 Hey folks Thank you so much for joining us this afternoon in I'm Raul Mohs I am the Miami program director at Knight Foundation and We're here in the great company of friends and partners To have a good conversation about where Miami's startup ecosystem goes next and so earlier today Knight Foundation in partnership with startup genome released a report that took a look at Miami's startup community kind of the journey So far and how we perform compared to peer cities across the across the world And it was really revealing it because it kind of confirmed what we've been seeing For several years now that Miami's on this awkward trajectory as an innovation hub And it also offered some really cool insights that we hadn't really measured before about where we might go next And so today's conversation is meant to be the first of many It's meant to kick off kind of a period of reflection and maybe a reorientation around how Miami can Channel all the forces that are changing the world today from the covid pandemic To the urgent task of creating more equitable systems across the nation To really move forward as a place for high impact high growth entrepreneurship survives and thrives And so to help us in that task We've got a few friends on deck We'll do a quick round of intros and then we'll hand things off to will wine rob whose og miami tech found in ceo of live ninja and also Through and through a community builder who's really stitched together The best of the best of miami over the years and so jamie if you kick us off. We'll get started Great. Thanks, Raul So my name is jamie ferrell. I've had a string of exits in the ed tech space most recently Sold trilogy trilogy education for 750 million over four years Um and had about 400 plus employees down here in south florida. So excited to be part of the conversation Hi, everybody. Thanks jamie for kicking us off and raul. My name is lian bucannon I'm the founding executive director of venture cafe miami Um for those that aren't familiar We host the largest weekly gathering of innovators entrepreneurs and tech folks in miami But most importantly we focus on really connecting the ecosystem across lines of difference across silos and really looking at ways that Miami can be more inclusive accessible more diverse In the last four years venture cafe has had well over 50 000 people Check in to our weekly gatherings and programs and been able to partner with over a thousand different organizations locally nationally and internationally So we see ourselves as an organization that could be a connective tissue And our role is just to align and amplify The other amazing organizations and folks in the miami innovation ecosystem Awesome. Thank you. Uh, i'm nico. I'm the founder and general partner of animal ventures We're a 60 million dollar seed fund where we focus on Leading or co-leading the earliest investment rounds. We'll usually invest anywhere from 500 000 dollars to 2 million In companies raising 500 000 up to four Um, previously I started miami angels, which is our local angel group here Uh, and yeah, I'm very very excited to be part of this conversation Right. Hi everyone. My name is will wine rob born and raised here in south florida So very prideful of our city and all the changes transformations that it's been going through Most recently I was CEO and co-founder of Live ninja, which was acquired a few years back by net to phone where I now head up product marketing for them I'm also the founder of the local leaders collective Another night foundation backed initiative that provides peer support groups for local founders as role mentioned My role today. I'm honored to do so is to moderate the conversation And I'll try my best at that because we've got a lot of great topics to cover and only an hour to do so But we give it our best shot I would like to thank you all for joining us today and also thank the night foundation for putting together What should be an amazing conversation with some incredible people from our local startup and entrepreneurial ecosystem Um for folks joining Again, thank you so much the way zoom works for most of you that are probably familiar with zoom because it's like baked into our lives nowadays Zoom has a q&a feature at the bottom of your screen. So please as the conversation is happening in real time Please feel free to drop your questions We'll pick some questions that are maybe timely throughout the conversation But we'll definitely get to a lot of questions towards the towards the end of the conversation So without further ado up further ado role, are we ready to kick it off? Awesome thumbs up. All right. So I want to kick things off with venture capital Uh and fundraising as that's always a hot topic and one that many people tuning in are probably very interested in Uh and being that we're talking about vc nico I'd like to start with you and I'd like to tie it into a very timely topic that I know a lot of people are very Passion about uh, we often hear and see in the data that black brown Women founders receive a miniscule share of total venture capital deployed in any given year We also regularly hear from vcs that state that they don't see enough deal flow From underrepresented founders in order for them to make up a larger part of their portfolios In your opinion, how do you reconcile those two things and I wanted to start with you because I know you're Taking a very active role in this and are actively thinking about ways to mitigate those issues Yeah, um I'll start off with saying I obviously don't have the answer. I have a bunch of thoughts. Um I think I think at the core it's who are the venture capitalists, right? Because uh, I'm a big fan of you know, thinking fast and slow and then y'all kind of mind and all the research on biases And etc, which you know, we're basically prisoners of our biases. And so if most of these sees end up being, uh, You know, white males and naturally they're going to gravitate towards investing in white males Um, and their deal flow is going to come from there and and their Reference ability and the warm intros and everything. It's kind of like a self-fulfilling circle, right? Um, and then the big exits are going to come there So that kind of reinforces the cycle that you know, it's the young, you know, college dropout Tends to be a white male that can is going to be make the best entrepreneur And so I think at the core it's you know, how do we how do we change the the makeup of who the investors are themselves, right? Because if you look at the the number of dollars going to These uh underrepresented communities are very small But then also if you look at the number of investors coming from these communities is also comparatively Um small, right? So I think in our case, you know, we're three immigrants And our portfolio is two-thirds Diverse, right? Which means that we've got a bunch of immigrants. We've got a bunch of women Um much higher than than than industry averages um But we still don't you know, have an invested you know, we're 13 companies in and we still have an investor in their black fount um And and so that's why you know, we've been spending a lot of time Uh trying to understand and they're kind of on the learning and then on the actions Like what can we do concretely so that we can get more embedded? In the black community specifically Because if I'm not if we're not seeing all founders, we're not doing our jobs, right? And I'm not fulfilling our fiduciary duty to to our investors um, even if we are you know, two-thirds of our portfolio companies are diverse and that's like Much larger. It's it still means that