Announcing Future Founders Miami
Lately, a lot of founders have been asking me “why is Miami important to the future of tech?” The short answer is easy: come see for yourself. For me, it’s a little bit of everything: the weather, the culture, the diversity, the art, the ideas…but mostly, it’s the people. Miami mayor Francis Suarez described the workforce here as “young, incredibly talented, diverse, and competitive.” I would add “entrepreneurial’’ to that list based on the folks I’ve met since first visiting Miami earlier this year.
Our founder Jack Abraham moved here last July because the opportunity to build new companies in Miami was clear. Since then, he has brought along our general partner Chester Ng and our COO Healey Cypher, as well as several other key leaders from the Atomic team and from our broader portfolio of high-growth startups. This year, we’ve been on a tear: we opened our Wynwood office in April and hosted our Atomic Miami Open House this week, and have already created more than a dozen new companies out of our new $260M fund, several of them here in Miami.
The energy I feel in Miami is reminiscent of NYC Tech circa 2010. While it was too early to call New York a “tech hub”, one could already see the beginnings of high-growth startups like Rent the Runway, MongoDB, Venmo and dozens more. The emerging “Silicon Alley” was composed of smart, scrappy, and hungry entrepreneurs who wanted to make a mark on the world and didn’t believe they had to move to Silicon Valley in order to do so. The community was small, but growing, and above-all highly collaborative — operators, investors, and builders helping one another get ahead because a rising tide lifts all boats.
The skeptics often ask me: “but how will you recreate Silicon Valley in Miami?” The short answer is again easy: we will not. We will continue to heavily invest in new talent and our companies based in the Bay Area because entrepreneurship is not a zero sum game. What will make the Miami Tech ecosystem successful is not replicating the conditions of Silicon Valley or migrating people from SF, but nurturing local talent and emerging as a vibrant ecosystem of its own. Miami’s competitive advantage is the diversity of its people, thoughts, and ideas, the focus on economic growth from its city officials, and the high quality of life for all residents — and we at Atomic will continue celebrating these unique characteristics.
2021 feels like the same pivotal moment for Miami as 2010 did for New York City. Our mission at Atomic is to expand access to entrepreneurship, especially to those outside of Silicon Valley and from underrepresented backgrounds and Miami is the perfect place to continue with that mission. Today we are announcing Future Founders Miami: a new program focused exclusively on recruiting top talent to build high-growth and high-impact companies right here in Miami. If you’re interested in building Miami’s first billion-dollar company from the ground up, we want to talk to you. Check out details on Future Founders Miami and apply here.
