#StartUpMiami 2015

Today was the 3rd Annual The Atlantic Magazine #StartUpMiami conference sponsored by the Knight Foundation. The event left me turbocharged and I extracted the following 3 takeaways about Miami's positioning in the global startup race.

1)We are still early in the Marathon.

Miami has made some big strides early in the race to become an innovation hub, but there is still tremendous work left to be done. Having the Knight Foundation at the table has been a game changer in centering our momentum and this can be attributed to the continued leadership of Matt Haggman and hometown mentsch Manny Medina and his eMerge Americas initiative. Much of the next tier of work will be centered around the acceleration of talent, aggregation of capital and fostering a spirit of deep systemic collaboration. We must continue to stay equal parts thirsty and hydrated if we are going to overcome the temptation to give in to premature laurels. Our ability to stay the course in the marathon will be just as much a function of our embracing champions and absorbing the feedback of our greatest skeptics.

2)We have several global thought leaders in our midst...Let's leverage them!

We are fortunate that several globally renowned leaders like Singularity's Salim Ismail, Square/LaunchCode's Jim McKelvey & Richard Florida are actively engaged in the ecosystem. The best part is that they are all deeply collaborating with #305 anchor institutions. McKelvey with Miami Dade College's IdeasCenter, Salim with Knight Foundation in the Singularity Global Impact Sea Level Rise challenge and Richard & Rana Florida with FIU's Miami Beach Urban Studios via City Lab. Although the contributions of these leaders can be characterized as transformational - the best part of these Uber Mentors, is their underlying accessibility.

McKelvey, Florida and Ismail are not alone, there are other leaders of this caliber with major Miami linkages and the task for all of us is to bring them into the public sphere!

3)Leadership matters more than ever.

Miami's next-level leadership cohort looks like Brian Brackeen of Kairos, Susan Amat of Venture Hive, Emily Gresham of FIU Research, Jaret Davis of Greenberg Tarring, Laura Maydon of Endeavor, Vance Aloupis of the Childrens Movement of Florida, Alberto Padron of Stinghouse, Brandon Okpalobi of Dibia Athletic, Lauren Reskin of Sweat Records, Felecia Hatcher of CodeFever, Wifi Fernandez of TheLab Miami/MDC & Caryn Lavernia of City Year Miami...and the list continues. They are entrepreneurs, funders, advisers, social entrepreneurs who dare to paint outside of the lines of their sector and are well equipped to tackle the gender, racial and socio-economic disparities which linger in the startup space. Their success is our success.

To keep this leadership engine primed, we must invest to scale leadership programming that works - whether it is the Miami Foundation's Miami Fellows, FIU's Center for Leadership, or the Miami-Dade Chamber's YPN. We also need to ensure that efforts like the unprecedented Talent Development Network collaboration between 7 major academic institutions (MDCPS, FIU, UM, FMU, MDC, St. Thomas & Barry University) which delivers paid internships for students is wildly succesful. We must keep this pipeline of talent growing, developing, thriving and more importantly staying in Miami to succeed in the long run.

Miami redefines what it means to be a global city and is doing so with an equal degree of swagger and self-awareness around the balance between schmooze and substance to reach our goals. Everyone of us needs to play a role ---- what piece of the puzzle will you tackle?

#Future305