The Tampa Bay ecosystem has seen an influx of technology executives come to the region over the last year, and for Tampa Bay Inno's latest event, we spoke with three of them to learn more about what the region can leverage, what it needs to improve upon, and of course, the Tampa Bay locales they're hoping to hit.
On why they moved to Tampa
• Jessica Killoren, Silicon Valley tech executive, grew up in the region and returned for a "soft landing" during the Covid-19 pandemic.
• Naimish Patel grew up in Sarasota and returned to the Tampa Bay region when he began to look for a place to settle down with his family. He is an avid healthtech startup investor, and an early employee at Rally Health which later sold to UnitedHealth.
• John Fohr, CEO at insurance tech company TrustLayer, came to the region for the large pool of talent. "It's helpful for us to have folks who know about insurance — there happens to be a bunch of insurance centers down here and we have been impressed so far with engineering."
On what the region is doing well
"A big selling point for me coming back here is life is just easier," Killoren said. "It doesn't take all day to get your errands done, it is stressful to live in some of these bigger cities, and executives and entrepreneurs, they want to minimize stress."
"We have an emerging network building here. It's a small network but for the most part everyone is really open to connecting," Patel said. "I probably get hundreds of messages a week, but if it's someone from Tampa I'll make the time for them because they're here, and that seems to be true for a lot of Tampa."
On what the region needs to improve upon
"The vast majority of tech companies moving to Florida are moving to Miami, and there's a real ecosystem that has developed there," Fohr said. "[But] when people talk about moving there, a lot of those neighborhoods are really expensive. So it's opportunity for Tampa to step up, but we have to be much more vocal, much more active, for companies to relocate, to say come here. There may be more outreach that we can do to bring folks here."
"There's something to be said about the community of great people building great things and as our community begins to grow, it will attract people over time," Patel said. "The real pull of San Francisco or New York or even D.C., is the sheer number of founders. And if you started a business, having that network of people doing that as well, is the most valuable thing. So the biggest thing you have to do is get more founders here. That will attract others."
"I think there's a big miss from the time people are in college to what they do for their job," Killoren said. "Traditionally, our top talent ends up leaving Florida and we want to stop that. And then there are opportunities in the future of work, where the industries are really innovative. So Tampa is at an inflection point from a talent perspective, to look at that gap, and get on platforms like Handshake and get on site at schools to let them know opportunities are available, and working with other regions to attract talent."
On raising funding
"When we first moved there was some pushback that it would hurt your valuation," Fohr said. "But we have not seen that. On Zoom, I'm on calls with traditional venture funds — I think it's opened everyone's eyes up to the opportunities out there."
"I think from an investment standpoint, we're seeing great companies can come from anywhere," Patel said. "And if you're growing and can do it in a cost effective way, there's deals everywhere. That's the advantage to being in a place like Tampa: We have a young city, highly educated, and even Austin today is still relatively expensive compared to Tampa. So if you're an early-stage startup it's easy to lure people over here, which is why I look at local companies more than ever before."
On the places to take a potential new transplant
"I would definitely make sure to take them by Embarc Collective, it's a great example of how Tampa is evolving from an innovation perspective and then definitely take then out to the beach, take them out on the boat," Killoren said. "It's a lifestyle that, until I left Tampa, I didn't fully appreciate. Every weekend you can be on a boat, and by the pool. That's not really life for a majority of people. And it's something that I definitely would love to broadcast."
See the entire panel discussion here:
