Among the YouTube videos produced by the Tampa Bay Super Bowl LV Host Committee, there’s one promoting Tampa Bay as as the tech hub you didn’t expect: TAMPA BAY: An Unexpected Destination for the Tech Industry, which you can watch below:
It’s a great promo for the tech virtues of “The Other Bay Area, on the Other West Coast”, featuring these locals:
- Jacqueline Darna, CEO and Medical Inventor of Nomo Nausea
- Joy Randels, CEO and Founder of New Market Partners, person behind a lot of things in the Tampa Bay tech scene, and indirectly the reason I live here now
- Brian Murphy, CEO and Founder of ReliaQuest
- Sheryl Hunter, Founder and President, Hunter Business Law
- Ryan Nece, Managing Partner, Next Play Capital
The only thing I’ll nitpick about the video is that St. Pete and Clearwater are underrepresented, appearing only as beach scenes. Let’s let the world know that they’re part of Tampa Bay, and home to Tech Data, Jabil, KnowBe4, The Penny Hoader, and Malwarebytes’ east coast office to name a few players, as well as the birthplace of Wikipedia!
In fact, when it comes to “Tampa Bay”, I view it as the area served by Tampa International Airport (TPA). This means that I count Sarasota County — home to advertising and marketing tech companies and agencies including AdRizer, DealersUnited, FloorForce, Perform[cb], and Revcontent — as part of Tampa Bay.
2 replies on “New video: “TAMPA BAY: An Unexpected Destination for the Tech Industry””
Yes — The entrepreneurial innovation community in St. Pete and Clearwater is absolutely amazing and connects Tampa to Sarasota and beyond! In addition to the companies in St Pete and Clearwater you mention are countless startups that will be local superstars in the years to come. Two of our clients to watch include 180byTwo (built at The Ring in Clearwater which is amazing in itself) and SoleVenture in St. Petersburg. The beaches are a beautiful backdrop to an electric business community!
I can assure you the tech community and Unicorns that existed long before the term was ever used in Sarasota, Manatee, and Pinellas counties were highlighted by me during over 90 minutes of filming. Some of the footage has been used to recruit companies to the area, the majority of them landing on the southside of the Howard Frankland and Sunshine Skyway, There are still more in those counties than Hillsborough and it is likely to stay that way for a long list of reasons. This is a snippet for the pre-game but longer than the 30-second ad which aired during the game.
I wanted to see more tech represented in the video rather than “tech-enabled” because that is how the rest of the world labels tech. Tech means a software or hardware product, not services such as MSPs, back-office operations centers, etc. Those businesses are valuable and we want them here but the skills, talent, and capital required to start and scale them are vastly different than “tech” companies. We have “tech” here but until we draw the line between the two we will not get the credibility we deserve because when potential investors like true VCs (with hundreds of millions under management), tech companies looking to relocate, or serial founders looking for a new place to start a company they quickly discern the difference between the two. We have grown a lot and should be extremely proud of what we have accomplished, but we still have a long way to go. I think founders are getting smarter and more skilled along the way and I am looking forward to an ever brighter future for our tech community!