Kudos to St. Pete Times business writer Robert Trigaux for his recent blog post (Can new fund boost Florida’s venture capital?) and his update on Florida’s Opportunity Fund. While the fund is far from new news, having several false starts and changes in leadership, the post does a good job of capturing some of the challenges that we face in Florida and why the old school economic development crowd needs to stop what they are doing and start paying attention to what works. Continue reading this post…

…for most superficial view of technology and business in Florida … Brent Britton weighs in with his view of why Florida is the new rising star for tech. Based on research from the AeA, an industry organization whose statistics use a very wide definition of tech and tech workers, all is well in our home state. This is great news for TBTF and the prediction that Tampa will be a top tech town by 2015.

Drinking from the same bucket of koolaide as state and local economic development clones, this type of “We’re #1″ group-think breeds stupidity, complacency and a willingness to throw good money after bad as we desperately try to attract the next Scripps or Draper Labs. Continue reading this post…

Congrats to the folks over @ Rent-a-Coder for their second listing in Inc. Magazine’s Top 5000 Fastest Growing Companies.

One of the biggest complaints (or excuses) I hear from would-be startup founders is the lack of access to development talent. While I am the first to discourage people from building a prototype or version 1.0 product using remote resources, sometimes local talent just isn’t available.

Remember, if you are relying on outside development, a good product requirements plan and complete product spec are doubly important.