Tampa Bay’s startup talent comes from K-12 and higher ed institutions, community programming and as “corporate refugees” from other scalable/scaled startups – the high potential talent advances on to coworking, incubators and accelerators – eventually building scalable startups that require equity funding. The specific, measurable goal is increased net new job creation. This metric viewed from the perspective of:
- Net new jobs
- Created in the Tampa Bay area
- Paying a better than average salary
What needs to happen?
- Developing talent (primarily via K-12 and universities)
- Acquiring talent (primarily via marketing and branding)
- Retaining talent (primarily via programming and networks)
The vision is to turn Tampa Bay into a job creation engine. Although there are plenty of places to locate talent in the Tampa bay area, retaining talent and encouraging talent to create startups, are the prime challenges. If equity capital is not readily available, talent will either relocate or simply choose to not build scalable startups.
Results?
TBTF 2013 Initiative – Grow Tampa Bay Technology (Launched February 8, 2013)
