For more information, click here.
Hack For Change: Miami is helping build a community of civic innovation in South Florida. A wide variety of individuals and organizations have come together to foster of a culture of open government, civic engagement, sustainability and technology for good.
It’s our data….let’s make something of it!
Published by Venture Beat
By Jolie O’Dell
The promise of social checkins has always been that they’ll make money by revealing to marketers where you are and when you want to buy stuff. Payments startup Square thinks it can do ya one better: telling marketers where you already bought stuff and where you’re likely to want to buy more in the future.
In a chat with The Verge, Square discovery chief Ajit Varma said, “We can tell you that people who like X might also like Y, and it’s a true representation of what you’ve bought.”
Video of Brad Feld at RokkMiami
The brainstorm, collaboration and dialogue that took place at RokkMiami, were very inspiring and motivated the community to keep that hunger and creativity to continue building Miami as the new hub for innovation and technology.
Brad Feld shared insights and served as a great guide to help identify what has worked in the past and areas that haven’t worked so well. The conversation brought some actionable items that were included in the roadmap.
The video will give you a taste of what happened at this amazing event.
Published by The Miami Herald
By Nancy Dahlberg
What does Miami need to put it on the map as a vibrant tech hub?
That’s the focus of Monday’s Rokk Miami, which will bring together up to 140 people from the community — entrepreneurs, foundations, government leaders, educators, big businesses and others — to assemble a roadmap for building a tech hub. Rokk Miami will be hosted by Miami Beach-based Rokk3r Labs, the Knight Foundationand Brad Feld, the well-known investor and author of Startup Communities: Building an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem in Your City who will be at the event to advise and help guide the roadmap process.
Published by The Starting Gate
The LAB Miami is flying in digital marketing expert Katya Constantine to lead a workshop on customer acquisition and digital marketing that will address how to best use the channels to acquire and retain customers, how to optimize your costs and track and measure performance. More details on the workshop, taking place May 6, are here:http://labcustomeracquisition.eventbrite.com. Below is her guest post.
By Katya Constantine
It is almost here…
Brad Feld, Rokk3r Labs and Knight Foundation are hosting:
A first of its kind event where entrepreneurs and the Miami community come together to map the way towards an innovation and technology driven ecosystem. Check the details at www.rokkmiami.co
April 29th, 2013.
Published By The Starting Gate
Score one for organically grown tri-county collaboration.
For the first time, startup groups teamed up to offer a bus from Boca to Refresh Miami’s event at The LAB Miami in Wynwood on Wednesday night, with a stop in Hollywood. About 25-30 took the bus and the cost was covered by generous donations. The next bus experiment will be next week — Monday — this time from Miami to the Startup Delray’s Hack the Library event and is also free (more details about the event and Startup Delray are below).
Published by Entrepreneur
Frustration often leads to innovation. For Miami-based entrepreneurs Nabyl Charania and German Montoya, slow product launches proved to be their inspiration.
Published by The Starting Gate
What happens when an advertising entrepreneur, mobile interface designer and communications expert come together serendipitously to create the next great mobile app?
Published by TNW
We’ve previously written about how music service Senzari was planning to take on Pandora and traditional radio, launching initially back in 2011 in private beta, before opening to everyone in Brazil, Spain and the US last March.
Watch as the Rokk3r Labs team ignite Miami’s entrepreneurial community. The trailer of the four part series.
Start- Up City: Miami, watch our entrepreneurial revolution here
Published by TechCrunch
Senzari, the Miami-based Pandora competitor backed by $3 million in funding from 500 Startups and other angels, is making good on its recent acquisition of the Berlin-based streaming music app Wahwah.fm. The company is now spinning off its music efforts as a mobile-first streaming radio application, rebranded as just Wahwah. In the meantime, the Senzari web-based streaming service is being temporarily shut down, as the product is rebuilt.
Written by John Koncurat
We are Appilicious!! – Appiliciousapps.com. Our company is working in downtown Miami Florida to build innovative customer driven software applications. We developed the first hCG Diet App in the world in 2009. Now in 2013 we have advanced our app may times over to make it the gold standard in hCG tracking technology. Our app is downloadable for phone or tablet devices in the Apple and Android marketplaces. In conjunction with our hCG Diet app we have launched Dr2App. Dr2App is exclusive to our company. The purpose is to connect physicians to their patients, via our app and admin site, allowing the doctors to monitor their patients weight-loss progress remotely 24/7.