we're not seeing 100 and that's a problem Yeah, lianna, I would love to get your thoughts on this as well Uh, you know for folks that are listening on the call lianna wrote an incredible piece on the Miami Herald recently that was published Uh sharing her thoughts and perspectives, but we'd love to to hear what you think in ways we can bridge this gap Thanks, will um, I think piggybacking off of what nico said Um to me it boils down to two important considerations that may seem a little bit counterintuitive So the first piece is trap And um last year venture cafe partnered with many of the organizations here to hold something called capital days where we were really focused on How do we look at this problem around more inclusive deployment of capital? And we realized it's not about the data. We all know what the data says So like one percent of venture back founders are black Point zero zero six percent of women led startups black women led startups actually receive funding And over 93 of vc firms. Um have no black investment partners So we know what the data says but when it boils down to it, it's really about trust and access to on the trust side Um, I think practically speaking thinking about building relationships that are not just I'll drop some money in a fund where the gps are black vcs looking more at translating relationships from being transactional to actually relational Thinking about the way that black founders, for example, are actually supported once you put dollars in everybody knows this Jamie, you know this Raul, you know this will and nico. It's not just about putting dollars in It's actually what happens after the dollars. So follow on funding how you get them to scale up So you can actually realize your ROI so that trust piece is really important So focusing on the relational and then access isn't is the other piece Where where are we sourcing deals from what is our kind of process or way finding around sourcing deals If you are looking at co-investing with a predominantly black vc led fund Is it just one or do you have multiple sources where you're actually looking? at at deal flow and I think the last thing is Stop thinking about founders of color as a handout Or that it's a help piece and I'm just going to be real here We're leaving money on the table when we're failing to be more inclusive in how we deploy capital for example, you know Black people make up 1.2 trillion dollars in spending power. That's a huge like I'm just about dollars and cents That's a market opportunity. That is a missed market opportunity and vc are all about dollars and cents It's about money so stop leaving money on the table by by you know being Tied to implicit bias in the way that we view investing opportunities potential solutions and deals and then the other piece is really around millennials millennials are kind of the largest Group in the united states right now and they're increasing increasingly black brown and asian So looking at what our consumer market trends are we just need to do better on the investing and funding side Because the consumers want these products the consumers want these founders The consumers want to support a more inclusive slate of growing companies So I think it's time for vcs to kind of wake up You know, well, I'll I'll plus one to liens being real here and I'll give sort of an operator perspective Nico's already sparking And what I would say is this and You know In order to raise funds in order to build a startup like you're going to get a hundred no's Right no matter who you are you're getting a hundred no's And if you're going to be successful post your series a and post your series b and you're going to crush it like Your mindset is always going to be this is on you as the operator, right? And so what I would say is do the do the vcs and myself i'm an angel investor I'm looking for more ways to increase the diversity of my investments, right? um But I also as an operator Do believe the way to be successful is hustle And never ever ever giving up. And so I think if you reframe this right vcs No offense Nico definitely You know opportunity To improve But I also think on the operator side like No matter who you are. This is a startup, right? You just keep pushing and don't get me wrong. There are certain people um White males that may or may not have uh, or likely do have more access and you know to liens point it's data We already know that right Put your head down and go Eventually somebody's gonna say yes Just an app, you know different perspective. I love that perspective roa any thoughts Yeah, I think um as someone uh, so I succeeded Nico and i'm angels a few years back before joining night foundation and I think the Kind of lienne touched on this wrong. We've talked on it separately like what gets deals done, right? It's trust Uh, it's trust. It's familiarity. It's social capital. It's who you know and how you know it and so the angel group Uh, while I was there like it was just easier for me Uh to bring people to the table as members and angels Um, who I already had in my social network, right? Even people had worked with before etc etc from my community and so the the the the the conscious effort has to be made Uh to to build out groups Tables that look like community, right? And so like I look back kind of uh at that time and I think halfway through the year I look back and said oh like look at the numbers. They're phenomenal We've grown X percentage in terms of members in terms of capital deployed And then you're going to break it down in terms of like who did you recruit and it's like oh I recruited a lot of folks that I had already done business with before and some new folks But for generally speaking it didn't look like miami on the net It looked more like the community that I was coming from and not miami as a whole And so I think the the calling out constantly of who's at the table and does the table look like the city Uh does it look like a community that's critically important. That's a great starting point And then from there, I think you can say all right, we've got folks at the table That's not enough right just having a seat at the table is not true inclusion It's making sure that folks have the right ability and and the ability period To contribute and participate in the dialogue that's happening at that table right beyond the tokenism of oh We look at our table look how shiny it is like okay like how's that conversation functioning? So um whether you're an angel investor or an investment group or at a vc Um, I think who's at the table really matters and informs the kinds of deals and the kinds of of opportunities That you see that come across the the pipeline Thank you role one question that just came in relevant to the topic uh as a black male with a startup What resources or organizations in miami should I consider to have access to potential investors and or support? And I'll open it up for the panel where everyone wants to jump in So lian will give the real answer the operator answer is Everyone anyone that has a checkbook That's who you should target I have to co-sign on jamie's answer everyone but with the caveat who you can get connected with so be strategic Look to get Connected with these folks and I will talk about this later But look to get connected with people that can open doors of opportunity for you Just because you don't have that connection doesn't mean that someone in your you know Six degrees of kevin bacon network has a relationship. So things like um code fever black tech week Excellent accessible resource black angels miami That's a great resource. Um the other one