Miami – The Next Great Startup City

What makes a city a great entrepreneurial hub? What does it take to attract top talent, incubate home grown technologies and launch innovative new ideas into the business stratosphere? These are the kinds of questions considered at StartUp City: Miami, hosted by Atlantic Magazine and the Knight Foundation and held at the fantastic New World Center on Miami Beach last week. I keep telling everyone I meet and everyone who asks me “why Miami?…” Miami is on the cusp of becoming the next great American city. We have beautiful weather and the beach, but there’s something else truly exciting going on here. In the years since I’ve called South Florida home, there’s a new energy, a buzzing entrepreneurial spirit that’s taking hold of the city like never before. Sure, Miami has always had an extremely high concentration of small businesses and entrepreneurship. But this is different. This is 21st century entrepreneurship. It’s technology and innovation and lifestyle companies that offer the kind of life you actually want to live here. When I moved to Miami seven years ago to found our law practice focusing on small business law and legal services for entrepreneurs and early stage companies, it wasn’t completely ludicrous because the city had a lot of small business owners, but it was a very different market. Now exciting entrepreneurs and business owners like Joel and Leticia Pollock of Panther Coffee, Roger Duarte of MyCeviche, Felecia Hatcher of Code Fever and Brian Brackeen of Kairos, all panelists at StartUp City: Miami, are inspiring a new wave of entrepreneurship and tech innovation in Miami and South Florida in general. StartUp City: Miami featured a full day of one-on-one interviews, panel discussions, and keynote case studies on how to harness Miami’s economic potential and considered the fundamental questions of how to unlock Miami’s secret to start up success. Check out some of the clips below: