Investing In Florida Technology

Hello, my name's Tom Wallace, and I'm the Managing Partner of Florida Funders. Welcome to Florida Funders podcast. Our podcast is all about how to make all of us better angel investors, or better founders or entrepreneurs. We really address two audiences here. One thing that I love about angel investing and entrepreneurship is, it's so dynamic, so fluid, and there's always something new to learn, and somebody new to learn from. Our guest this week is Tony Dibenedetto. See acast.com/privacy...

When you paint a picture in your head of the American Dream, what do you see? For many of us, it involves the vision of being ‘self-made’ and designing our own destiny, no matter where we came from. For Elias Torres, the choice his mother made when she immigrated from Nicaragua to Tampa would prove to be a fortuitous one in helping him realize that dream. After his early start at IBM, Torres became committed to the vision of entrepreneurship. With Drift, his current company, he has proven...

It's been more than 18 months since the COVID-19 pandemic started and we experienced weeks of lockdowns, quarantines, and a total reconfiguration of the way we work. For venture capitalist David Blumberg, the pandemic took him from his ancestral home of California across the country to Florida. Realizing that he was no longer chained to his fixed, physical office in San Francisco, he took the plunge and moved over 3,000 miles in order to take advantage of the up-and-coming vibe of Miami, as...

What happens when a brand new tech startup finds itself in the middle of one of the worst financial crises the country has ever seen? With a little luck, some intuitiveness, and a lot of hard work, a pivot in the right direction can not only save a company, it can create major success, too. Brian Murphy founded ReliaQuest in 2007, just as the US was plunging into the Great Recession. While he didn’t know it yet, a DoD contract would come to be instrumental in the company’s pivot from IT to...

Discipline, initiative, and responsibility are all skills you would expect a young person to learn in the military. But what about teamwork and learning to successfully collaborate with others as a whole greater than its parts? For Hugh Campbell, his time in the US Army taught him this invaluable lesson. When Campbell entered West Point fresh out of high school, he never dreamed of the opportunities that would soon be accessible to him. Through his work as a communications officer, Campbell...

We’ve all had that lightbulb moment at least once in our lives, where we have a striking realization seemingly independent of everyone else around us. What we don’t all have the privilege of experiencing? Having that moment lead to an early adoption of and investment in what would quickly become the most important, groundbreaking technology on the planet. Arnie Bellini began his career at Price Waterhouse just as personal computers began their evolution from space-age technology to...

Have you ever had a moment of recognition that an issue you were experiencing was readily solvable, and you might just be the one to figure out how? Reuben Pressman started on the journey that brought him to where he is today when he began coding as a 10-year-old. As a student at the University of South Florida, he realized that the majority of the learning he was doing was going on outside the classroom—and that student involvement was a huge blind spot at his and many other...

Have you ever had a moment of recognition that an issue you were experiencing was readily solvable, and you might just be the one to figure out how? Reuben Pressman started on the journey that brought him to where he is today when he began coding as a 10-year-old. As a student at the University of South Florida, he realized that the majority of the learning he was doing was going on outside the classroom—and that student involvement was a huge blind spot at his and many other...

Have you ever had a moment of recognition that an issue you were experiencing was readily solvable, and you might just be the one to figure out how? Reuben Pressman started on the journey that brought him to where he is today when he began coding as a 10-year-old. As a student at the University of South Florida, he realized that the majority of the learning he was doing was going on outside the classroom—and that student involvement was a huge blind spot at his and many other...

Have you ever wondered what it takes for a young immigrant to truly achieve the American dream? Well, you might just be able to learn a thing or two from Manny Medina’s story. After emigrating to Miami as a young teen and—as he puts it—surviving high school, Medina was able to develop a unique and valuable perspective on the US-Latin American market. From his jetsetting early years as a CPA at PricewaterhouseCoopers, to his time in Kuwait helping rebuild after the liberation, to creating...

The world of entrepreneurship is more harrowing, thrilling, and rewarding as ever, but the past year and a half has been especially exciting for Florida investors. With the influx of people from New York, California, and even from Latin America, the area has experienced an incredible boom that has benefited investors and entrepreneurs alike. One such industry growing exponentially from all of this? Organizations that are designed to incubate entrepreneurs like Endeavor, where Claudia Duran...

To the traditional investor, the world of cryptocurrency can be intimidating. Luckily, my guest today is an expert in the field and helps us break it all down. If you’ve found yourself wondering about crypto, DeFi, and the blockchain economy, listen in—you may discover this brave new world of finance isn’t quite as complicated as you might think. Join me today as I welcome Rennick Palley, founder and CIO at Stratos Technologies. Rennick is an MIT graduate who started his career on Wall...

Curious as to how military training prepares you for the world of entrepreneurship? If you’ve ever found yourself at a crossroads in your career and felt that you just aren’t being offered anything to your liking, have you ever thought of striking out on your own? Entrepreneurship is a complicated and humbling experience, but it also allows you to be your own boss and create the business you’ve always wanted to work for. What happens when a former Army officer and member of the White House...

Have you ever wondered what it takes to develop true staying power in an industry as quick and variable as tech? If you’re serious about making it in the tech world, there are certain attributes that will set you apart from the pack. Curiosity, humility, and the ability to see patterns are invaluable for anyone, but are absolute prerequisites for successful entrepreneurs. Couple these with a shrewd eye for team building and a knack for playing to your own strengths, and you may be well on...

Being a successful angel investor requires a lot of work and commitment. At Florida Funders, our goal is to make it easier for people and increase their chances of finding the right opportunities for them. Being in this arena for over 25 years, we’ve learned valuable lessons on how to maximize the probability of great returns, and we’ve compiled these best practices into what we call “The 5 Ds of Angel Investing.” In this episode, Tom Wallace talks in detail about these five important...

At Florida Funders, we are helping early-stage companies get access to capital from investors through an online process and crowdfunding. We’re all about learning best practices and getting better at angel investing, and the purpose of this podcast is to interview some of the best and brightest and most successful investors and entrepreneurs to learn from them and get better in the process. After interviewing a handful of people on the show and finding out what makes them tick, what...

What started as a friendship between two women cheerleading for the Buccaneers ended up in Next Path: a growing company providing hiring solutions for companies that see people as their competitive advantage. In today's episode, Ashley Jarocki and Stephanie Markese share with us how they went from cheering on the same line together to making a leap of faith and starting their own company in the staffing world. Stephanie Markese always wanted to be a dentist until she realized that she...

When you hear about a new idea, how can you be sure it’s good or bad? As an investor, you have to be a calculated risk-taker. Of course, there’s the due diligence that can help you decide whether the business that’s presented to you is worth funding, but you still need a dose of courage to financially support an idea Netflix is one of those successful businesses that weren’t short of ups and downs – and in this episode, you will hear the story of Netflix seen through the lens of one of...

Just like Florida is known for strawberries and tourism, LA is currently most famous for Hollywood – but things are gradually changing. The technology landscape is constantly growing and although LA has become a huge market, it still feels young. This means there are, yet, a lot of opportunities for angel investors to practice the art of venture capital in the right way, and grab their share of the market. Adam Struck is a Floridian but he is currently living in LA with his family....

Just like Florida is known for strawberries and tourism, LA is currently most famous for Hollywood – but things are gradually changing. The technology landscape is constantly growing and although LA has become a huge market, it still feels young. This means there are, yet, a lot of opportunities for angel investors to practice the art of venture capital in the right way, and grab their share of the market. Adam Struck is a Floridian but he is currently living in LA with his family....