Making Tampa Startup Friendly

Creating a top-10 tech market in the Bay area is the goal of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum.

By RICHARD MULLINS

The Tampa Tribune

TAMPA - Starting a successful company is never easy.

In fact, entrepreneurship may be one of the most mentally, spiritually and financially exhausting challenges in business, especially in the cutthroat world of technology. And the Tampa Bay area has never been known as a market bursting at its seams with billion-dollar tech success stories.

However, there are ways to make building a technology company easier in Tampa Bay. That's the new plan for Tampa Bay Technology Forum, a group started several years ago largely as a social and professional networking group.

From that humble start, TBTF now has the lofty and perhaps sobering goal of putting the Bay area among the top 10 technology markets in the United States by 2015 - just eight years from now. The forum wants to put the Bay area on par with cities such as Seattle, San Francisco, Boston and others that sprout a steady stream of meteoric tech startups.

TBTF leaders want this community to foster technology companies here the way that Hollywood produces movies - systematically, profitably and publicly.

"Our goal is to make it as easy as possible to start a company here," said Brent Britton, a lawyer at the firm of Squire, Sanders & Dempsey in Tampa and a new TBTF board member. The idea, Britton said, is to pack the Bay area so chock-full of successful entrepreneurs that the person next to you at Starbucks could probably help out with a thorny gap in your business plan or at least find you a good programmer.

To be sure, there's a big gap between the Tampa Bay area and San Francisco when it comes to entrepreneurship. But TBTF has a battle plan with five angles of attack, and says it is making some progress on those fronts.

*Boost entrepreneurial skills. The most ambitious aspect of the plan is the TBTF Emerging Companies Academy, an extensive, free training program in how to launch a startup company. (Some pilot programs are already under way.) Rather than offering training at any one site, TBTF hopes to marshal experts where they already are, such as at local colleges, companies and other organizations.

The challenge the group hopes to address: too many entrepreneurs assume that simply because they won a patent, the world will rush to buy their product, said Andy Hafer, the new director of the academy. It's hardly that simple, he said. Even the Web video phenomenon YouTube spent millions of dollars on technology, research, personnel and marketing before Google bought the company for nearly $2 billion.

So TBTF has assembled dozens of experts to teach entrepreneurs all aspects of starting up and building a company, and will assign a mentor professional to personally guide entrepreneurs through the process - akin to a master's of business administration personalized for one company.

Vinod "Vinni" Vijayan of Tarpon Springs signed up for the program. His company, ListRegion.com, is trying to compete with online auction powerhouse eBay by offering fixed prices for items rather than an unpredictable auction.

The Academy "is almost like having a personal board of advisors that I could never afford," Vijayan said.

*Enhance technology transfer programs. TBTF hopes to increase collaboration with the University of South Florida, the University of Florida, the University of Central Florida and other colleges to channel more entrepreneurs through existing business incubators and help those companies that emerge into the marketplace. This may mean co-producing some events, plus directing entrepreneurs to join those incubators during their very early stages - or helping companies with expansion after they "graduate."

*Improve availability of early-stage capital. Once companies go through the Emerging Companies Academy, TBTF hopes to gather high net-worth individuals, venture capital firms and other investors to introduce to the startups - but only for "graduates" that receive the official TBTF stamp of approval. The goal is to help promising young companies get financial backing.

Before the first pitch, the organizers will help train entrepreneurs on how to present their company. One sign the new TBTF project is working would be if a nationally recognized venture capital firm opened a satellite office in the Tampa Bay area, Britton said. Right now, no major Silicon Valley venture capital firm operates a permanent office here.

*Increase government support. Cooperate with other local business groups to lobby on behalf of more government support for entrepreneurs and devise ways for government to invest public money more effectively in local companies.

For example, TBTF managers think the state should invest more in local startups as both an economic development initiative and a potentially good investment.