that I could think about you know Beacon council is a pretty good resource and trying to get um instead of just getting a check sometimes you want like clients You might want to connect with larger corporates that you could do business with and be able to demonstrate traction That will get you a larger check and then of course obviously plug for venture cafe miami Because we are here to connect you but um, I would also just be strategic about your connection So don't waste time as money and you don't want to waste your time running around like a chicken with your head cut off But be strategic. I would say if you can get in touch with jamie. That's a good connect Yes, and um What I'll say is uh miami is is a very special Tech community because it's very tight knit. Um, and so you can probably get to almost anybody you want in a couple weeks So just start reaching out and ask me like hey jamie. I saw that you're connected to liane Can you you know, could you do an email intro? And nine times out of 10 or 99 times out of 100, you know That will go through and I can't stress and point enough about being strategic Um at this day and age, you know, especially active investors either angel or institutionals have Their preferences and what they invest in pretty clearly laid out either on you know Twitter or LinkedIn or their websites And so just don't waste your time like out, you know, we are very Incredibly narrowly focused in what we do and yet I'll still get you know An email week about like hey, you know, I'm buying a couple Popeyes franchises, you know Are you interested in investing? It's like it's not what I do. It could be a great business So save yourself the time. Um, and then just you know ping ping people wait for intro I think Miami's a special place and and how quickly that can that can get you to everybody Yeah, agreed and I'll co-sign what you said nico. Miami's a very welcoming city this community this entrepreneur startup ecosystem I feel we're very much still in the phase where a rising tide lifts all ships We're happy to connect. I think everybody here on the panel can raise their hand and co-sign Please reach out to us right if there's anything we can do to help our emails are open Uh, linked in whatever the case may be twitter So please do reach out If there's still more questions on this topic, please feel free to list them We'll get to them towards the end, but we do need to keep the conversation moving talent Another passionate topic we need to get into We hear from many entrepreneurs and founders that there simply isn't enough of the right talent here locally in Miami And now we're entering this whole new phase of how to deal with talent Hiring and retention in a post-covid world Most you know companies are now making the shift to remote employment and all this stuff So jamie as more folks think about living somewhere other than the city that their employer is based in especially in tech What do companies in miami need to do today to attract and retain that exceptional talent that is on the market right now? Um, thanks will good question. So How do companies attract and retain talent uh specifically in miami? So the first thing I would say is you know I don't look at attracting talent. Um, or retaining talent any different than I look at a potential acquisition Right, whether it's a business or a person you're either going to buy it or you're going to build it Right. There is there's not really an in between And so in miami what it feels like is we hear a lot. Um, and certainly I've said this um We can't match the packages in san francisco or everybody wants to be in new york or there's just that not that kind of money here You got to learn how to build it, right? And I think talent Breeds talent and so will if you're asking for a couple of different ways um, I think one there's Nobody wants to hear this but it's patience as more companies exit Right, there's going to be repeat founders. There's going to be more people that have experienced at different levels um different growth trajectories and so I think you'll get talent as more and more companies down here exit um, so that's you know Patience and or poaching I would go with poaching So that's one I think two, you know, and this is something really interesting and um, this could be biased because I've only ever worked in businesses that are you know, sort of 100 mission driven but You know, I think when founders and early stage companies down here talk about what they do um It is far more compelling to talent anywhere to frame it Um in terms of what the larger mission is so why do you do what you do? Right, and if you look at the companies that have sort of broken out as successful down here even in the last year or two um You know trilogy, right? We sold like we effectively changed people's lives for a living. That is what we did Right every day. We knew that there were 100 people whose lives we changed that day Papa another breakout, right? They don't have problem getting talent. Why well, guess what they do like they I don't know. I mean increase the quality of life for elderly people and arguably increase the longevity at some point baby sparks right education uh parent educate like these are all you know highly mission driven organizations and I think as more and more companies and founders learn um how to present a more compelling vision Which I think will happen over time And more people understand the why that's what gets talent Right, it's that and then the third the third bucket even though you go back to buy If you can't afford to buy it on salary come up with great equity packages right so, um You know, I'm a strong believer and have always given every single employee a pretty decent amount of equity Um, and I think once that happens and once somebody sees What equity can do they're gonna it's again it goes back to talent breeding talent. It becomes like part of the culture here Nico would love to get your perspective And you know, what are some of the things you're seeing with your portfolio companies and how they're they're going about this Yeah, I think that the the biggest shift since covid started in in march is kind of the new normal Whatever it may look like it'll for sure be more distributed And I think miami, uh stands to get right just in the past month I've gotten about 12 calls from from people. I know in either New York or south inquiring about miami They're like, okay, if I don't need to be stuck in, you know paying High taxes and you know high real estate like why should I stay in Manhattan? Like, uh, you know I would love to come spend time in miami and move my head. So I think that that's a huge I think the remote first, um, or However, you want to frame that whatever's going to happen over the next 12 18 months. I think miami stands again from that um, the other thing I'll say kind of back to to jayme's poach um strategy is we have two very well-funded companies in miami that have uh brought Thousands of awesome talent down here Whatever the outcome may be with those companies some of them are struggling, but every startup struggles at some point um I think a lot of those people got a taste of the south florida lifestyle and if the companies don't do well, they'll want to stay And if the companies do well, then they'll have some money so that they can become either angel investors or bootstrap founders If the companies don't do well Well, you know, they'll want to look for jobs and they don't want to go work for corporate Right because they're startup people and I think that that'll be a very interesting talent so I think i'm very optimistic