Keith Rabois, managing director of Khosla Ventures, was having dinner with a “very profitable CEO” in October 2018 when the CEO requested him a query: How many individuals does it take to create a complete new Silicon Valley? Is it 10,000? 100,000?
Rabois didn’t know, however he determined to just accept the problem and set about making an attempt to make Miami the subsequent Valley.
And regardless of different large identify traders like Andreessen Horowitz decamping and shutting down its workplace in Miami a mere two years after establishing store, Rabois mentioned he’s nonetheless bullish on the South Florida metropolis.
At Primary Venture Partners’ NYC Summit on Thursday, Rabois claimed that 11% of all seed investments within the United States have come out of Miami, which is “up principally from zero,” and that he hopes to lift that to twenty%.
According to PitchBook knowledge, seed investments into Miami startups up to now this 12 months accounted for less than 2.6% of whole U.S. seed funding. In 2023, they accounted for 3.5%.
“And the stats you have to be for those who care about the way forward for tech are [the] fraction of seed investments, the place do they occur?” Rabois mentioned, including that later-stage funding reveals much less about the way forward for know-how.
Rabois additionally mentioned Khosla Ventures was gearing as much as put money into its fifth firm in Miami that can “reinvent training,” however didn’t present specifics.
In April, Khosla and Founders Fund, the place Rabois labored from 2019 till January, led the $150 million funding into spend administration startup Ramp. Rabois mentioned that Ramp, which relies in New York, has an workplace in Miami, which provides to town’s attraction.
Rabois mentioned he’s typically lively on X/Twitter hyping up Miami as an incredible place for founders as a result of he feels it takes work to construct a brand new tech hub. He added that he wished founders and traders to know there are alternatives in vibrant cities the place you don’t get up day-after-day and concern being “assaulted and abused,” clearly making a dig on the homeless and opioid epidemic in San Francisco.
For as a lot as Rabois nonetheless believes in Miami’s tech hub future, he hasn’t deserted San Francisco altogether and reportedly spends a few quarter of his time at his dwelling there.
As an apart, Rabois mentioned he can be backing as San Francisco’s mayoral candidate Daniel Lurie, who has a tough stance on addressing the opioid disaster.
“To create a tech ecosystem, you want angel traders. You want founders,” Rabois mentioned on the summit. “You want Series A traders. You want a bunch of various abilities inside an organization — engineers, designers, enterprise individuals, gross sales individuals. It’s actually onerous to start out an ecosystem. So proselytizing is vital.”
Update: This article has been up to date to supply extra context into the share of whole U.S. seed investments that have been in Miami startups. This article was initially revealed September 12, 2024, at 12:37 p.m. PT.
