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Revenue First Startup Strategy

by | Mar 7, 2024 | Go-to-Market, Startup Sales, Startups

I joined host Fred Schonenberg on the Venture Fuel Podcast to compare notes on tech accelerators, investing, and the difficulties in supporting climatetech startups.

In this episode, we delved into the world of early-stage startup strategy. We explored the crucial importance of finding early adopters and achieving product-market fit, highlighting the need to shift focus from solely raising capital. Join us as we unveil key insights and valuable strategies to propel your startup’s success.

AI Innovation Showcase

by | Feb 24, 2024 | Startups

TBIC AI Showcase:
Watch Video

The event was held on February 21st, 2024 at the newly opened ARK Innovation Center in downtown St. Pete, Florida.

The event featured a welcome from Tonya Elmore, CEO of the Tampa Bay Innovation Center.

Our event sponsor, Steve Tingiris from Dabble Labs, provided a retrospective of the TampaBay tech ecosystem and highlighted some of the critical milestones of our collective journey.

TBIC Accelerator alumni Rosa Shores, Co-founder and CEO of Blockspaces, gave the crowd an update on their progress and an overview of their new product for managing cryptocurancey-based fiancial products.

Cathie Wood, CEO and CIO of ARK Invest and title sponsor of the Innovation Center’s new facility in downtown St. Pete provided the keynote address, which features a glimpse into ARK Big Ideas 2024 research. Cathie called out the progress made in artificial intelligence, noting the decreasing costs of training large language models and the uptick in practical uses of AI across many industries.

The main event for the day featured the following startups who participated in a 12-week workshop focused on market validation and product-market fit.

  • Aapya Solutions – Computer vision and machine learning system for retail inventory awareness and analytics
  • Archslate – Project and cost management system for the architectural and engineering industry
  • Blue Fusion – Simplifying data collection and analysis to support AI model training
  • Dataplant – Driving personalized revenue retention at scale for customer success teams
  • Metacommerz – Optimizing the supply chain with data analytics
  • NoxuData – Conversational data analytics for CPG brands
  • Subconscious.ai – Predicting buyer behavior with automated market research
  • Traq.ai – AI-assisted analysis and optimization of sales team performance 

If you missed the event, you can watch the video on TBIC’s YouTube channel:

https://youtu.be/EZa71IKQxfQ?si=v_pLr4lU4Fn9nmJw

Our next accelerator will focus on #climatetech and #sustainability – if you are building a startup in this space and interested in participating in our program, apply at: https://bit.ly/ClimateTech24

#tampabay #startup #accelerators #ai

Startup Rant: Myths, Metrics & Models

by | Jan 31, 2020 | Founder Focus, Go-to-Market, Startups, Technology-based Economic Development

I found this video of a talk a gave at Kauffman’s 1M Cups in Tampa a while back. It is a short riff on my BarCamp talk “Stupid Shit Startups Say,” which I toned down a bit for a more generic crowd. The theme was the same; emerging tech ecosystems are full of misinformation and well-meaning but poorly qualified advice on what startup founders need to know and do when building a new tech venture.

Fighting the urge to “fake it until you make it” and focusing on solving real problems with scalable products produces real companies with honest, mature founders. As a tech community fighting for credibility on the global stage, we should expect and support nothing less.

Sorry, the audio isn’t very good, I tried to clean it up but the camera was in the back of the room with no external mic. If you turn on captions, you will get 90% of the presentation. I look forward to giving this talk again in person someday, probably at another BarCamp. In the meantime, good luck with your startups, and please don’t say stupid $#!+.

Entrepreneurship – Engagement vs. Education

by | Feb 23, 2015 | Startups

Entrepreneurship Conference at UT

This week marks the return of the annual South East Entrepreneurship Conference (SEEC) hosted by the University of Tampa. University sponsored teams from all over SE will converge on UT to attend workshops, listen to keynotes from expereinced business owners, and pitch their ideas in a series of presentations. Once again, I am honored to be participating as a judge at the finals on Saturday afternoon and I look forward to seeing the wide variety of ideas that these participants have prepared for the conference.

While I am not a big fan of business plan contests and prefer to see people building products vs. pitching them, the participants at this conference and similar events like those hosted by USF’s St. Pete Entrepreneurship program continue to impress me with their insight and enthusiasm. After judging at last year’s SEEC, I got to know a few of the local participants and see them often at tech-focused gatherings such as BarCamp and Startup Grind. Their passion for building new products and businesses lasted well after the conference had ended and even if they have moved on from their original idea to something new, they are some of the most motivated and curious individuals that I have had the pleasure to meet.

I am pleased to see the “Always Be Learning” mentality extends far beyond academia for these folks with several of them mentioning their diverse peer network in the community and how hands-on resources like the Tampa Hackerspace helped them to see their ideas as more than a plan on paper. It is very encouraging to hear these teams focus less on chasing money and more on testing their ideas in the market and developing better means of customer engagement. I hope this year’s batch of teams brings more of the same. Good luck to all.

Reviving Tech Rant – Brainstorming for Tech Startups

by | Dec 11, 2014 | Market Strategy, Startups, Tech Rant, Technology-based Economic Development

We started Tech Rant back in late ’07 as a supplement to the workshops hosted by TBTF’s Emerging Companies Academy myimgprogram. These weekly coffee chats were structured as an informal support group for start-up founders and early stage tech companies. They were held every week for almost two years before moving to the IdeaField space, the first full-time coworking facility in the Tampa Bay region.

With the Hillsborough County Entrepreneur Collaborative Center (ECC) about to officially open this week in Ybor, it seemed like a good time to revisit the Tech Rant format to see if there was interest in restarting these startup brainstorming sessions.

Please let us know what times / days work best. As a test run, let’s shoot for a brown bag lunch format on Thursday Dec. 18th at 11:30 am.

As it was before, all topics are fair game. Stop in to discuss any challenge you may be facing in your start-up including:

• Idea validation
• Creating a product roadmap 
• Finding co-founders (and do you need one) 
• Creating / refining your business model & roadmap
• Market validation & product readiness 
• Sales & distribution strategy 
• Hiring contractors or full-time employees 
• Applying for an incubator / accelerator program 
• Raising outside funding (angel, venture, crowd, etc.) 
• Partner development & agreements 
• IP strategy & licensing 
• Hiring service providers (attorneys, accountants, other) 
Details:
Thursday Dec. 18th
11:30 – 1:00
Hillsborough County’s Entrepreneur Collaborative Center
2101 E. Palm Avenue (in Ybor City)
Parking lot north of Palm is free 
 
RSVP on TechRant’s MeetUp page

If you have any other questions, feel free to ping me on MeetUp or on Twitter @StartupMonkey.