Q&A on SBDC at FIU's first 20 months: 900 entrepreneurs served, and counting ...

By Nancy Dahlberg / [email protected]

Since early 2014, the Florida Small Business Development Center at Florida International University has helped more than 900 South Florida entrepreneurs. The SBDC’s services are free and available to the community.

Jacqueline Bueno Sousa, the program’s founding regional director, said SBDC at FIU looked at the landscape and needs in Miami-Dade County’s entrepreneurial community so that the services it offered would be value added. It settled on focusing on scalable existing businesses as well as startups, and particularly ones with global ambitions. In fact, one program it is starting later this year will focus on helping young companies go global from day one as well as helping existing companies reach new markets. “We have a focus on helping our companies grow globally because we think that is a game changer in terms of the local economy,” Sousa said.

SBDC specializes in offering entrepreneurs one-on-one counseling, and in many cases entrepreneurs get access to a team of SBDC consultants who specialize in different areas, such as finance, distribution, government contracting or marketing, Sousa said. The office, with 14 consultants, also has held a number of training programs and workshops in partnership with FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center and IronHack coding school.

SBDC at FIU (sbdc.fiu.edu) is part of a statewide network that includes offices in Broward, Palm Beach and Monroe counties and is funded by the U.S. Small Business Administration, the state of Florida and other public and private partners. SBDC at FIU is also supported by FIU’s College of Business, where the office is based, and private funding.

The Miami Herald talked with Sousa about the SBDC at FIU’s first 20 months and what’s ahead.

Q. What is your one-liner for SBDC?

A. SBDC at FIU helps businesses grow and succeed.

Q. What services do you offer a small business?

A. We have a team of highly experienced business consultants who work one-on-one with small- and medium-size businesses to help them succeed. We have experts in finance, marketing, international business development, contracting, HR — all the major areas in which businesses experience growth challenges.

Free Hispanic Unity summit Oct. 8 in Davie; Susan Amat, Victor Mendelson to be honored

The 2015 Entrepreneur Summit, a day-long learning and networking event by Hispanic Unity of Florida, will showcase the diverse businesses that contribute to South Florida's economy.

The event will be held 12:45 to 7:30 p.m. Oct. 8 at Nova Southeastern University, in the Carl DeSantis Building, 33301 College Ave. in Davie.

Emerging entrepreneurs and established business owners will have access to experts and educational resources at the event.

Honorees at the event include Susan Amat, founder of The Launch Pad and Venture Hive in Miami; Victor Mendelson, co-president of Heico Aerospace Corp. in Hollywood; Manny Ruiz, chairman and founder of news service Hispanicize Wire and of Hispanicize; Gus Vidauerreta, author and co-founder of Top Secret Nutrition in Miramar; and Ricardo Villadiego, founder and chief executive of Easy Solutions in Doral. For more information about the event's speakers, see hufesummit.org.

Admission is free. To register, go to www.hufesummit.org  or call 954-964-8884, Ext. 216.

Sun Sentinel

Endeavor Miami to honor co-founders of Square, Gilt Group

Endeavor Miami will honor technology entrepreneurs Jim McKelvey, co-founder of Square and founder of LaunchCode, and　Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, co-founder of Gilt and co-founder and CEO of GLAMSQUAD, at its 2nd annual Endeavor Miami Gala on Nov. 18.

The gala will bring together about 300 business leaders, entrepreneurs and investors to benefit Endeavor Miami, said Laura Maydón, managing director. Endeavor Miami is the first U.S. affiliate of　Endeavor Global, an organization　that accelerates entrepreneurship and fuels economic growth by supporting more than 1,000 High Impact Entrepreneurs running more than 700 companies worldwide. Both McKelvey and Wilson have strong ties to Miami and will share their inspiring entrepreneurial journeys at the event, Maydón said.

The Endeavor Miami Gala on Nov. 18 will take place at the New World Center on Miami Beach. Tickets at $500 can be purchased at EndeavorEvent.com, and proceeds support Endeavor Miami.

Endeavor Miami launched its operations two years ago with the support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation and a local board of business leaders. Since then inception, Endeavor Miami has selected a diverse group of high-impact entrepreneurs, and two of those companies – DeliverLean and Ginny Bakes -- were recently recognized in　Inc. Magazine’s annual list of America’s Fastest Growing Companies.

