•  Jerry Haar, executive director of FIU’s Pino Global Entrepreneurship Center: “Our colleges and businesses need to improve across the board in state of art course offerings in computer science and engineering. We have made great strides but we have to understand we are in competition with other areas of the United States. Government and the private sector have to work together. We need to compete not as a single county, we need to compete as a region.”

•  Matt Haggman, Miami program director of the Knight Foundation: “We have a lot of assets but we need easier ways to connect within the start-up community and engage the broader public.” What’s needed? “Build an infrastructure — from co-working spaces and mentors to better access to funders — that allows the start-up community to better connect and engage.”

•  Andrej Kostresevic, organizer of Miami Lean Startup Circle and other groups and founder of New Frontier Nomads: “The talent shortage, the difficulty of hiring capable developers, is a common theme I have been hearing from clients, friends and recruiters — for years. Longer term solutions for improving this should involve the local schools, which have been making an effort to reach out to the tech community. I must particularly commend FIU’s Steven Luis, who has been hosting and facilitating several local groups, like the Game Developers Guild, who aim to bring students and professionals together in a setting that promotes jointly working on real-world projects.”

• Steven Luis, director of technology for the School of Computing and Information Sciences at Florida International University: “Everybody’s got to be involved, no one can be a bench sitter. Everyone has got to take a role. If you are company, you need to be hosting meetups, sponsoring events, giving back. Have your engineers mentor in the high schools, at the universities, at incubators.”

•  Kristin McLean, CEO of Bookigee: “We’ve seen very few funders here who have the necessary comfort level and sophistication with tech funding to lead an A-Round. This means that in order to grow we may have to relocate to be closer to the investors who decide to back us. This is a very common request for funders who want to be able to give young companies mentorship and oversight once they invest. I think this lack of a higher-level tech funding structure is one of the biggest blocks we have to developing the startup tech scene in South Florida.”

•  Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of CareCloud: Biggest challenge? “Talent. We have had a great experience so far being able to attract some of the best developers and engineers to CareCloud … But continued investment from state and local resources as well as collaboration between the private sector and universities, like our new partnership with FIU, are exactly what will create the foundation needed to create and grow a world class tech ecosystem.”

•  Rob Strandberg, CEO of Enterprise Development Corporation of South Florida: “Our ecosystem needs to better pull together collectively and not view collaboration as a zero sum exercise. If we could assemble individuals from all of our elements – academic institutions, corporate partners, experienced tech execs/mentors and credible members of the investment community, we could better pool and focus our resources so our startups would have far better chances for success.”

•  Isaias Sudat, serial entrepreneur, founder and CEO of GridGlo: “I think Miami has done a great job, a tremendous leap forward, with the arts — we can learn from that. We can extrapolate that to the technology side. … As an entrepreneurial community, we need to do a better job mentoring. When I started I would die for a good mentor to show me, help me, guide me. The community can be more engaged in that.”