A longtime entrepreneur and a burgeoning investment firm are teaming up to create a company they believe will further showcase Tampa Bay as fertile ground for success.
Aaron White, best known for his edtech startup Script’s exit in 2021, is in stealth mode for his next startup. He was tight-lipped on further details. But he said it will be a software-as-a-service model in the sales and marketing space and expects to launch its product by the end of the year.
Instead of building it solely alongside his co-founder, Patrick Cahill, the duo is joining TampaBay.Ventures in what White calls an attempt to create a “super team.”
“This is our home, and we want to build some of the best and biggest companies here,” White said. “We believe in the town and the people, so we’re partnering with TampaBay.Ventures — we’ll be their entrepreneurs-in-residence and hopefully build something together that’s never been done before.”
The entrepreneurs-in-residence program will allow White’s new venture to bake inside the walls of TampaBay.Ventures, leveraging the knowledge from the investment team and its portfolio of nearly a dozen startups. In return, White and Cahill will provide their knowledge and wisdom to the newer startups.
“What an entrepreneur in residence is designed to do is allow founders, who have shown they have the ability to create incredible businesses, to dive in alongside our companies,” TampaBay.Ventures General Partner Andreas Calabrese said. “[They will] work alongside us to discover a problem together and work on the problem together.”
The move isn’t particularly unique for other major startup hubs — Moderna was built inside Boston-based Flagship Pioneering, for example. It also isn’t surprising for White and Calabrese, who have been staunch advocates for the Tampa Bay ecosystem for years. White moved to Tampa in 2017 to start Script, and Calabrese co-launched TampaBay.Ventures in 2021 to focus solely on investing in Tampa Bay startups.
“We’re betting on the growth of this ecosystem and believe there’s a lot of founders doing the same,” Calabrese said. “I think this ecosystem does work well together; investors and founders and technical talent, it’s what makes Tampa special. Everyone is aligned in building the city.”
The nation has begun to catch on to the growing startup success in Tampa Bay. Many longtime entrepreneurs have expanded or relocated entirely to the region, while other homegrown entrepreneurs have continued to rack up national wins.
“People are catching on [to the Tampa Bay startup success], but they don’t know how deep we are — we have founders on founders on founders, with so many ideas coming out,” White said. “So people know something’s happening but don’t know how stacked we are.”
He hopes the new TampaBay.Ventures partnership — beyond helping launch his own company — will be able to further propel the ecosystem to the next level of success.
“I believe our next thing is looking at, ‘How do we build a super team? How do we build it here and plant roots?’” he said. “That’s what we wanted to do, is build. It’s like, ‘Let’s get the best of the best, bring everyone together and build something great.’”