Published by The Starting Gate
Startup and City have been separate conversations for too long — it’s time to explore their intersection, said Richard Florida, the urban affairs expert. And that’s what happened at Start-Up City: Miami.
Published by The Atlantic
MIAMI – Danny LaFuente offers a bottle of water that is also an art piece. “égalité,” the label says in script perfectly mimicking the mineral-water brand of Evian. If you weren’t paying attention, you could down the whole thing as a parched visitor – it is 80 degrees in Miami this week – without ever catching the sly artist’s statement.
Published by Beached Miami
Ahead of Start-Up City: Miami, I met with Florida, author of several influential books, including 2002′s The Rise Of The Creative Class, to discuss what Miami needs to do to transcend the (outdated) fun-and-sun stereotype and become a global ideas capital. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Published by TNW
Collaborative whiteboard app SyncPad today officially announced the launch of its version 2, which it quietly released a few weeks ago and has been tweaking since then. New features include enhanced text editing and user moderation, as well as authentication, password protection and encryption options.
Published by All Things D
There are times when it’s inconvenient to read — for instance while cooking or working out at the gym — so you might find yourself tuning into a TV newscast. But perhaps instead of facile local news or the jabbering heads of cable news, it could be a personalized newscast.
Published by Mashable
A new inforgraphic from Allmand Law analyzes the successes and failures of well-known tech startups from Zynga and Shopkick to AirTime and MySpace, helping us understand why some companies fall short
Published by The Starting Gate
The six local startups that pitched Thursday night during Refresh Miami’s free Demo Night event — some presenting their companies for the very first time — got an opportunity to tell their stories and demo their products to hundreds of their friends and peers (and more than a few investors), with video cameras rolling. That’s priceless.
Written by Scott Goodman
CoFoundersLab is very excited to be hosting our first event in Miami! The inaugural “Co-Founders Wanted Miami” co-founder matching event will be held on Wednesday, February 6th at Incubate Miami. If you’re an entrepreneur looking for a co-founder, don’t miss out – register today!
Published by The Starting Gate
Local efforts to accelerate an entrepreneurial ecosystem in Miami got a big lift last week when Endeavor, the global nonprofit that selects, mentors and supports high-impact entrepreneurs, announced it is setting up its first U.S. affiliate in Miami.
Read The Starting Gate
Have you signed up to CoFoundersLab Miami already? If not, you are missing out! On Feb. 6, they will host a networking event that brings techies and entrepreneurs together with the hope of spurring a business partnership. Cofoundersderslab.com is essentially a match making/ social network website for entrepreneurs who are seeking a co-founder.
Published by The Miami Herald
Next month, The Atlantic will launch Start-Up City: Miami, the inaugural event in a new series of day-long programs exploring the emerging models of “urban tech” taking root in cities around the world. The free event, produced in partnership with the Creative Class Group and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, will be Feb. 13 at the New World Center in Miami Beach, conference organizers announced Tuesday.
Published by The Starting Gate
The story of .CO Internet is powered by passion and perseverance –- and yes, the idea was even pitched on a napkin.
Published by Time
The Massachusetts Institute of Technology has launched an internal investigation into the school’s involvement in the suicide of 26-year-old computer programmer and Internet activist Aaron Swartz, MIT’s president L. Rafael Reif said Sunday. Swartz was accused of breaking into MIT’s computer system in order to access academic articles and make them available for free on the Internet.
Published by TNW
As the saying goes, “the best thing about Miami is that it is very close to the US.” One one hand, we didn’t hesitate to list the city as as one of the eighteen Latin American tech hubs you should know. On the other hand, its leading startups have little to envy to their New York-based counterparts when it comes to providing their staff with cool workspace.
Published by The Wall Street Journal
1. There will be many more companies started by college students and recent graduates. Students are eager to build businesses rather than getting corporate work experience first. Startups are the new Goldman Sachs.
Published by The Starting Gate
Miami’s second AT&T Mobile App Hackathon concluded this weekend, with nine teams presenting at the RightSpace2Meet co-working center at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park.
Published by The Starting Gate
Maybe you want to break away from the computer for an hour or two in the evening. What tech meetups are within walking distance? Or perhaps you know you will be in another part of South Florida for dinner and want to check out the startup scene there before heading back home. With MapYourStartup.com’s new events mapping service, you can do just that, says Noberto “Tito” Gil, who co-founded MapYourStartup.com with Rokk3r Labs.
