making. Healthy
angel networks fund many early-stage companies.
That’s what a healthy ecosystem for start-ups is all about, and some leaders say the vision is within reach for South Florida. “It’s about growing great entrepreneurs. They need to have a community supporting them,” says Susan Amat, executive director of the University of Miami’s Launch Pad entrepreneurship center and one of the leading advocates of the entrepreneurial movement here.
Last week, Launch Pad announced it will open a community accelerator in January at the Terremark/NAP of the Americas building in downtown Miami. The companies selected for the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator will participate in a three-month program of intense mentoring designed to grow the businesses quickly, receive $25,000 grants, and get mentoring and office space for the year. The Miami Downtown Development Authority has committed $460,000 in funding over two years for operations. Miami-Dade County is kicking in $1 million over four years to fund the grants to entrepreneurs.
And that’s not all. Florida International University President Mark Rosenberg is hoping to include a required course on entrepreneurship for every undergraduate. New events, companies, nonprofit initiatives and funding groups have been springing up to support the entrepreneur. Consider:
• The Knight Foundation has announced a major new program to promote and fund entrepreneurship projects in South Florida. The nonprofit Enterprise Development Corporation, under new leadership, recently expanded its incubator in Boca Raton and is at work on an incubator at Broward College. The University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park is gaining traction as a community hub for tech and the sciences, with co-working space, shared lab space, new restaurants and frequent events, in addition to a growing number of technology tenants that call it home.
• A wave of co-working spaces is expected to sweep in this fall. These include Pipeline Brickell opening in a couple of weeks, and a huge expansion of the recently opened LAB Miami in Wynwood set for early winter. Also scheduled to open in October: RightSpace2Meet’s co-working space at UM’s Life Science & Technology Park, and in Boca Raton, Caffeine Spaces. All plan to feature programs and services geared to the entrepreneur. (See related story here.)
• Tech calendars runneth over, with 60 to 70 events every month in South Florida. The weekend-long AT&T Mobile App Hackathon drew a record 200 people in August, and regular monthly meetups for Refresh Miami in August and September packed in 300 people. Silicon Valley’s Lean Startup Machine rolled into town and has vowed to lead quarterly workshops. Two weekends ago, hackers took over the Bass Museum to develop apps for the arts, and coming up Oct 12-14 Startup Weekends will be held at both UM’s Launch Pad/Terremark space and at the incubator in Boca Raton. In what could be a yearly tradition, Miami will host WebCongress, a huge Internet marketing conference formerly held in Spain. The Latin America-themed program will be Nov. 29 and 30.
• On the horizon: FIU’s third Americas Venture Capital Conference is set for December, a few days after Art Basel, and will be redesigned to be more like a TED conference, with thought leaders brought in from around the world, plus a shark tank, hackathon and more focus on networking. SuperConf will be back in late February, linking investors from inside and outside the region with South Florida’s start-ups. The nonprofit Entrepreneur’s Organization, or EO, is bringing its global annual meeting to Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau next spring. Manny Medina, who founded, grew and exited Terremark, is spearheading a community effort to establish a large tech conference in Miami beginning in May 2014.
“We’re about to hit the point where the ecosystem takes off. We’re seeing a lot of momentum,” says Brian Breslin, who has led the largest tech meet-up group in South Florida, Refresh Miami, since 2006. To sustain the momentum, he believes, government, the private sector and the entrepreneurial community need to come together and make growing a tech ecosystem a priority.
To be sure, start-up ecosystems have been sprouting up all over the country far from the mecca of Silicon Valley. Notable ones include Boulder, Austin and New York City. “We can take a page from their playbook,” says Juan Pablo Cappello, an entrepreneur, investor and lawyer who recently co-founded a local angel network and is leading other efforts to bring investors and entrepreneurs together.
No doubt a healthy ecosystem to nurture the creation of high-growth technology businesses is needed, with the economy still underperforming, unemployment in South Florida higher than the state and national averages and brain drain still a key concern.
By Nancy Dahlberg, ndahlberg@miamiherald.com
Through a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership slated to be announced Friday, a new technology business accelerator designed to recruit and cultivate high-growth start-ups is coming to downtown Miami.
The Launch Pad Tech Accelerator, created by The Launch Pad, an entrepreneurial resource center at the University of Miami, is backed by nearly $1.5 million in public-sector funding. Miami-Dade County is contributing $1 million over four years; the Miami Downtown Development Authority is investing $460,000 for operational expenses over two years.
It’s the first time the county and city have partnered to fund an endeavor to position Miami
as a hub for start-up technology businesses, said Jack Osterholt, Miami-Dade County’s deputy mayor.
