Tech Hub’s inaugural ‘Venture Appreciate Night’🚀 was a celebration of all the people who make up our startup community in South Florida!
Founders, funders and friends in the region came together to enjoy a three-course dinner, drinks, great networking and recognition of some of our ecosystem’s players.
For more than the past two decades, South Florida has been on the top of the charts as one of the country’s top places for entrepreneurship activity, but lacked in the funding that followed. That’s beginning to change.
In Q4 of last year, the overall deal flow across the United States including angel and seed, early stage VC, and late-stage VC was the lowest of 2022, according to Q4 2022 PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor. PitchBook’s reports states that “the four consecutive quarters of declining deal counts could foreshadow a continued slide in 2023.” But what does it mean when the South Florida region is defying the odds?
Despite the downturn nationally, the Miami Metro region (Miami, Broward Palm Beach) has climbed to one of the top ten venture capital regions in the country. While other major tech hub’s numbers are sinking, South Florida is consistently on the rise and continued to rise in Q4.
Bay Area | 2022 deal count: 3,263 and 2022 deal value: $75.4B- New York | 2022 deal count: 2,323 and 2022 deal value: $31.4B
- Los Angeles | 2022 deal count: 1,311 and 2022 deal value: $23.3B
- Boston | 2022 deal count: 1,016 and 2022 deal value: $21.4B
- Philadelphia | 2022 deal count: 554 and 2022 deal value: $5.6B
- Seattle | 2022 deal count: 479 and 2022 deal value: $7.8B
- Washington D.C. | 2022 deal count: 443 and 2022 deal value: $4.9B
- Miami | 2022 deal count: 423 and 2022 deal value: $5.5B
- Austin | 2022 deal count: 416 and 2022 deal value: $4.9B
- Chicago | 2022 deal count: 384 and 2022 deal value: $10.2B
This type of progress doesn’t happen overnight. There are thousands of people supporting and helping build our entrepreneurial and startup ecosystem in South Florida. We decided to honor just a few of these founders, funders, and mentors at this year’s inaugural ‘Venture Appreciation Night.’
attendees and honorees mingle
Here are our honorees:
- Claudia Duran | Managing Director @ Endeavor Miami
- Chris Ochner | Co-Founder & Chair @ Modern Trials and CEO @ MindFigure Consulting
- Darie Dorlus | Founder & CEO @ Synchronized Technologies and Startup Mentor
- David Hartmann | Founder & CEO @ The SilverLogic and Mentor @ FAU Tech Runway
- Dr. Kevin Cox | Senior Instructor & Assoc. Director of Adams Center for Entrepreneurship, Entrepreneurs Xchange Lead Instructor @ FAU, and Associate @ Glades Capital
- Giovanni Punzo | Founder & CEO @ Streann Media
- Roxette Irvine | Managing Director @ The LAB Miami, Director of Web3 Global @ Founder Institute, Partner @ 305 Works
- Steven Edwards | Founder & CEO, Premier Virtual
- Tahl Milburn | Gentleman Technologist. Thoughtful Investor. Executive Advisor. Tech Hub Ambassador.
- Todd Albert | Founder & CEO @ Boca Code and Startup Mentor
Gio Punzo shares his founder story
Tech Hub would like to give a big shoutout to Streann Media for being the presenting sponsor and Gio Punzo for giving a very insightful keynote about his founder journey. From being laughed at, told he was wrong, learning to believe in himself and now building a multi-million dollar business that help other businesses scale.
“We are thrilled to be recognized by South Florida Tech Hub as being an integral part of the start-up ecosystem in South Florida,” said Gio Punzo, CEO of Streann Media.
“We have gone from a start-up to becoming a global company, creating jobs around the world with our technologies that are touching millions of people. The content economy is going through a huge transformation and we are leading the change. We are truly blessed to be where we are.”
Check out some of the event photos below. Thank you to all who came out to celebrate with us!