Published by The Starting Gate
Entrepreneurs from around the world took the stage during a packed week of entrepreneurship events in Miami: Florida International University’s Americas Venture Capital Conference (known as AVCC), HackDay, Wayra’s Global DemoDay and Endeavor’s International Selection Panel.
Published by The Starting Gate
Launch Pad Tech has selected its first class of 10 startups in its downtown Miami accelerator.
Startups selected for the three-month Launch Pad Tech Accelerator program, which begins Jan. 23, had to be operating in one of three areas of strength in Miami-Dade’s economy — tourism/hospitality, healthcare or creative (art, music, fashion, film). Through the financial support of Miami-Dade County and the Miami Downtown Development Authority, each of the startups in the accelerator will receive free office space for a year, an intense, structured program for three months and then mentoring the rest of the year. Each team will also receive a $25,000 grant.
Published by The Starting Gate
After an all day -– and night — HackDay Dec. 8-9 at the The LAB Miami‘s new, expanded co-working campus in Wynwood, 13 teams presented their hacks to a panel of judges. Martin Varsavsky of Fon, Ben Wirz of Knight Foundation, Artem Mikhlin, an angel investor, and Boris Hirmas and Faquiry Diaz Cala of Tres Mares Group scored the teams on seven criteria to select the five finalists that will present at the AVCC on Friday. And the finalists are:
Published by Upstart Business Journal
Andres Moreno moved his startup from Venezuela to Silicon Valley in 2006, with hopes of raising funds and making it big. By all definitions, Open Englishhas done just that.
With 60,000 Latin American people learning English on its online platform and $55 million in venture capital funds, Moreno is upending the traditional, time-intensive and costly bricks-and-mortar language education industry.
But it isn’t in Silicon Valley where the company thrives. It’s Miami.
Published by Venture Beat
All venture capitalists are not created equal. The common denominator in our fundraising venture capital equation is capital, or investment dollars. That is the “what” in our equation — the known. Yet there are several variables: the “how,” the “where” and, to a certain extent, the “why” — which all lead us to the “who.”
Published by The Starting Gate
Flomio’s Kickstarter campaign product needing funding: FloJack, which enables NFC for iOS devices
Goal: $80,000
Outcome: $96,145 pledges in 447 pledges ranging from $2 to $10,000
Published by The Starting Gate, The Miami Herald
If you think the next two weeks are all about art, you may be surprised to learn there are also many entrepreneurship events vying for your time.
Steve unpacks the the fundamental differences between small business and startup. Steve Blank was part of/or founded eight venture-backed companies, four of which went public.
Published by Tech Crunch
Some of those things should soon be possible with the aid of the Kickstarter project by Miami-based NFC wizards Flomio and its project FloJack. It’s not a device that enables you to track stolen boats with GPS. Rather, in the spirit of the Square credit card reader, it is a small white lollipop of a device that plugs into the headphone jack of mobile iOS or legacy Android mobile device and allows it to read and write data via NFC. The company has wisely avoided getting wrapped up in payments at this point, but it is supporting other NFC functionality, such as tag reading via Samsung’s TecTiles or its own similar Zapps.
Published by TNW
Wayra is partnering with the upcoming edition of HackDay, the HackDay Foundation announced today. As part of the agreement, Telefónica’s accelerator will offer several benefits to the hackathon’s participants.
Published by Tech Crunch
Today, the Startup Genome released the first half of its massive 160-page report on the world’s top startup ecosystems. Of the many moving parts of the report, the most noteworthy (and potentially controversial) is it’s so-called Startup Ecosystem Index, which ranks the world’s top 20 startup ecosystems, a la college football.
Published by The Miami Herald
NewME brought its first Popup Accelerator to Miami last week, and together with the Knight Foundation and LAB Miami, gave 65 South Florida participants a two-night pitch workshop, a one-on-one mentoring session with a Silicon Valley venture capitalist or NewME expert and the opportunity to present their ventures at Demo Night.
Published by The Next Web
Finance is one of the five key sectors that technology can help disrupt in Latin America. This is what Envisioning Technology founder Michell Zappa explained during his keynote at TNW Conference Latin America last August.
Published by The Miami Herald
The moment many startups have been waiting for: Florida International University’s 2012 Americas Venture Capital Conference has selected its presenting companies.
