1 Let’s get our female co-founders and investors on the list
Here is a cool, new open-source list, created by Embarc Collective in Tampa, to recognize women founders and investors statewide.
“With this list, we can collectively better distribute opportunities for Florida’s tech community — enabling founders to develop a community of peers, investors to diversify their deal flow, conferences to identify new voices, and networking dinners and events to offer balanced representation,” the entrepreneurship organization said in a blog post.
The list so far includes 76 founders – about a third from South Florida. The list of women investors is short so far but hopefully will grow – 10 of the 17 listed are from South Florida. “More women in investment positions leads to more women founders receiving investment, which leads to more successful outcomes for all. Companies with gender-diverse executive teams are 21% more likely to outperform on profitability and 27% more likely to have superior value creation,” according to McKinsey data, Embarc said.
The data set includes women co-founders of technology or tech-enabled startups and/or women currently working in an investment-focused role across institutional or corporate funds or established angel investor networks.
Have an addition? To include any founder or investor that we did not already surface, please submit this form.
View the list of Florida Women Founders + Investors
2 Hear from Claure – and about job growth, too – at free event Monday
The Miami-Dade Beacon Council will host a Report to the Community event regarding its One Community One Goal initiative on Monday, September 16. Marcelo Claure, CEO of SoftBank Group International, will be the keynote.
Among the highlights has been that the tech sector jobs have grown by 40 percent, from 8,173 in 2012 to 11,440 in 2018. Other 2019 highlights of the report will be shared at the free event at 8 am to 10:45 am at Jungle Island. Register here.
3 Co-working wave continues south
Palmetto Bay didn’t have a co-working space to call its own, but now it will. Venture X, a West Palm Beach company, announced plans to open its second location in Miami-Dade County in summer 2020. Its first Miami-Dade location, in Doral, is already open.
The Palmetto Bay space, at 9555 SW 175th Terrace, will be located in a building belonging to Sin Man King. King and her children — Kitty, Quenni, and Koby — bought the Venture X franchise and will manage operations at the 16,000-square-foot facility, the Miami Herald reported.
Venture X is part of United Franchise Group. This will be Venture X’s sixth location since launching in Naples in 2012.
4 VC rolling along in the Sunshine State
The latest large investment comes to us from Tampa Bay.
ComplianceQuest provides software for the life sciences and manufacturing industries. It closed its $36M Series A funding round, led by Insight Partners. The funds will help the company’s continued global growth. ComplianceQuest ranked No. 163 on Inc. 5000’s list this year; the company generated 2,357% growth over three years and brought in $2.5 million in revenue in 2018.
If you missed my comprehensive venture report on the 1st half of 2019, produced by eMerge Americas, find it here.
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