Over 180 players in the Tampa Bay innovation ecosystem — whether they were startups, supporters, investors or fans of Tampa tech — came together Feb. 19 at Embarc Collective for Tampa Bay Inno's first ever Startups to Watch event.
The event highlighted 20 startups that are expected to do big things in the next 12 months and beyond, with many of them presenting to the sold out crowd.
A panel featuring Allan Martin of Lumina Analytics, Danielle Rushton of Wherewithal and Karri Zaremba of Venuetize followed the pitches, touching on everything from giving advice to entrepreneurs, to fundraising in Tampa Bay and beyond.
While each company had a huge 2019, they all stated the toughest part of building their business is the fact that it's never been done before.
“We’re building something that’s never been built," Allan Martin, CEO of Lumina Analytics, said.
The company founders also spoke on the navigating they had to do when it came to getting funding in Tampa Bay.
"Our challenge is we’re a CPG company ... what really needs to happen is the education here," Rushton, the co-founder of Wherewithal, said. "There’s a lot of money in Tampa.”
Zaremba, the founder and COO of Venuetize, said her company received clashing opinions when it came to where to find funding.
"We were getting a lot of conflicting advice from perspective investors," she said. "We ended up settling on a middle ground.”
As for what they're working on in the coming year: Wherewithal wants to have fully launched its product, Lumina is working on products to make artificial intelligence more accurate and Venuetize is continuing to innovate with e-commerce and biometrics.
Check out scenes from Wednesday below and a big thank you to our sponsors University of Tampa, Synapse and especially Embarc Collective, who hosted the event.