Wilkis Wilson is an e-commerce entrepreneur who oversees the mobile app startup GLAMSQUAD, which home-delivers affordable beauty services and has an office in Miami Midtown. Wilson is also an advisor, mentor and angel investor and she is on the board of South Florida-based Perry Ellis International, among other organizations. McKelvey, an inventor, serial entrepreneur, pilot, artist and author, brought LaunchCode, a nonprofit organization that connects tech companies with talented and trained apprentices, to South Florida in the last year.　 Inc Magazine named McKelvey one of 15 entrepreneurs to watch in 2015.

 

Hail, taxi: ZabCab rolls out in South Florida

By Glenn Garvin

Calling a taxi in South Florida no longer requires dealing with an actual human voice, just nimble fingers on a smartphone keypad. The New York-based company ZabCab unveiled an app Monday that will allow passengers in Broward and Miami-Dade to summon a regular taxi — though not Uber or Lyft — with a cellphone app.

Hundreds of Miami-Dade taxis began accepting calls from the app Monday, and ZabCab officials say they hope to have 1,500 of the county’s 2,200 cabs signed up by next year. And Broward’s Yellow Cab, which controls about three-quarters of the county’s legal taxis, has moved its existing app onto the ZabCab platform.

“This is going to give our customers — our residents and visitors — an easier way to get a taxi,” said Miami-Dade Mayor Carlos Gimenez, who attended ZabCab’s press conference at the Perez Art Museum Miami and made the first official call for a taxi on the company’s software.

“More and more of our younger people — and even people my age — are wanting to use their cell phones to get a cab quickly and easily,” he said. “This is definitely a big plus.”

The bilingual app, available for both Android and iPhone, in some ways resembles those introduced so successfully by Uber and Lyft. A prospective passenger is able to see cabs closest to his location and whether one of them has decided to accept his call. Then he can track the cab’s progress.

And, like Uber and Lyft, the app allows passengers to rate their drivers. Cabbies with low marks will be kicked out of the ZabCab system.

That’s where any resemblance to Uber or Lyft ends, though. Customers will still pay their drivers directly, rather than using credit cards through the app, and the prices will be the same as those set by county law.

There’s no charge to customers for using the app — or to drivers, either. In 2016, ZabCab will start charging drivers a flat 99 cents per trip for every customer obtained through the app.

“We won’t be making any money for a couple of years,” said ZabCab CEO Martin Heikel. “But eventually we hope to make a lot. We’re going to make this the first truly national taxi app. Once it’s on your phone, you can use it to get a taxi in Miami or San Francisco or New York, wherever you are.”

ZabCab has been operating on an experimental basis in Manhattan for about two years, but South Florida is its first big full-service rollout. The company plans to add 24 other metropolitan areas next year.

Apps are not completely new to the South Florida taxi industry; some cabs — it’s not clear how many — have been accepting fares using an app called Ways2Ride for a few months.

But industry officials say apps are the way of the future.

“I keep trying to explain to the county commissioners that radio dispatching is as old as horse-drawn carriages, and soon it will be about as common,” said Diego Feliciano, president of the 1,200-member South Florida Taxicab Association. “Uber and these other companies were early at the get-go, but lots of companies are going to be doing this. It’s just another way, the newest way, to call a cab.”

 

Mayor Gimenez: Uber, Lyft will be legal in Miami-Dade by end of year

By Glenn Garvin

Ride-sharing companies like Uber and Lyft will be legal in Miami-Dade County by the end of the year, Mayor Carlos Gimenez said Monday, while “a substantial part” of the taxi industry will be deregulated.

“Demand is too great” for the ride-sharing companies, Gimenez said. “You're not going to put that genie back in the bottle.... I'm not going to drag Uber and Lyft back into the 20th century. I think the taxi industry has to move into the 21st.”

Gimenez made his remarks following a press conference where the New York-based company ZabCab unveiled a new app that will allow customers to summon regular taxis with a single tap on their smart phones, one of the popular features of the ride-sharing companies.

