Steve McGarry first decided to move to Tampa after selling his Silicon Valley fintech startup, LendLayer, to PayPal's founder in 2015.
It's not a typical city to head to after a large-scale exit, especially in 2019 before a mass exodus to the Sunshine State began in 2020.
But McGarry had family in the region and, perhaps equally as important, thought the landscape could provide a solid foundation for his new web3-focused company SandStorm.
That bet has seemed to pay off. SandStorm launched last month at SXSW and CEO McGarry simultaneously announced the company raised $2.5 million.
"The vibe is similar to Silicon Valley where people were receptive to innovative concepts," he said. "And it seems like everyones pretty plugged in here. I think that whenever you’re launching a company of any kind you need to go where there’s a production of talent."
Sanctor Capital lead the round, with industry giants including Sandbox and Sebastien Borget, founder of Sandbox, participating. Roughly a dozen other participants were also involved, including MetaStreet, Rarestone Capital, Youbi Capital and GBV Capital.
SandStorm offers a marketplace connecting the top metaverse builders to brands in need. It allows companies and brand agencies from all industries to reach out directly to the metaverse builders if they choose, and also offers a more white glove-type service in which SandStorm works with the brands and manages the relationship with the builders.
"A misconception is the brand you have in the physical retail world has to sell or promote the same products in the metaverse; if you sell dish soap in the physical world you don’t have to in meta," he said. "It's changing what you’re doing and reaching a different audience with Gen Z and Gen Alpha spending eight, nine hours a day online right now."
The site sees roughly 3 million users a month, with McGarry's goal to hit 25 million to 50 million by the end of the year. It's a big leap, he acknowledges, but he believes the space is at an inflection point.
"When I launched the company I was inundated with people in the Tampa Bay area in the space," he said. "The demand is there it's just — I'm not aware of many other web3, metaverse-focused startups. My hope is more come so there's a bit of balance between interested parties and interested companies."
McGarry has roughly a dozen employees across the nation, with plans to hire more by the end of the year. He believes the talent is ripe in the area, thanks to Tampa Bay's multiple universities and ability to easily recruit in the region.
"The structure here is substantial; there's so much talent from the universities and enough technology here already," McGarry, the CEO and founder of SandStorm, said. "I think there’s a lot of amazing talent not only coming here but here before we even got here. [Tampa Bay] is a very safe bet and it will only get more impressive with the talent in the future."
