For the tech and startup industries in the Tampa Bay area, 2019 can be expected to be summed up in two words: growth and stability.
While startups and technology players have spent 2018 — and the years prior — fighting to make the Tampa Bay region an acclaimed destination for their industries, 2019 may be the year their hard work pays off.
In the startup world, it is obvious where everyone has their eyes — and hopes — on: Embarc Collective. Still slated to open in March 2019, the $10 million innovation hub in downtown Tampa run by Lakshmi Shenoy will bring entrepreneurs, venture capitalists and academic resources under one roof.
"My goal out of Embarc Collective is we get to work, and work for us is to be able to support each of the startups in very customized ways," Shenoy said. "For the broader community, we’re creating a sense of talking about and learning about technology and innovation."
Shenoy added 2019 will be a chance for Embarc to make a local impact by encouraging top players to stay and build their businesses here, continuing to show the Tampa Bay area is a great place to be.
Embarc is one of the many supporting organizations pushing for working together, joining Tampa Bay Wave and Synapse, both Tampa-based accelerators.
"I think there will be a lot more coming in terms of connectivity," said Brian Kornfeld, co-founder of Synapse, a Tampa-based organization formed to help local entrepreneurs, investors and others make connections. "When you start to see where people are together day after day, you’ll see more of them get connected. Now that the USF Medical School is going up and there are more places to walk around in downtown Tampa, those connections will take place, he believes.
"It gives people more opportunities to be connected and the entrepreneurs, investors, everyone in this community is understanding they have to take the steps to join organizations and build and grow to the maximum potential," Kornfeld said.
More hubs and high-value meetings
Linda Olson, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Wave, also pointed to the Station House at Hyde Park Village and the reinvention of Channelside with Sparkman Wharf as further ways connectivity will be solidified in the new year.
"Any time you create these types of hubs, the more you create them the more you're helping put people in close proximity where amazing collisions can happen," Olson said. "When you have creative talent and tech talent and experienced business mentors and others to create the system, magical things can happen."
As for the tech talent Olson mentioned, industry leaders have their eyes on a few key sectors in the new year: artificial intelligence, virtual reality and cybersecurity.
"If we’re looking back a year from now, we’re saying 'Yeah pretty much everyone who is successful is filling the spaces in those three markets.'" said Daniel James Scott, COO of Tampa Bay Tech, adding the landscape of tech in Tampa could change too. "I think it'll go from smaller, leaner niche type of startups to solving much larger problems. I think we’re going to see much bigger solutions coming out of Tampa Bay. Because when we’re talking about movement of data, you're not nicking a piece of the element — it's solved or it's not solved."
Evolving collaborations ahead
Alison Barlow, executive director of St. Pete Innovation District, works with entrepreneurs and tech startups and echoes the other experts' thoughts: in 2019, companies will keep working together to find new services.
"I think we’re going to start to see some unique collaboration where two companies in different industries have a similar problem," Barlow said. "Data analytics show that it becomes so much of the norm for so many industries and some of the tools people use, can be used to help each other. I expect to see more of that and that’s part of my job is connecting then and pointing it out."
The momentum of the industry does not seem to be slowing and neither does the local efforts by industry leaders to foster growth.
"Everything is being digitized and we’re in the middle of being digitized," Rich Hume, CEO of Tech Data (Nasdaq: TECD) said. "My doorbell has a camera that can give access to my home; it's the Alexas and 'Okay Googles' of the world. Tech is absolutely going to grow and the ones in Tampa will absolutely have growth. Technology had unprecedented growth in 2018 and it's a precursor to what comes in the future."