Ride-sharing companies, which hook up passengers with freelance drivers via cellphone technology, are technically illegal in Miami-Dade. But, after drawing a blizzard of traffic tickets when they first set up shop in the county in the spring of 2014, they've operated more or less openly for the past year.

Broward and Palm Beach counties, after similar tumult, took steps this summer to legalize the ride-"sharing companies. And Gimenez said he's going to follow the same path.

At the same time, he added, he'll push for measures to expand the regular taxi force by ditching restrictions on how many cabs can operate in Miami-Dade and who can drive them. Under current law, the size of the taxi fleet is capped and each cab must have a permit — medallion, in industry jargon — that can cost as much as $300,000.

“We're going to do something about the numbers and we're going to do something about the medallions, these kind of things,” Gimenez said. “There are issues that have to be overcome. The owners had to purchase those medallions, so we have to figure out, how do we deal with that?”

“We're going to look at the rest of the country and see how they've changed their regulations. Uber and Lyft will shortly be legal in Broward and Palm Beach — that's my understanding — and we want to see how they're dealing with it.”

 

Startup Spotlight: Taylannas breaks reading, language barriers

 

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article36632964.html#storylink=cpy

Susan Perry, center, is founder and CEO of Taylannas, a company that makes products that speak for those with language and reading obstacles. From left is Daryl Viamonte, Crystal Ice and Olivia Gomez.  PETER ANDREW BOSCH [email protected]

Read more here: http://www.miamiherald.com/news/business/biz-monday/article36632964.html#storylink=cpy

Company: Taylannas

Headquarters: Miami

Concept: “Our products remove the language and reading obstacle to healthcare and hospitality,” said Taylannas founder and CEO Susan Perry. “Our mission is one of inclusion.”

Story: Perry created her first product, MenusThatTalk, to help people who have impaired vision or who cannot read, and a version for hospitals followed. Then she looked at traditional healthcare communication in a broader way. She thought, how can patients and their caregivers follow instructions when they don’t understand them?

“Imagine that your life depended on taking a bottle of pills properly. Now imagine how scary it would be if you were one of the 90 million people who, for educational reasons, stage-of-life reasons, or different first-language reasons cannot read, understand or process the complexity of medical instructions, especially if other members of your family or your caregivers had the same problem,” Perry said. “We developed a new range of voice-driven technologies that would really help guests and patients by providing easy-to-use tools that include reading information to them in the language that they understand.”

SpeechMED was a result of experiences with caregiving for her mother and mother-in-law and a visit to the VA hospital: “My mother-in-law is a great example of how bad things can get when people don’t understand what they are supposed to do. Her life was ruined by a medication mishap after discharge from a hospital. She spoke English, but at 81, did not read it as well.”

SpeechMED, Taylannas’ voice- and video-information platform, delivers a wide range of personalized care information and discharge instructions, as well as medications, reminders, emergency contacts, appointments and explainer videos in the patient’s own language. It also provides that same information in the caregiver’s language should it differ. More important, it provides audio instructions. It is being pilot tested now.

The initial mechanical version of MenusThatTalk was developed in 2009 and was innovative in its time. A hospital version, launched in 2012, is used by Baptist Health South Florida. Perry is particularly excited about the newest all-digital version of MenusThatTalk, which offers 16 languages — including Klingon, of the fictional Klingons in Star Trek. A large restaurant chain will be its first big customer, Perry said.

“Taylannas is driven by a desire to create fresh thinking and new solutions to large and scale-able — sometimes systemic — problems. And the company clearly is not afraid to take on challenges for which no sustainable solutions currently exist,” said Bill Connors, managing director of The C Group and advisor to Taylannas. Staying focused on the core business will be critical, but that will be guided by Perry’s passion, he said. “In the world envisioned by Taylannas, in a way literally everyone will someday have a seat at the table.”

Launched: MenusThatTalk, 2009; MenusThatTalk Hospital Version, 2012; SpeechMED, 2013.

Management team: Susan Perry, CEO; Olivia Gomez, director of operations; Daryl Viamonte, production manager; Crystal Ice, creative director, Bill Connors, advisor.

No. of employees: 8

Website: www,taylannas.com

Financing: The company has been mostly self-funded by Susan and husband Tayloe Perry, in addition to an investment by Dr. Bill White. In total, about $1.25 million.