The presentations are one of the high points of the two-day conference of speakers, panels, networking and deal-making. AVCC will be Dec. 13-14 at Miami’s JW Marriott Brickell and hosted by the Eugenio Pino and Family Global Entrepreneurship Center and FIU College of Business.
Published by The Next Web
Miami will welcome its second HackDay on December 8th-9th 2012, the HackDay Foundation announced today. According to its organizers, this new edition significantly raises the bar when it comes to prizes and goals.
Published by ABC Univision
The United States technology sector is dominated by a few clusters, mainly Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, New York City and Boston but is there room for one more? Miami hopes so.
Tech entrepreneurs scattered throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties face challenges to establish and expand support services outside of the metropolitan Miami locale. I have firsthand experience as an involved participant in the tech community, while living in central Palm Beach County. This post explores the genesis of the tri-county tech support system presently emerging outside of Miami.
Video produced by Debbie Landa of GROWlab accelerator
We talked to women working in and around the tech industry to discuss their experiences.
Today I’m talking with Marco Giberti, President of Reed Exhibitions Latin America. In addition to his role at Reed, Marco is also a well-known investor in startup companies in Latin America as well as being an entrepreneur himself. He is also on the advisory board of the Americas Venture Capital Conference, which will be held in Miami in December. I talked with him about his perceptions of the startup ecosystem in Latin America from an angel investor’s perspective.
Published by Fast Company
Nightlife is to Miami what the financial sector is to New York City or film production to Los Angeles. Party promoters are as ubiquitous in Magic City as fund managers on Wall Street or screenwriters in Hollywood.
Published by The Miami Herald
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.
Published by The Miami Herald
Over the past few months, we have been asking South Florida entrepreneurs, community leaders and investors what they think are the biggest challenges facing the start-up community and what the ecosystem most needs to grow. Below is a excerpted sampling of their responses. Also see more views in the accompanying story here.
Published by The Miami Herald
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.
Published by The Miami Herald
On one side: Juan Pablo Cappello, lawyer, serial entrepreneur and serial investor in tech startups. On the other side: Auston Bunsen, young entrepreneur, programmer and organizer of the annual SuperConf.
Published by The Starting Gate
By Norberto “Tito” Gil
A ‘good’ problem often times presents an opportunity to create something extraordinary. Miami has a ‘good’ problem on its hands: how can the various protagonists of the Miami entrepreneurial story be connected in a way that is tech-savvy and that allows for progress and productivity to occur in real-time?
Published by The Wall Street Journal
En edificios envejecidos, escondidos en calles que pasan desapercibidas en los barrios bohemios de Condesa y Roma en Ciudad de México, está ocurriendo una especie de revolución. Veinteañeros en camisetas trabajan en sus laptops, escribiendo códigos y diseñando interfaces de usuario para portales en Internet de nuevas empresas tecnológicas.
And the winners of the first hackathon for the arts in Miami, announced Sunday night, are…
* First place went to Team 7: Alexandra Saba (age 19), Alfonso Guerra (age 48) from Apokalypse Software Corp, and Chris Scott (age 24) from Gnome Labs. They won $5,000 in cash for their geolocation based app that allowed users to easily locate works of art scattered throughout the city and access information related to each piece for the Temporary Contemporary exhibit. (Photo of team shown at right). http://www.bassmuseum.org/art/tc/
Published by All Things D
In aging buildings, hidden on unassuming side streets in the Bohemian sections of Mexico City known as Condesa and Roma, a revolution of sorts is occurring. Twentysomethings in T-shirts huddle over laptops, writing code and working on user interfaces for start-up technology Web sites. Design approaches are debated, and Lean Startup methodologyis a regular topic of conversation between games of ping pong. Were it not for the fact that all discussion takes place in Spanish, the scenes in these offices would be indistinguishable from those in offices in Palo Alto, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, or any of the other South Bay suburbs that form the heart of Silicon Valley. But this is not Sunnyvale.
Published by Latin America Startup Blog
Although of course there are millions of ordinary people in Latin America that don’t give a second thought to the notion of tech entrepreneurship, in that small but growing community of people that do care on a daily basis, it seems like there aren’t many at home this week, whether you look in Mexico City, Buenos Aires, or Rio. A good many of the entrepreneurs that fuel the community, both on the entrepreneurial side as well as the investor side, have packed their bags and headed North.
Published by The Next Web
Google has announced the launch of its first Latin American data center, FayerWayer reports. Based in Quilicura near Santiago, Chile, it will serve several countries across the region.