*Mix it up. Gather groups from universities, business and government to share resources and meet regularly on common projects, such as matching up scientists from The H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center with chief information officers of local companies to see how they could benefit each other. This also calls for a heavy dose of public relations and marketing, spearheaded by Michelle Bauer, a partner with the St. Petersburg-based Sextant Marketing Group.

TBTF organizers say they don't want the group to become a chamber of commerce, though it still will hold social and business networking events. And they don't want TBTF to become a venture capital fund, though it will help make connections between entrepreneurs and financiers. And they don't want TBTF to become a physical business incubator, though they hope to channel entrepreneurs into those programs and support them.

By 2015, the TBTF hopes to produce successful startups regularly by helping to find funding, fostering companies in a market supported by local government, and publicizing them nationally.

"This is a really great idea," said Susan Strommer, president and CEO of the National Association of Seed and Venture Funds.

"What makes it hard to pull off is judging the qualities and backgrounds of the entrepreneurs who can be successful given the resources you have in your community."

For example, starting a nanotechnology firm is good, Strommer said, but if that company can't recruit anyone to work there because the town is an auto manufacturing hub, the venture won't grow, she said.

That said, Strommer is an advocate of growing companies locally.

"Most economic development studies find that using big taxpayer dollars to lure an established company into your area does not produce the results states expect," she said. The cost/benefit ratio is too high, she said.

Taken together, TBTF's plan impresses Randall Kempner, vice president of regional innovation at the Washington, D.C.-based Council on Competitiveness.

"The goal is to make sure companies, whatever the industry, are able to incorporate innovation and become best at whatever they do - not just be a so-called tech hub," Kempner said.

The worst thing the Bay area could do is "just try to become Austin [Texas] or San Francisco. Lots of cities want to be 'Silicon Hills,' or 'Silicon Plains,' or 'Silicon Whatever.'"

The United States will never be the "low-cost provider" in the world, Kempner said. So if Tampa is a hub of restaurant companies, call centers or other service industries, Kempner said to start building on that.

The question, he says, should be: "How can Tampa become the most innovative hub where restaurant companies, call centers - or whatever Tampa does best - becomes the place where every other similar company and entrepreneur in the world wants to be located."

(CHART) NAMES AND FACES

Amy Norman, president and chief executive officer, Tampa Bay Technology Forum

The new leadership face of TBTF, Norman oversees all TBTF operations, including 130 programs and events annually. Norman, 29, joined the organization in early 2005 after working for the American Association of Kidney Patients as program director and fundraiser.

Andy Hafer, director, Emerging Companies Academy

Hafer, 43, previously led TBTF as its president, but shifted roles in July to build the TBTF Emerging Companies Academy, a program to train entrepreneurs in all aspects of building a company from concept, through development, to outside investment and beyond.

Brent Britton, TBTF board member

One of the key architects of TBTF's new direction, Britton, is TBTF's unofficial event emcee. He is a patent law and intellectual property lawyer with Squire, Sanders & Dempsey. Britton, 41, came to the Tampa Bay area three years ago after working in San Francisco and New York. A former software engineer, Britton also holds a graduate degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Media Lab.

Michelle Bauer, Communications Director

A long-time TBTF booster, Bauer was the founding executive director of TBTF in 2001 and is now point person for publicizing and marketing TBTF nationally. Among the top few technology company promoters in the Bay area, Bauer, 41, also is a partner with the St. Petersburg-based public relations firm Sextant Marketing Group. She founded several Florida conferences, including the Sarasota International Design Summit.

Source: Tampa Bay Technology Forum

Reporter Richard Mullins can be reached at rmullins@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7919.

Photo credit: Tribune file photo by JASON BEHNKEN

Photo: Amy Norman, president and CEO of TBTF, meets technology professionals Aug. 16 at Tech Jam, a fundraising event, at Raymond James Stadium.

Photo: Andy Hafer

Photo: Brent Britton

Photo: Michelle Bauer

Copyright © 2007, The Tampa Tribune and may not be republished without permission. E-mail library@tampatrib.com