Recent milestones reached: Launched SpeechMED Caregiver, an application for caregivers and patients to use at home. New pilot test starting at the University of Miami Hospital to test SpeechMED with congestive heart failure patients in English and Spanish. For MenusThatTalk, secured new technology partner for a planned 250-restaurant concept that will launch in December and offer the MenusThatTalk product in at least 10 languages.

Biggest startup challenge: Access to funding and finding the right business partners.

Next steps: Building the most innovative restaurant technology available and refining SpeechMED to fit patient needs by continuing to implement strategy with the understanding that validation has to be achieved at each crucial milestone.

“The biggest challenge for Taylannas now is to develop strategic alliances with more health industry partners whose patients could benefit from the potential life-saving features of SpeechMED and the related cost savings from reduced readmissions,” said Anne Freedman of Speakout Inc., who has been mentoring Perry and her team in leadership and marketing. “The company also needs to expand its reach to restaurant chains to help them satisfy federal requirements to serve the disabled, as well as simply provide better customer service.”

 

PREPWORKS: from learning center to global ed-tech platform

 

By Nancy Dahlberg / [email protected]

In 2007, Tracy LaFlamme Ortega opened her first Learning Center in Key Biscayne. Today the former high school English teacher is running a global education-technology company that provides test preparation and supplemental lessons to students anywhere, anytime, on any device.

Ortega’s company, PREPWORKS, painstakingly developed an online platform for its tutoring methodology and launched it in 2011. Now PREPWORKS’ technology is used by more than 100,000 people in 26 states and 18 countries.

PREPWORKS is an adaptive learning company; its supplemental curricula is for middle and high schools — public, private, and charter — in core subjects like algebra and civics, while its PSAT, SAT and ACT programs ready high school students for college entrance tests.

“We have translated the science and success of our 10 years of 1-to-1 tutoring into a highly scalable and adaptive online platform that delivers the most prescriptive learning experience to students seeking college and career readiness,” Ortega said. She worked briefly at a test prep company, wondered why results were not better, and set out to develop a better way: “We are really looking to make a difference.”

Over the years, the Key Biscayne learning center and a second one in Coconut Grove have served as incubators to develop and test the company’s proprietary adaptive learning processes. Not a one-size-fits-all system of the the past, PREPWORKS “serves as a GPS for each student, delivering to each student instructional content and practice activities specific to the student’s specific level of mastery and deficiency in given lesson areas,” said Ortega, in an interview at the Coconut grove center.

Content includes videos, technology-enhanced practice questions, and a writable sketchpad accessible from any Internet-ready device. The result: 281 trillion personalized learning paths, Ortega said. “For our SAT and ACT programs, we have a track record of improvement of 300 SAT points and 5 ACT points.”

Unlike private tutoring unaffordable to many, the company’s online courses cost about $100 to $300 in the direct-to-consumer market, and the company is testing a monthly subscription model that would bring the cost down to about $25 a month, Ortega said. Schools and districts that PREPWORKS partners with pay about $10 to $75 per student depending on the course. “We see technology as the great equalizer in education,” she said.

Until now, PREPWORKS has quietly developed its products and grown, but is now ready to scale. While Ortega won’t disclose revenue figures, it’s in the multi-millions, Ortega said, with an average year-over-year growth rate of 120 percent since launching its e-learning systems in 2011. Her company, now with 12 employees and 30 contractors, has attracted more than $2 million in angel funding, including an investment from e-learning entrepreneur John Edelson in the spring.

“I always look first for a market that is growing and ripe for innovation, and test preparation is really ripe,” said Edelson, founder of Fort Lauderdale-based SpellingCity.com, Time4Learning.com and other e-learning sites. “Tests are increasing and evolving, and tests are getting better ... and somewhat adaptive. The company has a sophisticated adaptive learning technology to address this market. A good adaptive system will see which skill or concept you are missing ... and teach you something you really needed to know.”

To be sure, the market is large and crowded. According to BMO Capital Markets, estimates for the U.S. K-12 tutoring and test preparation range from $5 billion to $7 billion. BMO Capital Markets projects that spending in K-12 testing and assessment will reach roughly $1.8 billion in 2019. With such a big opportunity, there are dozens of ed-tech companies in this sector, from startups to established players like Kaplan.