Miami’s first hackathon for the arts. Sign-up today and develop an app for the Temporary Contemporary art project. 3 days packed with art, technology and innovation, don’t miss it!
Published by The Starting Gate, Miami Herald
The Next Web’s Latin American Conference, held in Sao Paulo Aug. 22-23, brought together tech industry keynote speakers such as Werner Vogels, CTO of Amazon, Nicolas Szekazy, co-founder of Kaszek Ventures, and Miami’s own Demian Bellumio, COO of Senzari, as well as an action packed Startup Battle featuring startups from Latin America’s best accelerators delivering their pitches to a panel of expert judges.
Published by TNW Latin America
Colombian entrepreneur Andres Barreto was one of the guest speakers at Start-Up Chile’s SUPWeek, a one-week entrepreneurship event series that took place in Santiago, Chile. The goal of his workshop was to share valuable and very frank advice with the program’s alumni.
Published by The Miami Herald Blog The Starting Gate
When Brian Breslin founded Refresh Miami in 2006, his monthly meetup would be five people at a Starbucks. Last night, it was standing room only — about 300 people — at University of Miami’s Storer Auditorium for its monthly event, themed “Founder Matchmaking: Finding your Tech/Biz Partner.”
Previous winners of the FIU AVCC, Wormhole I.T., talks about the great opportunities that came about from the conference.
Published by The Next Web
Brazilian tech futurist Michell Zappa kickstarted the first edition of TNW Conference Latin America with a keynote on 5 infrastructure problems facing Brazil, and how technology can help solve them in a new and creative way.
Published by The Miami Herald
If you live in South Florida and dream of launching the next big software company, you could be in luck. Or, at least eligible for a little extra investment cash, whether you already own a local startup or simply have a great business idea.
Published by The Miami Herald
When Lean Startup Machine Miami rolls out of town tonight, this much is for sure: It will be back.
Published by Mashable
Brian Solis interviews Adeo Ressi and talk about the investment process.
Understanding the investment process in Silicon Valley used to require membership to a very exclusive club of investors, plugged-in media and experienced entrepreneurs. Adeo Ressi wanted to change that.
Published by The Miami Herald
Written by Wilfredo Fernandez for The Miami Herald
Over a month ago, LAB Miami received a twitter mention from SUMA Conectivo,a co-working space in Mar de Plata, Argentina, a bit outside of Buenos Aires. Carlos Maria Schauer, SUMA’s founder, had an idea for connecting co-working spaces through a simultaneous 12-hour Hack event. We immediately saw the potential and committed to this effort. Within the next week, we were able to get commitment from 2Work in Sao Paulo, Co-Work Chile in Santiago and a group called Hacks and Hackers in Bogota. The date was set for Aug. 11, which was fittingly positioned during the Olympic games.
Published by The Miami Herald
Paul Graham, take note. South Florida has plenty of nerds and a growing startup community.
In 2006, the Y Combinator co-founder wrote this in an essay about building startup communities: “I think you only need two kinds of people to create a technology hub: rich people and nerds. … Observation bears this out … Few startups happen in Miami, for example, because although it’s full of rich people, it has few nerds. It’s not the kind of place nerds like.”
“No shortage of ideas or @redbull,” tweets Allan Tito. That about sums it up as the ATT Mobile App Hackathon kicked off Friday night.
Too many to count, but at least 150 hackers pack into the main presentation room at the UM Life Science & Technology Park. They spill into adjoining lounge areas, the smaller conference room as well as the benches outside. One attendee who recently moved down from New York tell the crowd he was pleasantly surprised to see such an “awesome tech scene.”
Published by The Miami Herald
More than 250 South Florida computer programmers, graphic designers, and entrepreneurs have signed up for this weekend’s free AT&T Mobile App Hackathon taking place at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park in Miami. Several groups will be joining the event from Latin America, too. At least $5,000 in prizes will be offered, organizers say.
Published by El Financiero
En el 2005, el venezolano Andrés Moreno dejó su compañía de aprendizaje de ingles con la idea de armar una versión on-line de la misma, pensando que podría enseñar inglés de manera mas rápida y efectiva.
Published by Entrepreneur
Are you more like Howard Schultz of Starbucks, the billionaire investor Warren Buffett, Richard Branson of Virgin, or Tony Hsieh of Zappos? Knowing the answer could help you become more successful in your business.