on Kind of the accessibility and availability of talent for companies here And do you share similar thoughts on that? I know through venture cafe You have a lot of visibility into this with different startups you work with so we'd love to hear your perspective So I may be a bit of a detractor So I definitely agree with what jayme and nico said but I think that you know talent The question of talent is really a tale of two cities, right? And I think if we're talking about talent, we have to be really honest about like what type of talent Are we talking about? I think to your point nico I'm very optimistic about like high tech talent or folks that are well equipped to work in some of these scale uh focused startups But there's a whole bunch whole swath of our population That has still has trouble finding high quality employment Still has trouble finding upscaling opportunities and you know, we have to be real there are systemic inequities that limit The trajectory of your individual talent journey in miami that are very real They're very protracted. They're very present. And so I think that the conversation around talent has to be a little bit more Diverse in terms of what we mean when we're talking about talent The other thing that I would say on the venture cafe miami side is that you know, there's some there's some interesting opportunities around talent to really look at Where you leverage those connecting organizations in sourcing talent and identifying talent in being able to vet Talent because they've had an opportunity to engage outside the traditional hiring process So I do think that there's more of an ecosystem that we need to build around talent and there's some significant gaps I think about a lot of black software engineers that have left miami because they couldn't find a job And so that may not be necessarily the available availability of a position But that access point or or roadmap or opportunity pipeline just doesn't exist The same way it exists for some folks as it does for others I completely agree with liane. There's systemic Issues that mean that there's systems right systems as they're structured and it's not one system It's interlocking systems that reinforce one another right and amplify one or the for better and for worse That that we really need to to kind of look at as a community society I think that's part of the conversations happening right now I did want to elevate something that jamie had shared around kind of equity compensation Because that was actually the something that was in the report That started genome compiled and that hadn't been really measured before And so it's it's basically an assessment a measure of how many companies what percentage of stars in south florida Offer all of their employees equity compensation. So stock option participation compared to their peers And and when we see that miami has a really kind of big gulf compared to other emerging places like at lana or austin In terms of how many companies here give all employees not just senior employees with all employees equity comp And one it was interesting because we've never measured that as miami before So now we have the benchmark that we can track against and compare to the cities But the other piece that is that the the delta is so big That that I do think it's one of these kind of questions of the maturity of the market Right, miami is a really young market when it comes to this kind of a venture activity And so I wonder as we go on in the coming years as more companies kind of Grow and mature will we see more of them offer all their employees equity compensation? Which ultimately leads to more evenly distributed wealth creation Which we want to see and that also has kind of kicks off a virtuous A virtuous kind of cycle right a virtuous cycle whereby Not only do you have better talent coming down because they're getting equity compensation at all levels of the company But then as wealth is created at all levels of the company when there's an exit to nico's point Those transactions generate new angel investors new funds, etc So that's that's one piece. I think you're totally right on on miami has a room to grow In terms of best practices when it comes to attracting and retaining folks Those are all great perspectives. Uh, would like to take a question from the audience Someone writes in is it just me or does it seem like tech salaries in miami are lower than other cities comparable With cost of living is it a funding issue? Our local companies factoring the value of our beaches into their compensation calculus so just What are your thoughts as far as our tech salaries? It always kind of comes up in in comparison to obviously The valley in new york and boston and even places like austin Um, what are your thoughts on that open it up for anyone on the panel to jump in Jamie you you've built companies down here and nico you're investing in companies down here So you're seeing that you know, what do you would what about if you think of that question? And i'll and if I can i'll tell you into another question That mariana added, uh, which was do we think that miami will gain more talent or lose more talent with remote first? And so I think there's there's there's questions this question kind of can can be bundled together as companies reprice salaries according to geography So roble, I think you know the reason I didn't respond Was because I I don't know what the data says Right and so without the data, um happy to give an opinion and share what we did Um with a preface that no idea if i'm right or wrong um, and so I would say a couple of things, um, you know So we did not tried and did not and could not hire the tech talent that we wanted down here um Not saying we tried we did anything. Maybe we did it wrong. I'm sure that there were things we could have done better um But that's how it didn't work for us now the approach that we took Um, and this is where I think again once you have more experienced founders um Starting companies the approach that we took generally for hiring jobs including tech talent Was not what other markets pay That's one piece. It's what is the roi? We're going to get from this position Right and if you start looking at things like that and at an early stage company if you're building incentive packages that do include things like equity milestones based on Getting a point two percent more efficient on your sales conversions because of the sales force process flows guess what you're going to get a pretty excited sales force admin um Which is a role that we actually got somebody to move here for so again I think it goes back to being creative um And the experience piece so I don't know what the data says um But that's you know been my experience Uh, I'll add to that So we only have out of the 13 companies that we've invested in we've only invested in one Miami company And that Miami company has been fully remote from day one Uh, I think they've got four people that live here um, so I'm on the jb camp here that I just don't don't have the You know the real data to have a smart opinion All right, uh, so just moving on and I think that's this is an important conversation that still needs to happen Especially again in this post-covid world Where again, it's almost like the playing fields have kind of been leveled because now we'll be hiring people from all over the country Remote work is much more accepted. So this is definitely something we need to look further into so thank you for submitting that question um Another topic that I'd like to discuss is finding community Miami is a very welcoming city as we talked