North Miami hopes the tech bootcamp will attract black businesses

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The North Miami City Hall exterior. Photo courtesy of the City of North Miami.

North Miami is hosting a bootcamp for startup owners and tech companies, with the hopes of laying the groundwork for the city to become a tech hub and attract companies to the area.

The program called NoMi Tech is a partnership with Lightship Foundation, an organization that provides resources and support to founders of technology companies from diverse backgrounds. The organization runs a bootcamp to help startups and other tech companies, and through its funding arm, Lightship Capital, offers financial aid to companies, including some that have made it through the bootcamp accelerator.

The city’s partnership with the foundation is about $140,000 for the first year, North Miami director of economic development and strategic initiatives, John Lorfils, told the Miami Herald.

North Miami is the latest city added to the Lightships bootcamp series. Over the past five years, the majority-black city has seen steady growth in employment, according to data from the Miami-Dade Beacon Council. Last year, the city’s top two major business sectors were retail and professional, scientific, and technical services.

With about 60,000 residents, 56 percent of whom are black, North Miami is positioned to attract black and other diverse businesses, said North Miami Councilman Mary Estime-Irvin. Everyone wants to be in South Florida and North Miami is that place where we can take advantage of that.

Estime-Irvin said he began thinking about bringing tech businesses to North Miami after hearing Miami Mayor Francis Suarez talk about bringing the tech industry to his city. And I was like, wait a second, you know, not everyone can come to the city of Miami, she told the Herald.

We as a city need to prepare and always think about what we can do to make sure our residents have somewhere they can work, live and play, he said.

North Miami Councilwoman Mary Estime-Irvin

Estime-Irvin said she has begun attending tech conferences and worked with former city manager Theresa Therilus to create the initiative with hopes of making North Miami a tech hub. Part of that was partnering with Lightship to host a bootcamp that would provide training to minority tech founders who need the skills to start or grow their business.

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The free bootcamp will be held in North Miami April 17-19 and is targeted at minority, female and LGBTQ-led businesses, Lightship founder and CEO Candice Matthews Brackeen told the Herald. Attendees will spend time crafting their business presentation and refining it to attract investors. A second bootcamp is planned for December.

We use AI to help shoppers make better decisions. We provide assistance on financial modeling, branding and design, Brackeen said referring to what the bootcamp has to offer. And there are several entrepreneurs and residents and mentors who come and teach the founders lessons over the course of those three days.

Brackeen said the idea is that over time, as North Miami establishes itself as a tech ecosystem, it could develop more startup companies and attract more tech companies.

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Director of Economic Development and Strategic Initiatives John Lorfils

Lorfils said he attended Black Tech Week in Cincinnati, Ohio last year to familiarize himself with Lightship and their work. The event allowed him to see how many black workers there are in the tech space.

Blacks make up 12 percent of the U.S. workforce but only 8 percent of employees in tech jobs, according to the McKinsey Institute for Black Economic Mobility. Tech jobs are projected to grow 14% by 2023, but Black tech talent in those roles is projected to grow only 8% over the same time period.

Being able to offer North Miami as a destination for founders to consider bringing their startups and providing them with opportunities is the goal of the program, Lorfils said.

Brackeen said bootcamp’s secret sauce is providing new communities for founders. They are able to have colleagues join them on their entrepreneurial journey. It’s just really great bonds being built.

The program, Brackeen said, will help North Miami residents dream a little bigger. I think a lot of times the intelligence is distributed fairly, but the opportunity is not, and so what we want to make sure we do is highlight the fact that there’s already some amazing stuff being built in North Miami and we need to shed some light on that,” he said. , adding that smaller cities often don’t get the attention they deserve for technological innovation. I think it’s time to make sure North Miami gets the same love for its Black residents.

Through the program, participants will also have the opportunity to pitch their ideas to investors for funding. In some cases, the companies have received funding through Lightship Capital, which recently awarded $500,000 to a company that attended one of Lightship’s bootcamps nine months ago.

It’s not trivial and this would be our fifth bootcamp investment in years, Brakeen said. So for us, we’re super excited to be able to give people that opportunity and also that doesn’t mean we’re the only funders. So many of our bootcamp companies have gone on to get funding elsewhere.

Chandler Malone attended Lightships’ Bootcamp program in August 2021. At the time, Malone was based in Tulsa and had raised $500,000 for his Bootup business, an organization that helps people get their first tech job regardless of the their academic or professional background.

Four months into bootcamp, Malone raised $2.5 million and had $1 million in revenue. It’s all not due to bootcamp, but there were definitely a lot of things fundamentally that were helpful in that. He sort of unlocked the next steps for us, he said.

Malone has since moved his business to South Florida and has invested in other black-owned tech startups. When it comes time to really grow the business, you want to be in a place where you have the opportunity to have global reach and Miami definitely has that, he said she.

Lorfils hopes North Miami can also capitalize on those coming to Miami for the annual eMERGE Americas tech event that same week as bootcamp. As for when North Miami will become a tech hub, Lorfils stressed that it will take some time.

We are in the initial stage right now. But these are some of the things that need to happen, to get these tech companies on board, to market North Miami as a destination for their companies, she said. We’re actually bringing them here so they can see what we have to offer.

Companies interested in participating in the bootcamp can apply at this site: https://www.lightship.education/apply.

Raisa Habersham is a local government reporter covering North Miami-Dade County. She is a graduate of the University of Georgia.

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