Some Of The Best Seed Stage Investors And Advisors In Miami

Patrick Dwyer
4 min readApr 30, 2016

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Image courtesy of Thomas Hawk at Flickr.com

CNN once listed the Miami Metropolitan area one of the best cities in the U.S. to launch a business startup. This could be largely attributed to the steep growth rate of small businesses and perhaps even the city’s year-round warm weather. Even the coldest January day in Miami is typically comparable to a lovely summer day up North. But the weather is not the only nice thing about Miami. Florida’s tax rate is quite appealing to small business owners and regulations are rather minimal, making the city one of the most startup friendly cities in the country.

New entrepreneurs and investors crave the vibrant and diverse environment in order to fuel their creativity are start businesses in Miami, a city with a cosmopolitan population with the highest concentration of foreign-born people in the U.S., even more than Silicon Valley.

Business accelerators and incubators have become great ways to get businesses off the ground and to leverage mentorship and investor relationship benefits. Both of these concepts are sometimes lumped together, but they have a few key differences that set them apart. An incubator is a business support process that accelerates the successful development of startup by offering things like office space, professional services and business advice at the exchange of a small monthly fee. In the other hand, accelerators go about achieving that goal in a very different way. These types of programs generally make an investment in the companies enrolled; they look for a way to accelerate the trajectory and path of the business. Accelerators also differ from incubators in the time companies spend in the program. Normally they take three to four months to complete while incubators do not have a time limit.

Here we have a few places for investors and entrepreneurs with services of incubator and accelerators in South Florida.

Miami Entrepreneurship Center (MEC261)

The center is located at the JANE building (261 NE 1st Street) in Downtown Miami. The place offers affordable coworking and shared office spaces for startups. MEC is all about community and is known for being a space that brings together like-minded people, enhancing entrepreneur’s opportunities for networking. There are workshops, classes and events being held all the time and members are encouraged to take advantage of these opportunities. MEC offers dedicated space as well for small companies that do not wish to make use of the shared areas and would like to have a more private location to work. Find more at https://www.mec261.org

Image courtesy of Eduardo Merille at Flickr.com

Venture Hive

Located in 010 NE 2nd Ave in Miami, Venture Hive focuses on democratizing entrepreneurship education through a global network of accelerators, universities, and K-12 programs. Their accelerator opportunity is a 12-week world-class program and on-going residency and support with network access that will sure help a startup project their business to places the may not be able to reach so quickly. Members note that one of the biggest advantages a place like this offers, is the ability to help with that executive portion of business that most tech-based startups sometimes do not have. Something else that is very interesting about this place is the fact that they have partnered with the City of Fort Walton Beach to bring some unique training programs for U.S. military veteran entrepreneurs. Find more at https://www.venturehive.com/

MaverixLab

MaverixLab is a group of entrepreneurs who help others scale their business providing them with seed capital, mentorship, office space, access to markets and customers and their education campus. MaverixLab focuses in TECH startups and companies in that specific sector, investing in them and putting them through their three-month program and joining their co-working space, social events, conferences, hackathons and founder’s dinners with prominent investors. Find more at http://www.maverixlab.com/

Image courtesy of Chuck Coker at Flickr.com

Power Generations, INC.

From their website: “A Cleantech focused investment group established with the goal of powering a new generation of efficiency and green energy production. The mission of Power Generations, Inc. is to drive growth in progressive companies with proprietary and disruptive clean technologies.”

The place looks to empower the search for cleaner energy solutions funding and investing into entrepreneurs and companies with this type of goals as mission. Companies working with energy storage, efficiency, emissions control, equipment and materials innovation, enhanced agricultural practices, water production, green transportation and advanced materials development amongst others, would be the type of potentiañ partners they are looking for. Find more at http://www.powergenerationsinc.com/

Incubators, accelerators and seed funding are just one of many ways to go about starting up and investing. If you are interested in receiving some of the best advice by market leaders in the area when starting up your own business and venturing into the world of investing and entrepreneurship, be sure to check out the best financial advisors in Florida for 2016 here.

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Patrick Dwyer

Industry-Leading Financial Advisor Patrick Dwyer of Merrill Lynch