about full of diverse people that come from all over the world But it's also a very sprawled out city, right? Like we often hear that people that move into town They have trouble finding the right community where they're living And it's hard to get plugged into the right people Leanne, uh, again because Miami has a little bit of a reputation when it comes to finding community of like-minded folks For someone new to town to our startup community. How can they get connected to high quality many times often unpromoted networks of peers I think that's a good question And I'd like to start off by maybe just kind of focusing in on the why we need community Why we need communities of practitioners. I know the startup genome report had a really some really good insights on The role of social connectedness and I think that all of this on this call are evidence Of why you need social connectivity in a startup and innovation context But if you think about it historically, you know, we had chambers and we still have chambers But the purpose of chambers were essentially to promote the interests of businesses So in reality the way people have connected the way business people connect has changed The way we do business has changed you could have completely remote companies You couldn't have that back when chambers were really kind of the the only Only a fish in the game. And so our culture is decentralized and increasingly siloed geographically But also thinking about, you know, along other lines of difference So I'd say in Miami, it is a very welcoming community But if we're being real here We know that high value networks are harder to penetrate So it's very easy to get an introduction or a phone call But when we're talking about that deep level of connectedness community and real relationships that have kind of a degree of professional intimacy reciprocal value where you can actually Give but also get from that relationship. It's a lot harder to penetrate and define those things The other thing that I would say is we have very few High value networks that transcend lines of difference I think Raul your example from the outside of the conversation on who you were bringing into agp Was who you knew who you grew up with who you did business with and so I think in Miami if we're just going to be real We can be honest about the fact that, you know, lines of difference are what Encapsulate our social networks and I think the third thing that we know about Miami So true is It's almost more important to have a who you know approach than what you know I personally think it's both what and who but in Miami who you know will often get you a lot further than what you know and so With those things in mind, I think about the role of venture cafe We've seen over 50,000 folks kind of connect with the thursday gathering, which is truly open sourced And the number one piece of feedback that I get is that it's hard to break in And the number two piece of feedback that I get is Yeah, it's great to network, but I want something of substance something that's niched something that's industry specific Or something that allows me to connect with people that are not only in the same space But at the same level or a little bit further ahead of me so I can learn from that relationship And so practically speaking I think that for folks that want to get connected obviously, you know, um Venture cafe is a good landing plaid not as much as before when we were in person where you kind of navigate the cafe space But virtually we're still seeing a couple hundred people every single week connect in online spaces But I think practically speaking Re-framing how we think about opportunity to build community. I think traditionally we've thought about Transactional relationships, so you build community by what you can get or how many people are in your linkedin network And so I think us as kind of pillars of the ecosystem if you will it sounds like a you know A superhero movie, but for those of us in those leadership positions We need to think about how we be a little bit more proactive in our outreach Outreach to other markets to then recruit new folks, but also outreach outside of our individual circles So it's the same model where you know, one of my mentors whenever she would go to the city Because she held a leadership position She brings someone from boys and girls club or she brings someone that wasn't connected to that space So I think the plus one approach is something that we can do as leaders to help people find community in a more authentic way the second thing I would say is And we've kind of talked about this offline was like we just need some objective road maps I think it's easy enough to break into miami, but it's very hard to connect with people that can actually Value and be transformative in your life And so having those objective road maps that are not just like a linkedin list That literally is like if you are in ed tech you need to speak to Jamie if you are in vc And you want to connect to specific founders from latin america you need to speak to Nico or melissa medina and felicia at emerge So having that objective like playbook of who's who would really think I think help out and then the last thing is just like Being transparent about how connections are made Sure, you can go to networking events and think that you know by Chance you'll run into the right person, but let's be real. They're made at these kind of dinners You know the history of the non-group like these, you know regular breakfast lunches and dinners that are typically not advertised You're not going to see it on invent bright. You're not going to see it on facebook but Those are the places that I think are what we really need to think about redistributing our social capital and reallocating social capital So leon, so i'm just gonna Um, so I just went through this and a year ago I didn't know one person on this call and probably none of the no one that's watching either and so I will tell you As somebody who went through this who has built a career based on Networking and building relationships. Miami was the hardest one of the hardest places to break in Um that I have ever encountered and frankly had I not I mean as much as I hate to build his ego Had I not spoken to nico? I was done. I was like I was like i'm sticking with new york. No really. I mean I was flying to and from new york Two to three times a month because it was that's where my network was Um, and so, you know, I think there's a couple of things. I mean, I've learned a ton down here over the last year um, especially from you know, the folks in miami and um You know to your point leon and we talked about this like yes, there needs to be like I always call it a playbook, right? But a playbook, but I also think there needs to be like what I would call um, like a community commitment and what I mean by that is Um, you know on my linkedin profile for years and it's still there I wrote if you're interested in changing the world through education. I'm interested in a conversation And I will talk to any person that reaches out. Um, I get told it's not efficient. Guess what it's worked for me And so as we're sitting here, I was like, you know what? I don't want anyone to have to go through the shit that I went through and I'm pretty confident Right. So like, um You know, I will probably after this do you know, nico does this very well. He puts his calendar out there Um, I am not doing that But I do think literally anyone that's in the community like why not put on your linkedin profile Want to know about south florida? Give me a call Right because