"We find that teams with at least one female founder tend to raise more capital from investors. This fact is also bolstered by data that shows female founders tending to have a higher tangible positive impact on revenue generated by startups versus their male counterparts."

— Collin West and Gopinath Sundaramurthy on data that shows gender-inclusive founding teams have greater success in fundraising and innovation

Featured Growth Story: Monica Angel

Role: Program and Challenge Director

Organization: Synapse

Hometown: Tampa, FL

Tactical advice on building a startup: Good ideas can come if we move the old ideas out of the way. So fail, it’s ok. Just do so quickly so you can learn (maybe have a laugh about it) and move on.

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Celebrating International Women's Day 2020 in Tampa Bay
See the List of International Women's Day Events Happening in Tampa Bay


Connection to Innovation
Startups Showcase of FIBA 2020 Launch Program Cohort
Presented by Florida-Israel Business Accelerator
Tuesday, March 10 at 5:30PM - 7:30PM


TiECON 2020
Keynote Presentations and Panel Discussions on Investing and Growing Entrepreneurial Ventures
Presented by TiE Tampa Bay
Friday, March 27 at 8AM - 7PM

Citibank Plans to Fill 500 High-Tech, High-Growth Jobs in Brandon This Year
TBBJ • Citibank plans to make 500 new hires in the Tampa Bay area by the end of 2020. The jobs will roughly be two-thirds technology-focused and one-third operations-focused, including data engineers, software engineers, and business and data analysts. The new hires will help align with Citibank's focus on data preparation and automation.


Investing in Women-Owned Startups, a Better ROI
Grit Daily • JPMorgan Chase recently announced a strategic partnership with Tampa Bay Wave and Embarc Collective to support women-owned technology startups in Florida. The partnership will take place over two years to increase training and access to capital opportunities for women tech entrepreneurs.


Tampa Bay Innovation Center gets Major Gift
St. Pete Catalyst • The Tampa Bay Innovation Center was named as the sole beneficiary of a trust from a local startup consultant. The trust was given to reward the efforts of Tampa Bay Innovation Center for supporting the startup community and helping accelerate startup success.

Company: COI Energy Services

Elevator Pitch: An energy on-demand marketplace that enables utilities and businesses to trade energy capacity driving efficiency in buildings and balancing the electric grid.

Position: Full-Stack Developer

Position Highlights: COI Energy has an opening for a Full Stack Developer position in its Tampa, FL (preferred) or New York office. COI Energy Services is looking for an experienced full stack developer that can hit the ground running with minimal supervision. Must have a great understanding of frontend, backend and middleware technologies like CSS, HTML, JavaScript, AngularJS, Java, Jax-RS Restful API, Amazon Arora database elastic beanstalk, s3 storage.

Apply Here

Roll Call: Women Founders & Investors in Florida
We all know the woeful stats: in 2019, women raised less than 3% of venture capital funding, made up just 26% of the angel investor population, and comprised only 11% of decision-making roles at US-based venture capital firms. In our effort to narrow the gender investing gap in Florida, we created an open-source list in September 2019 to recognize women founders and investors statewide. With this list, we can collectively better distribute opportunities for Florida's tech community—enabling founders to develop a community of peers, investors to diversify their deal flow, conferences to identify new voices, and networking dinners and events to offer balanced representation.


Table Stakes Study: Analyzing the Gender Equity Gap
Last year, Carta, an ownership management platform for over 800,000 equity holders, and investment collective #ANGELS, collaborated to analyze the equity ownership of venture-backed companies by gender. The report takes a closer look at equity ownership to empower more women to get a seat at the [cap] table and make sure they receive fair equity when they get there. The report also closes with actions employees, managers, founders and investors can take to help work towards a solution.

Keep Humans in The Equation
Building a strong community around TaskRabbit as it scaled was the goal for CEO, Stacy Brown-Philpot. In this podcast interview with Masters of Scale, Stacy shares the power businesses can harness when focusing on the human elements of their business.
Listen Here

Grasshopper Grants for Empire Fintech Conference
Grasshopper Bank and Empire Startups are accepting applications for the Grasshopper Grant for founders to attend the annual “Empire Fintech Conference” in New York City on April 1st. Grasshopper Grants covers 100% of the admission price for a certain number of founders, who for whatever reason are not able to cover the cost of admission to attend critical events nationwide throughout the year. 
Deadline March 12
Apply Here


Tampa Bay Innovation Center Accelerator Applications
The Tampa Bay Innovation Center has opened applications for its early-stage startup company accelerator–The Entrepreneur & Investment Challenge. This program is focused on preparing technology ventures to scale a company. Tech ventures, either pre-seed, seed or post-seed to Series A, with a post-MVP or proof of concept that can commit to a 12-week program are encouraged to apply.
Deadline: March 22
Apply Here


Visa IFundWomen Grant Applications
Visa has partnered with IFundWomen to support women entrepreneurs who are ready to launch & grow their small businesses in the United States. Early-stage founders in need of capital to take their business to the next level are encouraged to apply. 3 grant winners will receive a $10,000 cash prize for their small business. In addition, the 3 selected grant recipients will also become eligible to participate in a subsequent pitch competition in Washington, D.C. during National Small Business Week: May 3, 2020 - May 9, 2020.
Deadline April 7
Apply Here