James Ontra says he is currently in the most entrepreneurial phase of his life — but it's not due to the launch of his technology startup. It's due to moving his life to Tampa.
"Picking up and moving to a city where you know no one, and have to make roots, settle down and get your business going and find leaders in the community who want to help you thrive — that's entrepreneurial," Ontra said in an interview with the Business Journal. "And we’re in the middle of it."
Ontra spent more than two decades in the state before Covid-19 hit and, much like other major metros in the U.S., shut down the city.
"We'd been in New York a long time and Covid was tough on the city," Ontra said. "My employees went home and then it became prohibited to come back [to New York]. It was a very big challenge to bring the employees back to the office for face-to-face business, and as a small company, that is necessary to survive, let alone thrive."
He began looking at Texas, where he previously attended the University of Houston, and spent six months scouring most of South Florida. But an introduction to Allie Felix, VP Platform at Tampa startup hub Embarc Collective, further nudged Ontra to the Bay area. An acceptance of his company, Shufflrr, to the Tampa Bay Wave's TechWomen Rising accelerator program was the final ticket.
"Miami had all the components but Tampa was straight-up business professional, 'This is what we can do,'" Ontra said, adding he is now a member at Embarc and the Wave. "There was no over the top glitz and glam, just straight-up 'here’s what we are.'"
Ontra and his sister, AlexAnndra, moved to the region in September. They plan to grow their startup that's "a shopping cart for slides" for corporate slideshows. The idea originally stemmed after the brother-sister duo worked in consulting for big-name brands like Starbucks and NBC.
"There were several items where the problems were consistent with all the companies, which was consistency of brand, of message, and it takes too much time assembling a slideshow," he said. "Shufflrr is the enterprise software that delivers on those items."
The company currently has eight full-time employees, with three hired locally and another expected six to eight in the next three to four months. Ontra hopes to hit 30 hires, either local or those that relocate, by the next year or so.
He is part of a continuously growing list of tech founders that have moved or expanded to the region. In the last month alone, publicly-traded Boston cybersecurity company Rapid7 announced its expansion to Tampa and Wall Street icon Cathie Wood relocated to St. Petersburg.
"People are looking for a better quality of life; Tampa gives a different value equation of living and working better than the big cities I came from," he said. "I see a lot of future here: to provide a foundation, to allow a startup to grow as opposed to do it all yourself when you're a growing company. And I think it will produce a lot of value over the years."