the reality is like the people that do they're gonna matter That's who we want. They're gonna help us build the community in the ecosystem. We have a responsibility to do that I think I just gave my action item Yeah, just on that. So I try to make myself available. I'm pretty easy to find Not only you can just book time and it's it's on my pinned on my twitter feed. Um My email is almost anywhere. I get so much spam as a result of all that like actual spam Not people wanting to meet. Um, and I you know, I I do my best, right? Um, and I think that Different People can do different things, right? And so I am much more on a one-on-one like let's jump on a call for 20 minutes Um, I think as as as a vc You get to see under the hood of a lot of things and so Um, I think we have a lot of shiny objects in miami and and so there's a disillusionment process that a lot of people go through because Shiny objects, you know, you obviously attracted to shiny objects first. And so you start to engage and there's nothing there And so your heart breaks and you know, you keep going Um, and as a vc because we've either looked at a lot of these companies or we've engaged with a lot of these players um, we have I don't know like historical Information and I think I can share that in in kind of a 20 minute call like when jiggy and I connected as she was um engaging more and so if I'll make that available to anyone listening. Um, if you want kind of more background on on What I've seen in the last five six years in in miami tech again, my calendar is I Go for the end go for it. So just really quickly. Um, jamie. I love the community commitment thing I never thought about that yet people reach out to me all the time So about to make that a new new commitment but I think the other the other challenge um as we think about like the access points is um is Knowing who to connect with multiple times So a lot of times you do an intro call, but there's also that responsibility around like follow-up How are you going to keep engaging someone? So they're not like you where you're like I did this for like a while and I was ready to give up And so I think it's incumbent upon us to create like those feedback loops So those regular points of contact, you know With people that are new with people that are breaking in so that they don't feel like it's like a one and done That it's actually like again a relational approach relationships are not built in one Meeting they're they're made after multiple times of contact. Sorry, Raul. I just wanted to add that point I think that's exactly I'll pick up from there in terms of relationships, right? Oftentimes when we talk about emerging start communities, we talk about the hard assets the hard infrastructure That makes them go right and fundraising capital, right financing or is essential money's essential as is talent Those are two kind of givens But we've seen a ton and start genome kind of kind of confirms this We've seen a ton of places where you have those raw materials or you have the hard infrastructure The equivalent of kind of a city's electric heater or water and sewer infrastructure But there's no life where there's very little life, right? And and you get jamie's experience, right? Where you have someone with incredible operating experience In building multiple high growth companies that have exited but couldn't find tribe couldn't find community couldn't find peers To to live work and play with and so the charge I think for us in terms of where we go next As a community really is about building up that soft infrastructure that that you mentioned at the end, right? These these dinners that are happening. There's a reason that you continue to happen, right? It's because people find value in building rapport with folks who they break bread with and so I think How do we expand that pie how to expand that experience include more folks? How to create different experiences that are comparable in terms of outcomes But maybe aren't the pointy-to-pointy dinners that exclusive restaurants, etc, etc But I think that soft infrastructure creates right the what we would call the maybe in the city would be the the green space or the public The parks or the the museums that give life, right that bring energy and make a place liveable and Contribute to this lifestyle kind of portion. I think those are the things that Miami's star community right now has a huge opportunity in Especially kind of somebody in this question about will we stand to gain or lose? From remote work on what's happening now. I'm a big believer that there's there's a lot of chatter for sure A lot of noise about people looking to move in different places I don't know it's going to be a flood but we've definitely seen both in data and anecdotally An uptick in the kinds and people kinds a number of people they're choosing to be here And if we don't kind of make a really concerted effort community commitment If we will to welcome those folks to help those folks find their community their peers I think the loss there is that in two or three years I'll say you know what I tried it great quality of life But I couldn't find anybody to to work with and play with so i'm heading back to new york city Right, so I think Miami unlike most other cities in the country right now has the unique ability to retain the people Who are choosing to be here, right? We're not also in that we have to kind of incentivize you with a $10,000 bonus People are choosing to be here because we've built a really cool city over the last decade and change Now how do we keep them? We'll keep some here is attached. What attaches them to place is other people We got to make those make sure those relationships with bonds Occurrently stick Awesome. Oh, those are all all great answers. So we're making good time. We have about 15 minutes left So at this point I'd like to open it up to q&a for the the folks in the audience that are writing in some really terrific questions So we'll kind of jump all over the place in the topics that we've covered so far Let's go back to talent real quick somebody writes in There seems to be a disconnect between the talent and companies as I've heard mature companies say I can't find the talent I needed Miami and I've heard talents say I can't find the companies that will hire Why is that after so many years of in Miami and uh in finding tech talent? Why is that still an issue? Where is that disconnect coming from? I think As somebody that hired a bunch of different a lot of people down here what we learned very quickly was Somewhere like new york city it is very easy to say this is the skill set that I want And I think one of the best learnings that we had Um That will drive every business that I run in the future Was you don't hire for skills, right? Like you don't hire for skills early on or you don't hire only for skills, right? Um at a high growth startup like I would probably our first 20 hires. I don't know what their skills were Hustle heart and learning and so I think they're the gap Will is not necessarily I think there's a piece of it employers know what they want Right or they think they know what they want and they want it now. They don't want to have to build it Right, so it's the short term versus the long term gratification Um, and I think people that are looking for different companies. I don't think companies do a good job Um branding themselves at all Right and how they're different and what the differentiators are and put themselves in sort of different places Um and not just indeed um So I think the disconnect Um Is really due to I mean many things but really those two