by Lorin Munchick

Continuing a trend that was started in 2020, more entrepreneurs and investors have been relocating from traditional tech hubs to a city that we have been champions of for years, Miami. With our tropical climate, diversity and, for some most importantly, a lack of state income tax and a very business-friendly government, it’s not hard to see why we love it here.

In the last year during the height of COVID-19 and the rush to leave densely populated cities like New York and San Francisco, high-profile investors including Founders Fund general partner Keith Rabois, David Goldberg of Alpaca and Blumberg Capital founder David Blumberg moved to South Florida to begin new ventures or open additional offices. Miami Mayor Francis Suarez began promoting the city as an emerging tech hub, and since the beginning of the year, there’s been increasing attention on Miami in the media and within tech circles. 

It’s common logic that at this stage Miami’s tech ecosystem isn’t as robust as San Francisco’s or Austin's, however more startup founders and investors are working hard to boost the area’s tech scene, which raised close to $1 billion in venture funding last year. Mayor Suarez’s go to tagline is he wants Miami to become the “Capitol of Capital."

Rabois has been vocal as well about the upsides of living in Miami, “It was obvious from a quality-of-life perspective and cultural perspective that this was the best choice, but from a professional perspective...we could build real companies here and this could be a professionally even better opportunity.”

Most agree that the pivot point was a tweet by Mayor Suarez who responded to Varda Space co-founder Delian Asparouhov’s idea of moving Silicon Valley to Miami, asking “How can I help?” The tweet heard round the world seemingly was a call to action for many key players who recognized the possibilities here. Since then, Suarez has continued to promote Miami as an emerging tech hub, frequently posting messages on Twitter about new tech moves to the city and hosting “Cafecito Talks” with newsmakers in the innovation space. 

“To me the thing that makes Miami unique is that it’s always been a city of builders because of our large population of foreign-born (residents),” Miami Angels Managing Director Rebecca Danta said.

“It’s a combination of the good weather, the ecosystem is sort of young and hungry and trying,” recent Miami move veteran Alexander Taub of Upstream said. “You have government officials like the mayor being as proactive as possible and trying to get people to come here … it helps to feel wanted in any type of professional setting.”

Carve client Tom Wallace, Managing Partner of Florida Funders, has often noted that Florida is not an overnight success story. “Although there has been a lot of news about the growing tech community in Miami over the past several months, this plan of transforming Miami and Florida as a whole to a technology hub has been in the works for years. If you look at how technology ecosystems are built, it comes down to two things: talent and capital. The state of Florida has always had a lot of capital but unlike California and New York most of our wealth does not come from technology. What we have seen though is the rise and sale of some great unicorn companies here in Florida that has ultimately fueled the organic growth of the ecosystem.”

One of the Miami tech OG’s, Laura González-Estéfani, Founder of Venture City, wrote about the new outlook for South Florida recently in TechCrunch: “Miami is reflective of the future of global startup hubs. It won’t be the next Silicon Valley, because we don’t need another one. As the entrepreneurial world flourishes in every corner of the globe, emerging market companies will be conquering markets across the United States and Europe.”