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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

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.

Startup Tampa Bay – Nov. 14th

by | Nov 17, 2014 | #EDI2, Startups, Tech Rant, Technology-based Economic Development

In his final Startup Tampa Bay video as a @HillsboroughFL Commissioner, @MarkSharpeFL discusses his successful EDI2 program and how it has helped the local tech ecosystem grow in both activity and visibility.

A few recurring topics came up in this video that are worthy of additional discussion:

  1. Finding startup resources in Tampa Bay
  2. Branding Tampa Bay as a active & growing tech ecosystem
  3. Availability of investment capital in the region

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VC Blogs – Subscribers vs. Substance

by | Sep 15, 2009 | Startups, Tech Rant

The Eric Schoenfled TechCrunch article on Top VC Blogs got a fair amount of play on Twitter last week, but the background for this post originates on Larry Cheng’s site where there is a much more comprehensive listing of 100+ VC Bloggers (ranked by number of subscribers).

The posts on these blogs range from superficial insight and self-promotion to deep dive management advice and personal insight into the strategies, challenges and pitfalls of early stage tech ventures. Don’t be mislead by the rankings, sometimes the large following is due more to star-power or volume of posts and not quality of content. (more…)