“PREPWORKS has a winner product in a market that’s growing and in need of better products. The next step is ‘let’s learn to market this thing broadly.’ The company’s Web presence has room for improvement as does some other pieces of its sales and marketing,” said Edelson, who has been an e-learning entrepreneur for 12 years. “But it’s poised for growth, and it’s a relatively easy challenge to overcome.”

One market PREPWORKS is going after hard is helping public schools and districts to significantly increase student performance in core subject areas such as algebra, civics and language arts. In Louisiana, PREPWORKS has already started to make a difference, as 100 percent of eighth-graders enrolled in PREPWORKS algebra achieved a passing score on their official state assessment, in a district where the historical pass rate was 44 percent, Ortega said.

“Our experiences with PREPWORKS were very favorable. We started with 15 students and entered a partnership with the parents, the students and the school, and we all signed off that we would have a part in supporting the child but this course is really set up to be an independent,” said Cherie Haydel Goins, assistant principal of Martin Behrman Charter School Academy of Creative Arts and Sciences in New Orleans, who has signed up to again offer PREPWORKS.

PREPWORKS is also partnering with Teach for America, a nonprofit that helps low-performing schools. The courseware will be offered free to all 300 students who attend the organization’s ROOTS Miami leadership summit on Nov. 21 with teachers and families. “PREPWORKS is really invested in the potential of students in Miami-Dade County Public Schools ... and that they have the tools that they need to succeed,” said Kiesha Moodie, managing director of alumni and community impact at Teach for America. “Hopefully this can be a model about how education and tech can partner and collaborate at a grassroots level.”

Along with schools and the direct-to-consumer market in the U.S., the company sees significant opportunity internationally. Last year, the company began selling in China, where the SAT/ACT test prep market is estimated to be $225 million. All lessons are in English because the curricula aims to prepare the student for college and career readiness in the United States, Ortega said.

Ortega understands the complicated world of test prep, and she brings the right attitude to her course design, said Penny Townsend, head of school for Miami’s Ransom Everglades, which has recently begun using the SAT and ACT PREPWORKS programs. “We see this as a low-stress way for students to assess their own test-taking skills and preparedness — and that the process will hopefully build confidence. The program is focused on identifying strengths and finding solutions for weaknesses.”

At Ransom Everglades, the program is a voluntary endeavor, Townsend said. “We hope that this kind of engagement will ultimately lead to more intrinsically motivated learners capable of self-directed study — skills needed in our technologically infused world.”

Nancy Dahlberg: 305-376-3595, @ndahlberg

Entrepreneurship Datebook: Events, workshops in South Florida Sept. 28-Oct. 4

GIRL DEVELOP IT: Learn more about the organization that aims to inspire women and girls to pursue technology at a free open house celebration, 7 p.m. to 9 p.m., Monday, The LAB Miami, 400 NW 26th St. RSVP: http://GDIMiami.com

VENTURE LAW PROJECT: Legal Clinic for Creatives with information on copyright, trademarks, incorporation and more, 5:30 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, Miami Center for Architecture & Design, 100 NE First Ave., Miami. More info: http://vlamia2015.splashthat.com/.

LAUNCHCODE HAPPYHIRE: Looking for a rock-star coder? Meet Miami’s tech talent and LaunchCode founder Jim McKelvey, 6 to 8 p.m. Tuesday, WeWork, 350 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. RSVP on Eventbrite here.

FOUNDER INSTITUTE FORT LAUDERDALE: Information session on the startup accelerator, 6:30 to 8:30 p.m. Tuesday, BCIH, 6400 NW Sixth Way, Fort Lauderdale. More info: http://fi.co/e/60581.

MEET THE ANGELS: Gold Coast Venture Capital Association presents networking and panel discussion with South Florida angels and venture capitalists, 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Wednesday, Embassy Suites, Boca Raton. More info: GCVCA.org.

DEMO NIGHT: Join Refresh Miami in a celebration of local entrepreneurship and watch eight selected startups pitch for prizes, 6:30 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Miami Dade Wolfson Campus Auditorium, Building 1, room 1216; free, thanks to HelloDotMiami. More info: RefreshMiami.com.