two things Like when you, you know, we spent so my last business was literally based on building talent And so my job was to speak to pretty much every chro In the fortune 100 and startups. I mean there weren't that many Um, I spoke to a lot and the one thing we heard repeatedly Um, and you can look at this anywhere is you know soft skills are far more important than hard skills We care about hiring for grit learning and confidence Well, I don't know about you guys, but I certainly haven't seen anywhere down here that assesses for that I haven't seen seen many job descriptions except for maybe a couple on angel list I mean we literally and again, I'm a little bit um off the reservation But like our job descriptions we were I was literally I was like I want a badass hustler that has a heart of gold That I want somebody who can learn faster than I can Like and by the way when you apply for this job show me demonstrate you can do those things Right, so I still think there is a little bit of I'm going to call it a an old school hiring mentality down here Um, that I think if we shifted a little bit at least for us we had no problem hiring Hundreds of employees that were amazing If I could just add to that I think that there's two two different conversations, right? One is the mature company. So if I don't know if uber needed to hire, you know, a thousand software developers in Miami You know potentially there is just not a big enough pipeline to fill those thousands seats I don't know. I haven't looked data, but that I'm intuitively that sounds like that could be a problem Now the talent shortage that I don't buy is when you're a startup and you need to hire two people If you're starting Miami and you can't hire two people It's not the lack of talent And and and that's really tough, right? But there's something about what you're offering either the salary is really low Which was you know, go back to a previous question or the equity compensation isn't there to adjust for the risk Or your company mission isn't attractive or you as a leader You know just people don't want to work for you and that is probably the hardest to counter terms with But the point is I think that and we've seen startups that had broken out over the last, I don't know five to ten years And at some point they knew they they have needed to you know start importing talent But at that very beginning if you tell me you can't hire two to five people That's not a Miami And that may be a bit of a contrarian take care I mean I would say if you can't hire 200 people it's then There's a lot of people down here We have three big universities like I think to Amy and Nico's point really quickly will is that there's a disconnect but the disconnect is really around the expectations and What is communicated on either part, right? So people that are looking for jobs don't know how necessarily to demonstrate That they have more than a resume that they're plugged in that they're involved that they're passionate that they care And they're probably not used to hiring processes where you actually have to show not just tell You know with our internal process. We have a rock star team never have a shortage of folks That are that we're applying for the small amount of roles, but it was really easy to find because we Go through process reaction to show what you do. I think on the hiring side the the same thing goes I recruited like I actually handpicked people I went out to places where I knew that people that had those skills I like have a watch list of folks that were like I've been eyeing for years that I was like Oh a role I already know that you have the skills because I'm actively involved in the community And so I'm able to identify a short list of people that I am personally reaching out to So I think on the the company side or the founder side like we also have to do our jobs of being plugged in As much as we can like you can still build But be tapped into a network where you can get referrals things like talent scout a great resource And so I think that there's a bit of a disconnect around like the how how both sides are approaching the problem And it just continues to to create a larger a gap That's a great answer. Thank you everyone for chiming in role. Do you have thoughts on this? Um, no, I agree with what folks have said I do think that though that there's opportunity especially in today's day To reimagine the marketplaces that bring talent and opportunity together, right? And so in a community like Miami, that's very young and nascent density is low On a per capita basis in terms of sometimes the talent that we're looking for Um, and and and the ventures as well that that talent would want to work for And so I do believe that there's supply demand kind of discovery issues, right? I think they're both there and I hear these things all the time I can't find great companies. I can't find great talent And I think one of the things that we're exploring at the foundation is what new models of marketplaces Should we conceive of or could we conceive of and our community is trying out to bring those two sides together, right? And recent horrors had a great kind of post recently about the great rehiring Which will happen as as we've kind of come out of lockdown and how horizontal marketplaces for talent like an indeed or linked in Are going to be challenged competing against more specialized vertical Places that specialize in nursing skills or logistic skill sets, etc Etc because those vertical marketplaces help you cut through the noise faster And so I think there's definitely an opportunity in Miami to innovate and to kind of come up with new models new Marketplaces that cut through the noise and help awesome talent kind of find great companies more easily Awesome. I want to get back to diversity and inclusion Somebody writes in a common pattern and work for inclusion is that leaders of color Who value inclusion are asked to single-handedly lead efforts on diversity inclusion within their own companies On top of doing the job that they were hired for So often diversity and inclusion efforts fall apart within companies because they are not sustainable for that person's workload Without the mobilization of resources and people in the entire company beyond that one individual. It's a great point How can we avoid the same pattern of burnout for individual leaders invested in inclusion in our innovation ecosystem? I hate to be the person that takes the staff at that at first, but I'm looking at the participants and I can almost guess who actually asked that question Um, but notwithstanding, you know, I think that's a real point that I think in this particular moment in time We can have some real transparent honest conversations like inclusion is not a one-person job It's an actual commitment that has to come from leadership Some of us had have had offline conversations around what that looks like. So I think, you know In this moment, it's great for honesty around just saying. I don't know what to do I know we need to do something but as a leader I have no idea what we should do But it's also incumbent upon leaders to connect with each other and connect with the resources to learn And then secondly pay people if you want someone to lead your d and i efforts You need to add dollars and cents to their salary To compensate for what they are doing or pay consultants or pay the people that you're asking to like just pick their brain and help You create a framework on how you could be more equitable diverse and inclusive I think the last thing I would say about these efforts is they fall apart because they