This article is a part of a larger series looking at the First Coast's emerging startups, tech innovators, lenders and players in the region's ecosystem.
Justin Dennis has been converted into a Jaxon.
The co-founder of Urban SDK grew up near the Pennsylvania-New Jersey border and was lured to Florida by a family member who encouraged him to apply to Stetson University. The DeLand-based institution provided a program that combined management and computer sciences and that sold the serial entrepreneur on the Sunshine State.
Dennis has lived here for 18 years and founded his latest project, Urban SDK, with Drew Messer in March 2018.
Recently, Dennis spoke with the Business Journal about the company's expectations for growth and more.
You all hired 14 people over the last 18 months. Walk me through that growth. Do you have plans for additional hiring and expansion?
Earlier this year, we accepted an investment from the Florida Opportunity Fund, Deepwork Capital, Miller Electric and TechStars. (The Florida Opportunity Fund is) a venture fund out of Enterprise Florida. …That was one of our investors. When we raised $1.7 million in venture capital, it helped us go from six people to 14 people. We are fundraising right now to do the same thing.
We anticipate to grow significantly in the next couple of months.
We have built our business here in Jacksonville. We see a good space to grow here in Jacksonville. We have a network of talent. We are trying to hire as many people as possible. We have hired people from other regions: Orlando, Tampa, Atlanta and Ohio. Growing during this dynamic has changed how you build companies.
The region has long suffered from a lack of venture capital-focused on software companies. We have raised a lot of money in Orlando and Boulder (Colorado) and TechStars. We are raising from Orlando and Atlanta again. From a software perspective, there are still opportunities for venture capitalists to come to this business and build bigger businesses.
What we are seeing, especially in tech, is there are more jobs than there are qualified people. For small companies, we are having to expand where we hire. I think it’s good for the area because its more relevant for Jacksonville as companies bring in talent from Orlando, Tampa and Atlanta.
Would you describe your work with the North Florida TPO and Smart North Florida?
We have worked with the TPO. They want to bring in new innovation to the region or innovate in the region. We feel the same way. Anything we can do to promote Jacksonville on a bigger scale, we try to do.
We did development on the first version of the (North Florida) data exchange. It was an open-source project for a public data API to allow any organization — whether they were in the private sector, public sector or university — to contribute data so the region could have a greater tool to share information. (There were) things like studying mobility for underserved populations, where the TPO and Smart North Florida wanted to identify areas of underserved mobility.
What it provided was a data exchange for a non-profit, healthcare (and) mobility in being able to study and identify areas of improvement.
Urban SDK had a chance to go to Turin last year. Tell me about that project and how it impacted your business?
[Urban SDK was in Turin as part of TechStars Smart Mobility Accelerator.]
We received an investment from TechStars and also partnered with the City of Turin to deploy some of our software and learn from organizations that were over there and how they approached smart cities. Unfortunately, the program was cut short because of Covid. We completed the program, but from the U.S.
It was more of a business challenge. We went there for an opportunity. We had to come back and reassess and evaluate how we would move forward through Covid. One of the obstacles of (the time) was at the time we were five people. We were gaining customers during Covid, raising funding during Covid and came out three or four times the size of what we were and are ready to double again.
The biggest learning was how to revisit your business during times of unanticipated crisis.
Where will Urban SDK be in five years?
We are expanding nationally. Right now, we are operating in Florida, South Carolina, Tennessee, Georgia, Kentucky, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Five years from now, our goal is to be a national standard for data and analytics in smart cities. We are expanding in multiple verticles. We have logistics, real estate and insurance offerings that we have been developing for the last year. We will go through the patent process in the next year.
Our goal is to be a national standard and be one of the best places to work in Jacksonville. We are focused on quality of life for our employees. We are allowing them to innovate in their roles and explore new technologies and promoting Jacksonville’s role in technology and innovation.
Where do you see the state of tech in the region?
We anticipate serious growth from the housing market. With the number of companies moving here, all businesses need to focus on tech and being technology enabled. We will have tremendous growth in Jacksonville, especially as we add more remote capabilities.
The next 20 years are going to be much more dynamic for the business economy in Jacksonville than the previous 20.
