TheVentureCity opens its door in Miami’s Latino heart
We’ve all seen the statistics. Minorities, especially the latino and black communities, are severely underrepresented in the tech world. Latino-founded startups are on the rise in the US, but they remain drastically underfunded. Women still represent a tiny portion of VC funds. Our mission is to change those statistics and to prove them wrong.
LAVCA, the association for private capital investment in Latin America, just highlighted the work of three of our core team members. This kind of support pushes us to keep chasing our mission, but it still isn’t enough. It has been only a year and a half since we opened our doors for the first time. Though we began our journey in a small office, we had big dreams and a shared goal.
We started in Miami Beach in an iconic location on Lincoln Road. It was our first home in this beautiful gateway to Latin America, where we began to grow our roots. Earlier this summer, we moved to Little Havana to establish our new campus and forever home, which we recently celebrated with our launch party. Located on Calle Ocho in the heart of Miami, it feels like we are one step closer to achieving our mission.
SW 8th street is the imaginary artery that connects Coral Gables with Brickell and has been known as the spiritual center and refuge for the Cuban diaspora. It remains riddled with roosters and cigar shops, a “walk of fame” featuring latinos in music, cuban coffee ventanitas and of course our neighbors, the iconic Hoy Como Ayer. Our campus lives in this neighborhood that breathes latino heritage while at the same time looking towards the future as a fusion of talent from all backgrounds.
We want TheVentureCity to be an open and accessible door into the startup world and we hope emerging hubs around the world embrace us as the place that can connect them with Europe, the United States, and of course, Latin America.
, none of our current growth in Miami tech would be possible. It’s come together through the help of countless organizations like the Beacon Council, Venture Cafe, CIC, and Refresh Miami, just to name a few. And of course, with invaluable support from the local education sector like the University of Miami, FIU, Miami Dade College, California they’ve been studying this phenomenon for some timeIronhackWithout initiatives like Lab Miami, Venture Hive, or most recently 500 Startups, and the constant help from , a startup we met at eMerge Americas and subsequently invited to join our acceleration program. , There are so many emerging companies in South Florida that are changing the game, such as WyncodeWhereby.us, which is also present in the Latino community as a whole, and at The entrepreneurial bug has been spreading in Miami since the 50s and 60s. In the 80s Manny Medina founded Terramark, one of the biggest centers of data in the Americas. The first personal computer, the fabled PC of IBM, was made in 1981 in Boca Raton.So, yes, Miami is a lot more than beaches and Art Basel (and we love Art Basel…) Miami is home of the next wave of groundbreaking startups. We want them to grow with us, we want to provide them with everything we have at our disposal to make it possible.Miami has the highest rate of startup activity in the country, but then falls short in scale-ups and exits. In FastMindIt isn’t a coincidence that our boardroom is named after Julia Tuttle, the founder of Miami and the only female founder of an American city. When she made it possible to incorporate Miami, we were a city with only 300 inhabitants, a huge difference from the more than five million we have today. Today we are a beacon of talent and entrepreneurial grit which are qualities exemplified by the other Miami icons we named our meeting rooms after: Pitbull, Gloria Estefan, Udonis Haslem and Marjory Stoneman Douglas. We want to showcase Miami’s history while we work to build an even brighter future for this city., Caribu, Smart Barrel, and many others we have yet to discover.The University of Stanford there is a program dedicated to help local entrepreneurs reach the next level, a company taking the boating world by storm, is another local force in our portfolio. Both of these startups are taking advantage of Miami’s position as both a tourism center and technology hub., Mediconecta, From Calle Ocho, the sky’s the limit!Our launch party was a celebration for our new campus, but also an invitation to take another step together towards achieving our dream for this city. Thank you to all of our friends, associates, entrepreneurs, investors, and neighbors that joined us on this very special day.Boatsetter Academy and . On the whole, Hispanics are brave enough to take the first step and star their own businesses, but few times do they go past the million dollar mark. They tend to stay midway in the small family business and medium business world. The issue lies in the lack of access to the methodology, mentality of scale, and above all, capital. These are key elements we have at TheVentureCity. We are perfectly located in Little Havana to address these issues and democratize access to resources for minority founders.Daycation
Epica. They have helped mold the necessary talent needed to continue excelling and reaching our common goal as a city. It also wouldn’t have been possible without the consistent help from Endeavor, the engine driving this phenomenon. Lastly, we benefit from the incredible spotlight and innovation brought by local startups like Magic Leap, a worldwide phenomenon, The Knight Foundation
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