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Guide

Miami

Introduction

The greater Miami region is a rapidly growing hub for technology, innovation and entrepreneurship in the United States.

In fact, Miami is currently ranked as the #11 city for venture capital activity in the United States, just behind Washington D.C, the Research Triangle (Raleigh–Durham), and San Diego. The city is home to a growing number of unicorns, with companies such as Chewy, Celsius and Magic Leap reaching over billion-dollar valuations.

This guide runs through the need-to-know stats and trends in technology, innovation and entrepreneurship for the Greater Miami region.

The Greater Miami startup ecosystem is one of the most vibrant and diverse in the world, with a concentration of startups in key cities such as Miami, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Homestead.

Venture Capital

Venture Capital Investment in Greater Miami has seen a surge in 2021 and 2022. Startups in the region raised respectively $5B and $5.8B in venture capital, up from $2.1B in 2020. This surge is driven by an increased number of recorded in mega rounds. In 2022, in a year when many other tech ecosystems were experiencing a slowdown in the tech sector, Miami startups raised their highest funding amount, which represents a 16% increase from the previous year.

 

By region

The landscape of venture capital investment in Greater Miami versus Florida state and the United state is quite varied.

Benchmarking Greater Miami against the US

Compared to the overall US, funding into Media and Gaming startups in Greater Miami over-indexes largely. With 17% of its total funding going into Media startups and 11% to gaming startups.

By destinations

There have been significant changes in the economic output of the different metro areas in Northern America over the years, with some areas growing rapidly and others experiencing a decline. Among the top 10 metro area in terms of total investment in 2022, Greater Miami is the fastest growing metro area  with an increase of 22%.

Greater Miami has been growing much faster, albeit from a lower base. Startup ecosystems in its region have been emerging with high levels of venture capital in recent years, but especially in the previous year, in comparison to other metropolitan areas, such as the Bay Area, New York City, or Greater Boston.

By industry

Likewise, beyond the most funded industries, Greater Miami has some emerging startup segments in Marketing, Real Estate and Food where venture capital investment has been growing fast.

By sub-industry

VC investments in the last years went into subindustries such as Health Platforms, Autonomous & Sensor Tech, Medical Devices and Cloud & Infrastructure.

By stage

In 2022 Miami startups raised their highest funding amount on record, which represents a 16% increase from the previous year. Greater Miami startups raised over $485M in rounds of under $15M, over $2B in rounds of under $100M, and over $3B in rounds of +$100M in 2022. The greatest growth has been at late-stage; the sum of mega rounds of over $100M with an increase of 275% since its contraction in 2020.

However, looking more closely at quarterly trends, VC in Greater Miami follows the more general trend of a pullback.

Early stage

Early-stage investment has more than tripled over the past five years with a positive trend observed over the past decade. In 2022, early-stage investment decreased by an average of --0.2% Quarter on Quarter, showing resilience and stability.

Breakout stage

Similarly to early-stage investment, breakout-stage investment has also seen rapid growth over the past five years and has gotten 7.5 times higher since 2017. In 2022, breakout-stage investment decreased by an average of -19.6% Quarter on Quarter.

Scaleup stage

Greater Miami attracted over $3.4B of late-stage investment over the past 5 years and more than doubled its investment since 2017. However late stage investment prove to be still volatile in Greater Miami and is the most impacted by economic downturn as investment decreased by and average of -23.75% Quarter on Quarter in 2022.

Top Investors

There are more than 312 investors headquartered in Miami city with at least one recorded round. 

Among the top 5 investors investing the most in Greater-Miami-based startups, 3 are from Florida. Florida Funders and Ocean Azul partners; respectively from Tampa and Miami snag the top 2 spots and are closely followed by Japan’s Softbank, Miami-based Fuel Venture Capital, and Norwegian (now located in Singapore) Antler.

Patents

Greater Miami vs Florida

The most prolific patent space for Greater Miami is in the classes of Information and Mechanical. This can be easily explained by who is doing the filing, considering Techtronic Industries is headquartered in Fort Lauderdale, Greater Miami.

Subclass patents

Top companies

Techtronic Industries has filed for over 2k patents since 2000, the most of any company based in Greater Miami.

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Regions: USA