If you want the most up-to-date overview of Tampa Bay’s startup scene, you’ll want to check out Startup Guide: Tampa Bay.
It was just published yesterday, and it’s written by Dan Holahan of Embarc Collective, a startup accelerator/incubator/coworking space located near downtown Tampa.
Dan’s writeup covers:
- A quick summary of “The Other Bay Area”
- Tampa Bay’s capital landscape
- Notable Tampa Bay startup fundraising deals that took place in the last six months
- Tampa Bay’s startup funders
- Tampa Bay startups to watch
- Local incubators, accelerators, and startup hubs
- Coworking spaces in the area
- Tampa Bay tech/entrepreneur conferences
- Tampa Bay community and event organizers
- Local tech media and podcasts (and I cover more in my recent article on Tampa Bay tech podcasts)
- Local startup job listings
- Tampa Bay city initiatives aimed at entrepreneurs
The Latest on Tampa’s Tech Scene was published in October 2020 and features a number of Tampa Bay-based entrepreneurs, organizations, and activities, including:
- The Undercroft, and their 6-week cybersecurity course, UC Baseline, which I took last summer
- Peerfit
- Connectwise
- Immertec
- Minimise
- CēVē
- Drift
- New Horizons
- TheIncLab
- Embarc Collective
- Tampa Bay Wave
- Synapse
- The City of Tampa’s Smart Mobility program
- Air taxi service Lilium’s potential US launch in Tampa Bay
Here’s a video showcase 50 innovators and companies making their mark in Tampa’s tech and startup scene:
Here are a couple of articles showing how well Tampa rates against other startup hubs around the world:
- Report: Tampa Bay’s startup scene ranked among top 30 in the world. Published in June 2020, this is a quick writeup based on policy advisory firm Startup Genome’s annual report of top 100 emerging ecosystems.
- Tampa Bay area named top 20 ‘Tech Towns’. This December 2019 piece from the Tampa Bay Times is a writeup of CompTIA’s Tech Town Index 2019, which included Tampa in their list.
Want to know more about what companies in Tampa Bay are worth watching? These two articles are a good start:
- 13 Tech Companies Placing Tampa In The Tech Spotlight (published October 2020)
- The 20 Startups to Watch in 2020 (published December 2019)
You need two key ingredients to build a startup scene: nerds and rich people. I’ve pointed you to articles about the nerds, so here’s one about the rich people who’ll fund the nerdery:
- 2020 brought a wave of new tech-focused Tampa Bay investment groups (published December 2020)
Need more convincing that Tampa Bay is the right place for your tech startup? These might help:
- Moving to Tampa Bay – A Guide for Entrepreneurs and Startups (published May 2019)
- The Startup Guide for Tampa