Published by Venture Beat
Last night’s announced partnership between Square and Starbucks came as a surprise, but after hearing chief executives Jack Dorsey and Howard Schultz discuss how the arrangement came to be, it seems like one of the most logical unions between tech and business in recent memory.
More than 150 developers compete for more than $5000 in cash and prizes on August 10-12th, 2012 at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park
MIAMI, Aug. 8, 2012 – This weekend, more than 150 developers will gather in Miami at the University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park to participate in an AT&T Mobile App Hackathon. An additional 100 developers will join the competition remotely from Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia. Participants will work together throughout the weekend to compete for more than $5,000 in cash and prizes.
Published by The Miami Herald
This post is in response to the thought provoking piece written by Juan Pablo Cappello and published in The Miami Herald.
Mr. Cappello, I’m pleased to hear about your interest in the Miami Tech Scene. Before I get started, I’d like to commend you on your accomplishments; Patagon.com was once described to me as the e*Trade of South America, you’re a practicing lawyer, and if I recall correctly, an angel investor. I hold your accomplishments in high esteem.
Published by The Miami Herald
Few places on Earth invoke the kind of economic envy that Northern California’s Silicon Valley does. So much so, that hopes of being the “next Silicon Valley” have spawned scores of wannabes worldwide such as Silicon Oasis (Dubai), Silicon Cape (Cape Town) and Silicon Sloboda (Moscow). In the U.S., “Silicon Beach” is coveted by five cities, among them Miami.
The Hackathon is On! Infographic published by Wired Magazine
We stopped by the University Miami to check out one of Refresh Miami’s monthly meetup. Refresh is a community of web and new tech professionals, students, and enthusiasts in South Florida (Miami & Ft. Lauderdale)
Published by BestCollegeOnline
College campuses are ripe with innovation, as students grow through education and experimentation in school. To help foster this innovation, many colleges and universities have opened business incubators, helping students and others in their community to help make their innovative dreams a reality. Whether they’re offering tricked-out labs or incredible funding opportunities, these incubators offer a great opportunity for students who are smart (and lucky!) enough to participate. Follow along as we explore 10 of the most exciting college business incubators around today, and be sure to share your own favorites in the comments.
Published by The Miami Herald
Forget about sleeping in. Two back-to-back weekend-long events for tech entrepreneurs and developers are coming to Miami next month.
The free AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, coming Aug. 10-12 , is the place to build apps, compete for prizes, network and scout for teammates to work on new or current projects.
Published by The Miami Herald
Miami-based Open English, an online English language school that has been expanding quickly in Latin America, has secured $43 million in its latest round of financing led by New York-based Insight Venture Partners.
Written by Camila Souza (@CSouzy)
Last night we stopped by the University of Miami to check out Refresh Miami to find out the latest local innovations for the entertainment business. Refresh is a monthly meet-up for South Florida techies looking to connect with like-minded people, and learn from each other. All seats were filled, people chatting and eating pizza, while waiting for the presentations to start. It was great to see how dynamic the event was–truly refreshing. The topic of the night was Tech+Entertainment.
Published by The Next Web
Open English has secured a $43 million round led by Insight Venture Partners, the Miami-based startup revealed today. Redpoint Ventures also participated in the round, as well as existing investors including Flybridge Capital Partners and Kaszek Ventures.
It’s not always the pitch that matters. Sometimes you need to know when to shut up and listen.
Everyone’s heard of an “elevator pitch”–that terrifying opportunity to pitch your future between floors. It’s a funny thing, though: Sometimes, even when you think you should be talking, it’s really better to be listening.
I learned that in the best way possible–but even so, it wasn’t an easy lesson to grasp. Here’s the story.
Written by Ray Ruga (@RayRuga)
“The tenants we attract expect the highest level of technology and security and a hackathon by definition does not support this perception,” –Unnamed Miami Property Manager.
Can Miami develop a fledgling tech community when individuals with the tools to help make it happen have such a misinformed perception as the property manager quoted above?!When we set out to look for a venue for the upcoming AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, one of the requirements was for the venue to have a 50Mbps internet connection. While we found a ton of places that could host up to 200 hackers, none had the required internet capability. Local Miami Herald reporter Nancy Dahlberg (@ndahlberg) recently posed the question, “Can Miami become a tech entrepreneurship hub for LatAm?” How can this city possibly begin to become this hub for technology when our infrastructure is so lacking?
