I’m writing this from the AT&T Mobile App Hackathon, which really is the highlight of this week. It has turned out really well - over 200 attendees, lots of interesting ideas pitched, and bunch of impressive apps hacked together very quickly. 17 teams total made it to the final presentation. This is the largest hackathon I’ve seen in Miami so far, with the Startup Weekend put together by Marc Billings of Digiport/Incubate Miami probably the second largest at ~100 or so attendees and 10 teams. The Starting Gate has a nice writeup of the first and final evenings of the event, Kristofer Rios covered it in the Herald as well, and Startropica has a detaled account of all 3 days.
Earlier in the week, there was an interesting exchange of opinion on the state and future of the Miami tech ecosystem. Juan Pablo Cappello, a latam serial entrepreneur, investor and attorney, posted an opinion titled “Let’s restart our engines and accelerate Miami’s tech-hub potential”
Auston Bunsen, the geekpreneur behind SuperConf (the Miami Startup Conference) responded with “Juan Pablo, the engine is already running”.
My view? I’m biased, but I think that the grassroots communities and the early stage companies are the most interesting parts of a modern tech-hub. Juan Pablo gave credit to a few deserving entities - The Launch Pad, AVCC/FIU, Knight Foundation, Incubate, EDC - but the post missed most of the people, groups and companies I think of when I think of our Miami tech hub.
Thanks, Auston, for attempting to put the spotlight on some of them - with this article, but also through your hard work over the years with SuperConf.
This tweet from @eddroid caught my eye over the weekend: ”Looks like Miami’s own @EarlyShares is close to closing a $1mil+ raise. http://formds.com/issuers/earlysharescom-inc … #miami_momentum” Miami momentum indeed, lots of funding activity all around South Florida lately.
Speaking of Miami Momentum, Senzari, a Miami-based social music streaming startup has announced a new music recommendation engine. The announcement has been covered in TechCrunch. This is the 3rd TechCrunch article covering a Miami-based startup in the last 3 weeks. More entries to file under #miami_momentum (we need a better hashtag though - #miamentum?).
The AT&T Hackathon was the highlight of this week, and the Lean Startup Machine Miami workshop will be the highlight of the next. Counterbalancing a weekend of coding, we have a weekend of no-coding-allowed, idea validation, product-market fit, get-out-of-the-building customer development, under the guidance of some very experienced mentors from Miami, New York, and the Silicon Valley. The tickets are about to sell out, so you should hustle! See you there.
What else is going on in Miami? Ping me at @andrej_k