LATAM TECH MEETUP: "Launching" in Latin America with speakers from 500 Startups, Endeavor and Dirigo Advisors, presented by eMerge Americas, 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. Wednesdaay, WeWork, 350 Lincoln Rd., Miami Beach. Register here.

SALES GENIUS: Topic of meetup is “Best Practices: A Sales Primer for B2B SaaS Organizations,” and the speaker is Mark Crofton of SAP, 7 to 9 p.m. Thursday, LiveNinja office, 120 NW 25th Street #301 , Miami. More info: thelabmiami.com.

SMALL BUSINESS EVENT: The Success Series in Miami, hosted by American Express OPEN, will facilitate hundreds of one-on-one meetings between small business owners and government buyers at the free “OPEN for Government Contracting” event, which will also include speakers and panel discussions, 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday, Conrad Miami, 1395 Brickell. RSVP. 305-503-6500. https://www.americanexpress.com/us/small-business/openforum/events/ogcmiami2015/

STARTING GATE

Modernizing Medicine raised $38 million, South Florida’s second highest funding round in 2015. See a drone’s eye view of the Miami tech scene and read more startup news and community views on the Starting Gate blog on MiamiHerald.com/business.

Nancy Dahlberg: 305-376-3595, @ndahlberg

 

#Miamitech by drone, see it first here (and read about Building.co, too)

Building.co Miami Launch Video from Bernard Bonomo on Vimeo.

 

What’s a geeky event these days without a drone, but Building.co took it to new heights with  a drone selfie of #Miamitech. It all happened during the co-working center's grand opening party last week for about 350 people, and you get the first look at the video above.

Calling Building.co “a growing force in serious tech in this town," co-founder Jose Rasco of Straat said the vision was always to be “a place where some of Miami’s most influential tech companies come together to collaborate on a daily basis.”

Current members include 500 Startups and IronHack, both running programs out of Building, Instacart, Clutch, App Theory, Panamera, Neustar (buyer of .CO), angel investor Mark Kingdon and Bonomotion, who made the video above. Its neighbors include Uber, Facebook and Twitter. Already the event space has been used or reserved by Twitter and Facebook, a Startup Weekend, Founder Institute and various meetups, including a new one for health-tech.

“It’s not easy to build a company on your own; we know it’s a bit easier when you surround yourself with smart, driven individuals who are equally determined to succeed….  Our focus is providing Four Seasons type service to our members, whatever they need,” Rasco told the crowd on the rooftop garden of the three-floor space. Rasco's co-founder in Building and other Straat endeavors is Juan Diego Calle, founder of .CO Internet.

As if the 2 ½ year endeavor to open Building was not enough, Rasco said the team is scouting locations in San Francisco for a second Building so Miami members would have a place to call home there. "And that is the first step,” said Rasco on Thursday, adding that New York is also in grander vision. “For us it isn’t as much about scale as the quality of product we are delivering.”

But for now, here are a couple of photos of the new Building (without the 350 people.)  Rasco also had a poem for #Miamitech, “Take me down to the new tech city, where the devs are plenty and the code is pretty.” Read it all here (and thanks for the Starting Gate love): http://building.co/blog/new-tech-city/

Photos from Building.co

EcoTech Visions, Code Fever offer free coding training to low-income, high-potential residents

  EcoTech Visions, an incubator promoting green manufacturing, and Code Fever, a nonprofit that runs tech entrepreneurship programs in  low-income communities, are partnering to train low opportunity, high potential Miami-Dade residents at its first Coding Bootcamp.

The first round of training classes will be held Mon-Wed evenings from Sept. 28 through Nov. 15.  This schedule will allow those currently employed to attend while still working full time.

This Coding Bootcamp will train participants with the skills taught in Harvard’s CS50 course, plus Javascript development.  This opportunity is being offered at no cost to the trainees in order to bring life-changing coding employment opportunities to those that need them most. 

EcoTech Visions and Code Fever have partnered with Wyncode and LaunchCode to give graduates the skills and opportunity to attend those programs and gain employment. 

To find out more information about this training class, call 305-224-9461.  To apply, visit www.ecotechvisions.org/trainingapplication. 

Submitted by EcoTech Visions