Across the country and globally, accelerators provide the resources, mentoring and networks needed to grow technology companies with high potential to create jobs. When the DDA began exploring ways to promote and build an entrepreneurial culture in Miami’s urban core, it looked to models that were already working, said Alyce Robertson, DDA’s executive director. “We didn’t have to reinvent the wheel. Launch Pad’s program is nationally recognized.”
The Launch Pad, started in 2008, has helped UM students and alumni launch more than 80
businesses, said Susan Amat, its co-founder and executive director. The Launch Pad model has been replicated at six universities nationwide.
The downtown Launch Pad Tech Accelerator will accept 10 companies in three sectors that will
support existing industries: tourism/hospitality, creative (art, design, fashion, music, film) and healthcare. The accelerator will also offer expertise in Latin American opportunities in those sectors. The first program wil begin in January.
“The goal of this program is economic development for the county. It’s all about attracting amazing tech entrepreneurs from all over the world who are in these verticals that South Florida has as strengths,” Amat said. “The accelerator model in itself is a true innovation.”
The accelerator will be based at Terremark’s downtown Miami NAP (Network Access Point) of the Americas, the physical and virtual meeting point for all optical, Ethernet, voice and Internet traffic
between Latin America and the rest of the world.
Miami City Commissioner Marc Sarnoff, chairman of the DDA, has been a proponent of the accelerator from the beginning. “There has never been a very concerted effort to create a technology hub in the downtown of Miami,” the commissioner said. “With the NAP, remember we are the only North American Access Point in the world, we are extremely well situated to build on the premise that we can be and are and should be a technology city.”
How the program will work: Companies selected in a competitive process will get three months of
intensive entrepreneurial training, office space and $25,000 grants; office space and mentoring will continue for a year. In addition, Amat said, the entrepreneur will get a support system for life.
The Launch Pad Technology Accelerator will also “adopt” 25 local tech start-ups that will have
access to structured programming events, mentoring and a reduced rate for office space at a location nearby. “The goal is to make downtown the place to be if you want to do tech,” Amat said. “There’s a lot going on down here, but it is really spread out. Once we bring everyone together, it is going to feel like a very different place very soon.”
What also differentiates this accelerator from most, Amat said, is that it takes no equity stake in the businesses. The $25,000 grants, which will be funded by the county for the first four years, have no strings attached for the entrepreneur.
Although uncommon, the nonprofit model for the accelerator can work.
For entrepreneurs, “there’s a pressing need for non-diluted money at these early stages,” said Ted Zoller, a senior scholar at the Kauffman Foundation, a nonprofit entrepreneurship think tank. For the accelerator, the keys to success, he said, “will be to get qualified entrepreneurs involved, it has to be privately driven, it has to be competitive, it has to be really focused on what the market needs and it has to be real world. My expectation is Launch Pad does just that.” But he warned sustaining the nonprofit model will be a challenge; the accelerator will need to look beyond the government for funding. “Of course, they are going to have to bring in the high-net-worth individuals that start writing checks.”
Linking the start-ups to the sectors of strength in the local economy is a smart idea because that brings together customers, serial entrepreneurs and financiers in those industries; with all three you have a compete ecosystem, Zoller said. “If [accelerator organizers] are using the same concepts as they are using at the university, my sense is they will be very successful. ... They have unlocked the power of the network,” he added.
Amat believes UM students will also benefit from the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator. They could work as part of the start-up teams, receiving real-world experiential learning, she said. ”The skills sets of students in law, engineering, medicine, business., communication and music can all be utilized, honed and enhanced through Launch Pad Tech in ways that could never be done in a classroom.”
Internet marketing entrepreneur Loren Ridinger, co-founder of MarketAmerica.com based in Miami Beach, says start-up companies that may not have considered moving to Miami will now.
“The technology accelerator is exactly what Miami needs to become the hub of tech start-ups in
the hemisphere,” Ridinger said. “Many start-ups in art, fashion, travel, lifestyle would be excited to call Miami home, but it has been hard to attract them when there hasn’t been anything like this.
“People don’t associate Miami with a tech hub — this gives us more sophistication. It lets us play with the big dogs.”
How to apply: Applications for entry to The Launch Pad Tech Accelerator program may be submitted now through Nov. 5, 2012 at launchpadtech.co. The first program will start in January.
(Photo shows Launch Pad Executive Director Susan Amat with a group of entrepreneurs at the space where the Launch Pad Tech Accelerator will be housed in downtown Miami. Photo by Miami Herald photographer CW Griffin)
| Sun | Mon | Tue | Wed | Thu | Fri | Sat |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | 29 | 30 | 31 |
