With visionary partners, Miami should leave Silicon Valley’s tech inequity behind | Editorial
When the headlines say, ‘Wrong direction’: Report reveals investment shortfall for female, minority Miami tech company founders” and “They were bypassed by #MiamiTech’s boom. So here’s what Black entrepreneurs did,” it’s encouraging to see this one: “FIU, Miami mayor’s new effort has one goal: get large checks to minority women biz founders.”
No one with a great idea and and an enterprising spirit should be left out of Miami’s tech explosion. Unfortunately, the focus on “tech bros” is rooted in the reality that women, especially minority women, have had a harder time breaking in and gaining access to funding.
Miami Mayor Francis Suarez’s Venture Miami is partnering with Florida International University to connect women-owned and minority-owned startups with investor networks. After all, it’s all about the money. Even Jeff Bezos had to get an investment boost from his parents to get Amazon up, running — and now running the world.
“We’re connecting founders to funders and making sure that a disenfranchised community is able to get access to this funding,” said attorney Kenasha Paul, Venture Miami’s new opportunity director, appointed by the mayor. Pretty simple, and extremely vital, too.
Through FIU, a 14-week curriculum will include up to six hours of programming a week, as well as mentoring sessions with advisers for participants. FIU can be proud that it is making a name for itself in the pursuit of tech equity. Philanthropist Melinda French Gates, through her organization Gender Equality in Tech (GET Cities), is spending millions of dollars to level the playing field for women, trans and nonbinary people. And in Miami, FIU will become the hub of this initiative.
In fact, this is where Miami, aspiring to be the hub of the technology and innovation industry, should break the mold of the male-dominated Silicon Valley model, where women, Blacks and Hispanics generally were excluded, no matter how skilled and talented. Even those invited to be a part of that world too often were made to feel unwelcome.
And that’s not what Miami is about — at least, it shouldn’t be.