don't have Buy-in in three forms. So there's not you don't have buy-in in terms of the folks that have privilege power and influence actually taking a step back Or providing That same level of power and influence to decision makers or people that are leading those efforts So they don't have kind of buy-in within the whole organization. The second piece is there's no, um, Clear expectations or articulation around what are the strategic action steps by which the organization can be held accountable So it's not just about metrics in a quantitative sense, but qualitative and quantitatively like what's the game plan So that there can be accountability. So people don't say, oh, we had a lunch. How many lunches do we have this year? um, and I think the third thing is um putting money where your mouth is I love to see the organizations that are following up their black lives matter support statements with like dollars Like actual funds, but then thinking strategically about not just giving money like throwing money at a problem but Coupling that money with a strategy and bringing in the right resources to ensure that it's a great impactful investment Yeah, and um, and and this is a conversation that Leanne and I had had offline um I think the most important part is is commitment at the top right, so when uh, I I go back to the uber example from a few years ago when they had a very very dark deep uh D and I problem and what they do they just hired somebody Right, but there was no change at the leadership There was no it was like they basically got a bunch of bad PR and said all right. Well What's a counter PR headline? Well, we can say that we hired this awesome person That I think was kind of coming from whatever awesome University with whatever awesome track record and specialist in this thing And I think that person lasted in that role like six months Right because that commitment wasn't honest. It wasn't authentic and it wasn't coming from from the leadership And so I think that d and I I Efforts will be will have very short legs if Leadership which today is you know across different industries is mostly white mostly male And doesn't have a day of reckoning or a conversation with the mirror And saying what what is it that that we need to change in order to do this because this is not just a A sticker that we can put on by by hiring somebody even if you pay that person really well Put you Awesome, we are coming up at the end of this. We have a few minutes left So just to to to recap and bring us in for a close here before we hand it off to a role who will sign us out I just like to go around the horn to each of our panelists for one actionable item takeaway Uh, you know something of value that that you could leave us with either This is an action item for you or a call to action for the community Which I heard a lot of great stuff here on this call So real quick just like to go around the horn and and hear what those might be Leanne, I'd like to start with you I knew you're gonna call on me first. So I'm trying to think about an action step Um, here's like just a bit of a plug action step Like we have been thinking at venture cafe how we can be more innovative around creating Some connectivity on different efforts around addressing racial and equity innovation here in Miami So we've got the survey please fill it out It's literally who you are are you committed what you can offer what you need So we can get some ideas on how we can be strategic But I think the important thing is just collaborate I think the best way to be equitable inclusive and diverse is to not stand on your own And be on your own island So think about you know, if you're doing programming if you're doing sessions What three or four organizations could you collaborate with? Um, because that I think is the first step when we get outside of our silos and begin to bring in other folks from diverse perspectives and diverse points of view Awesome. Jamie I think I would go back to what I said before like the community needs to make a commitment, right? And I think there's like two very tactical and easy ways to do that What like go right on your LinkedIn profile if you're interested and learn it on South Florida reach out Very simple takes 10 seconds. I think and the way to manage that because um, You know that can take a lot of time um I like personally I just do blocks. I do like a two 30 minute blocks every three days To talk to a certain type of individual So like I'll do two two blocks a week to talk to people that are coming into Miami It's just time management and discipline and like I think you know Everybody seems to talk a lot about doing this stuff. So I'll be really interested to see who actually Changes their profile I think I just threw out a challenge Nico Yeah, um So we're we're doing a couple things right one is uh, I've opened my calendar and I'm doing office hours specifically for black founders because a lot of what we heard was that That there is an access issue And so we want to remove that barrier That's one And the second is internally at the fund we have a learning objective every year Where you go deep into something and then you educate the rest of the team on what you learn My annual Topic this year will be race relations in america because having that been born or raised here It's it's something that is very different and new to me um And then uh kind of to the end point it goes it goes down to dollars, right? So that there's that the hashtag higher or wire That's going around on twitter And you know, we're looking to invest in and divest Founders and a lot of those will be black and we need to invest in black founders. So actively sourcing companies as diverse as possible And we're thinking about potentially onboarding an intern and we're still kind of You know internally thinking about how we can set that up because we're we're a very small team of three people So do we have the the soft infrastructure internally as a firm to have that internship experience to be available? So stay tuned on that It may or may not happen All right, roble Folks this discussion was absolutely Incredible. I really appreciate your time your candid thoughts and insights And the experience that you bring to the table from from each of the the roles that you're playing in town I'm I'm so enthused. I'm so excited. I'm so optimistic about what's happening I know this crazy crazy kind of implications and questions from from the pandemic around The state of the economy who's benefiting who's not But I really think that this kind of moment of reflection Is it's one where Miami can can absolutely rise to the moment and and further build what what we've already accomplished in terms of creating a community of entrepreneurs investors talent That's creating high growth ventures High impact ventures that's creating wealth for more of Miami And it's keeping a lot more folks in town and ability to kind of stay and participate in the future of the city So on the net incredibly excited about this. I bow down to each of you for the work you're doing And continue I've done continue to do And truly grateful for For what hopes what I hope to be is just the first of many conversations of the summer that that are kind of Moments of reflection as I mentioned before but also the moments of reorientation where we think there's new growth So a huge thanks to you will I had a colleague slap me Have to do the chat saying that she went to you to narrate her life Um, so kudos to you. Uh, and thank you. Leigh Ann, Jamie, Nico for being uh, so awesome at bringing you or your whole selves to this Thanks folks