Published by Fast Company
With all the startups I’ve seen, and I’ve coached over 700 by now, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on common mistakes startups make. So when I find someone doing it right, I like to share.
This is a great opportunity coming to Miami. In this three-day workshop, August 17th-19th 2012, to train entrepreneurs in Lean Startup and Customer Development methodologies.
“Lean Startup Machine is the leading edge of this movement. It’s the arrow-head of the spear.” Eric Ries, Author The Lean Startup
Published by New York Times
EVERYONE, it seems, has an app or a genius idea for one. Credit the lackluster job market plus facile tools and technology — no Ph.D. in programming required — for the rise of campus hack cultures that reach far beyond engineering and computer science majors and Stanford and M.I.T. Big rewards like the $100 billion public offering for Facebook, which was conceived in a Harvard dorm, and its $1 billion splurge on Instagram only feed the fantasies of code-writing college students.
Friday, August 10, 2012 at 6:00 PM – Sunday, August 12, 2012 at 6:00 PM at
University of Miami Life Science & Technology Park: 1951 NW 7th Ave. Miami, FL 33136
Mobile App Hackathon is an event produced by the AT&T Developer Program that is designed for attendees (technical & non-technical) to build apps/mobile apps, get fed, compete for prizes across different categories and most importantly: meet new people and scout for teammates to work on new or current projects. Our hackathon will introduce you to the latest cutting edge tools to help deploy your own app with a website backend, fully hosted in the cloud.
Published by The Next Web
With less than two months left to The Next Web Conference Latin America, we help you get ready with a new post series that will bring you everything you need to know about this exciting region.
WTF is a lean startup? On this episode we asked Startups around town how they keep it lean.
Published by VentureBeat
After playing coy and dropping hints for weeks, Microsoft has finally announced its newest incubator, the Bing Fund.
The Bing Fund will invest $50,000-$100,000 in early-stage startups, through standard convertible notes (loans that convert to equity at Microsoft’s option). Additionally, Microsoft will provide its startups with four to eight months of advice, design and development help, discounted access to Microsoft’s Azure Data Marketplace APIs, and introductions to potential partners or customers. The startups will also have the option of using office space on Microsoft’s Bellevue, Wash. campus, in a special section nicknamed the “Bingcubator.”
Published by The Next Web
Start-Up Chile has received 1,509 applications to join its next incubation cycle, the government-supported program announced today after closing the application process yesterday evening. As the organization points out, that’s more than double the number of projects that were presented in previous rounds.
Published by Inc Magazine
This has been a disappointing day in Silicon Valley for Kurt Varner. Y Combinator, the elite accelerator for tech start-ups, gave him the kiss-off with a form e-mail. Poor work by the Ukrainian programmers building his product forced him to perform a transnational termination. Twitter co-founder Evan Williams canceled a meeting. And after Varner himself canceled a meeting with an iPhone app developer whose advice he had sought, the developer tweeted his irritation: “How to be a winner. Nag the crap out of somebody to get coffee with you and cancel at last minute once they agree.”
On June 28th, 2012 in Miami’s design district onTedX Miami organized a special event at The Stage to video stream of some of the sessions from TEDGlobal in Edinburgh.
Published by Pulso Social
Hace 4 años que PulsoSocial cuenta las historias del emprendimiento tecnológico de América Latina. Desde entonces sabemos que en esta región está el futuro de la industria Web del mundo. Es así que además de contar las historias de startups exitosas ahora proponemos un puente que acerque a los emprendedores latinoamericanos a las oportunidades de negocio de Silicon Valley.
Es así que anunciamos la realización del más importante evento de tecnología y negocios de América Latina que tendrá lugar del 28 al 29 de septiembre en la ciudad de Bogotá.
Published by Forbes
One of the biggest mistakes an entrepreneur can make — especially when speaking with investors, reporters, and potential customers — is to goof up his or her startup pitch.
Without a clear idea of what a startup does, investors will not invest, reporters will not report, and consumers will not consume.
I stumbled upon and wanted to share the below infographic that clearly outlines the pillars of a great startup pitch, while also outlining six steps towards crafting that successful pitch.
Published by The Next Web
With less than three months left to The Next Web Conference Latin America, we help you get ready with a new post series that will bring you everything you need to know about this exciting region.
A speaker at the latest TNW Conference in Amsterdam last April, Miami-based angel investor Marco Giberti is always helpful when it comes to shedding light on entrepreneurism in Latin America. Besides his activities as the President of Reed Exhibitions’ Latin America division, he is also an entrepreneur himself, and a key figure of the regional tech scene.
