Over the last 10 years there has been huge growth in the number of start ups appearing throughout the Sunshine State. This thanks to a number of different schemes, including Black Girl Ventures Miami, Dibia’s STEM Saturday’s, CodeFever, and Venture Cafe to name just a few of them.
Some of the most successful entrepreneurs to come out of these and other similar programs are listed below. Hearing their stories on how they got started may just inspire you to develop your own entrepreneurial journey.
Andre Kay
It was back in 2009 when Andre’s journey into the world of entrepreneurship started when setting up the marketing company called ‘Sociallybuzz’. The firm provides social media management services, plus much, much more. However, this all changed when his wife gave birth to their son, Parker.
Whilst bringing up his son, Andre developed a passion for giving kids a means of learning success within a world that is becoming more complex and moving towards becoming more digital. This saw him create the ‘Kids Maker Lab’, a company that provides children with all of the tools that they need in order to show off their creative side and develop problem solving skills that are relevant in the 21st century.
Temante Leary
A professor at the illustrious Miami Dade School of Business, Temante founded the educational technology start up that is ‘Class Updates’ in 2017. The mobile application that he developed works to make communication between teachers, administrators, and students within educational establishments much more streamlined.
In addition to this, Temante is the co founder of a society called ‘Black Men Talk Tech’. The collective has the aim of helping young black men not only get into, but to succeed within the world of technology.
Andrew Barnett
After graduating from Penn State University with a bachelor of science degree in finance, Andrew had a number of high profile jobs before eventually founding his own company in 2016. ‘Andrew Barnett Mergers and Acquisitions’ is a finance company that specializes in formulating deals, merger planning, and executing mergers.
Because of the high level of due diligence that is performed on everything that the company does, it is no surprise then that it has gone from strength to strength over the past five years. To keep up with his journey, you can follow Andrew Barnett on Twitter.
Kamilah Harris
Kamilah refers to herself as a “professional birth worker” because of her work within the space. Since 2018 she has owned and ran ‘Mother Earth Diaper Service’ and ever since she has been providing guardians and parents within the South Florida area with an affordable service for renting cloth diapers. This helps to remove the cost of having to buy use once disposable diapers and also stops them from being sent to landfill sites.
Because of her work, Kamilah won a Miami Blacktech Week award that was given to her in partnership with the organization AnitaB.org. This organization exists to help those women who are working within the field of technology.
Image by Firmbee from Pixabay