On this episode we find out how developers, programmers and entrepreneurs avoid brain drain.
Published by Venture Beat
They can’t buy a celebratory bottle of champagne, but they’re hoping to start a new business. Meet the new class of under 20 would-be college kids dropping out of college to work on their entrepreneurial dreams under the watchful eye of investor Peter Thiel.
On this episode of Geeky Beach, we give you the survival guide to Shark Tanks! We talk to Marco Giberti, a respected Angel Investor in the U.S., Europe and Latin America about perfecting your pitch. This one is for you entrepreneur!
During their layover in Miami, Geeks on a Plane leader Dave McClure talked about the importance of investing in companies outside the United States and cultural interchange of ideas.
“International Hunter and Gatherer” from 500 Startups Bedy Yang know what’s new in Latin America Startup Scene. The Brazilian “moleca” takes some time to talk to CVOX Group about the new trends in tech community. BRTech Brazil is growing!
Published by USA Today
Reshaping a time-worn narrative isn’t easy. Social revolutions rarely are, especially when you’re a woman trying to break into the boys’ club that is Silicon Valley.
But an emerging class of early-stage tech start-up executives is helping dispel the notion that there isn’t a leading role for them in the male-dominated valley.
Company founders and leaders are coming out of Google, Salesforce.com and elsewhere for the excitement of shaping a young business.
Published by My Life Scoop
Whether it is water-resistant, solar powered or just a useful item to keep you cool during the summer heat, there really is some fun technology to enjoy during the summer months.
Published by EFE
Un grupo formado por emprendedores en el mundo de la tecnología y de inversores con capital para negocios de reciente creación iniciaron hoy en Miami una gira conjunta que les llevará por varios países de América Latina.
Published by The Miami Herald
Geeks on a Plane left Miami this morning with more than 40 startups from around the world, including several from South Florida. Those travelers include Brian Breslin of Infinimedia and Refresh Miami, Davide Di Cillo of Fifth Layer, Susan Amat of UM’s Launch Pad and Bill Hajjar of Senzari. They embark on a 10-day Latin American trip organized by Silicon Valley’s 500 Startups. First Stop: Mexico City.
Demian Bellumio is founder of Hackday Foundation and COO of Senzari. He hosted the Geeks on a Plane in Miami and talks about the selection for Hackday Buenos Aires
When it comes to the investor & entrepreneur dance, venues may change from time to time, but the moves are generally consistent, repeatable, and (sadly) predictable. Been there, done that, don’t be the dork
Rick Segal is back with another great post on the mobile startup/VC space. Rick’s comedic tastes do not reflect those of UNTETHER.tv.
With apologies and props to Jeff Foxworthy’s “You might be a redneck” routines.
You could be a dork…
If you have an out of office message saying you’re on the road with limited access to email. Really? Unless you are traveling on Antarctica, there’s always connectivity.
The Palo Alto firm is mirroring a trend we’re seeing across the entire industry as early-stage funds get bigger. Dave McClure’s 500 Startups recently raised $50 million while True Ventures closed $205 million yesterday and Seattle’s Madrona Ventures closed its biggest fund yet this week with $300 million. Senkut went for a bigger fund so that he could support more services like recruiting, marketing and PR and design for Felicis’ portfolio companies.
Update: Dave McClure has clarified in a comment how the deal negotiation actually happened:
“We discussed terms via face2face mtgs and phone calls, then confirmed closing via SMS. not exactly revolutionary or all that unusual, except that our f2f meetings occurred after midnight in places like Paris & Munich over drinks 
good luck Senzari!”
The music service Senzari has taken the opportunity of Geeks on a Plane‘s second trip to Latin America to announce that it has raised $1m in additional funding from 500 Startups and unnamed angel investors.
Published by My Life Scoop
With countless apps and games right in the palm of our hands, it’s far more convenient to spark artistic inspiration all while having fun. Today, we bring you ten of the most entertaining apps and games on the market to creatively stimulate you and fill that artistic void in your daily life.
Published by Tech Crunch
Miami-based streaming music startup Senzari, which aims to take on Pandora by targeting the markets Pandora misses (i.e., the rest of the world), has just closed an additional round of funding totaling $1 million. The round includes investors in both Miami and Silicon Valley, including, notably Dave McClure’s 500 Startups.
