Excellent Resources Help Fort Lauderdale Entrepreneurs Excel
New businesses enjoy successful launches, thanks to the accelerators and incubators in Greater Fort Lauderdale.
With its culture of innovation and wealth of talent, Fort Lauderdale, FL, is an attractive destination for relocating businesses, not to mention an inviting location for those who want to start one. Fort Lauderdale entrepreneurs will find ample resources – many of which come from the region’s higher education institutions – to get their businesses off the ground. Both Broward College and Nova Southeastern University, for example, offer a range of startup services.
Those services benefit entrepreneurs, such as Royce Lopez, who decided he wanted to start a trucking insurance company when he was just 17.
“The hard part was that I knew what I aimed for, but not all the steps I needed to achieve my goal. The Broward College Entrepreneurial Experience (BCEx) helped me develop an entrepreneurial mindset and learn from the collective knowledge of those around me to test my idea with my target market and make a viable business plan,” says Lopez, owner of National Truck Insurance in Fort Lauderdale.
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Stellar Support for Fort Lauderdale Entrepreneurs
The BCEx provides an affordable entrepreneurial education along with a supportive and inclusive learning environment for faculty, staff, students and community members. The accelerator offers a robust program covering all facets of the startup process, from ideation and business planning to financial modeling and market sizing. The program also offers budding business owners a community of like-minded peers.
“The BCEx accelerator is not just a class; it’s a supportive community invested in your success. Entrepreneurs who go through this program often become mentors themselves. So the result over time is not only a community of smart and savvy business owners, but one where everyone is helping one another,” says Sascha Rybinski, founder and CEO of Flag It, a Fort Lauderdale company that develops software to teach healthy behaviors that combat bullying, stalking and dating violence.
Diversity Among Small Businesses
Other BCEx success stories include Anastia Johnson, who founded ENVE34, a fitness and lifestyle brand helping women unleash their inner beauty and confidence by supporting and empowering them to get active, stay fit and achieve holistic health and wellness.
Queen Davis, the program’s assistant director, says the three business owners reflect the diversity of the program’s participants and the diversity of the region’s small business community.
“Broward County’s diverse community and culture foster a vibrant environment that naturally allows ideas to flow and grow,” Davis says. “The Fort Lauderdale area is also a great place for entrepreneurs because there is an abundance of resources. Programs, such as BCEx, are vital because we provide entrepreneurial education with real-world applications while cultivating an entrepreneurial mindset that can transform lives.”
“Broward County’s diverse community and culture foster a vibrant environment that naturally allows ideas to flow and grow.”
Queen Davis
The Wild Wave of Innovation
The Alan B. Levan | NSU Broward Center of Innovation on the campus of Nova Southeastern University is a 54,000-square-foot accelerator space, designed around a theme park concept that offers “rides” to participating Fort Lauderdale entrepreneurs.
The building’s resources include a military-grade cybersecurity range as well as a technology makerspace outfitted with advanced hardware and software applications, 3D printers, scanners, robots and drones. A media production studio allows entrepreneurs to produce podcasts, webcasts, investor pitch presentations, and marketing and branding videos.
John Wensveen, chief innovation officer for Nova Southeastern University and the center’s executive director, says the center will soon offer the first volumetric capture studio in the Southeast, a video technology that captures subjects in 3D to create holograms that viewers can watch from any conceivable angle.
Wrap-around services are provided free of charge by vetted providers supporting business planning, strategic planning, marketing, branding, legal, finance, accounting, human resources, technology and self-care management, he says.
“The Levan Center of Innovation is a futuristic toolbox, offering access to infrastructure that gives entrepreneurs a competitive edge,” Wensveen says.
Built-In Technology
Tech business owners, such as Aurelia Edwards, CEO and founder of Nailstry, take full advantage of the center’s resources and services. Edwards’ Nailstry application uses artificial intelligence technology to help users determine the exact size of acrylic nails to fit their nail beds and then matches them to companies that stock their size.
“This facility has state-of-the-art technology built in, so if you have a limited budget, you can bring your team in and use the equipment here,” she says.
“But even more helpful is the comaraderie and opportunities for mentorship. Being a founder is not as glamorous as they make it seem on Shark Tank, but when you come to a space like this, you can learn from other founders and share your own knowledge.”
Training Up Tech Students
Greater Fort Lauderdale has emerged as a high-tech hub. The region’s diversity in tech talent has created an ecosystem that more closely resembles the country’s demographics. Helping attract, train and retain that talent are higher education institutions, such as Broward College and Florida Atlantic University (FAU). Both offer unique training opportunities that give students a leg up in their careers.
In 2022, Broward College was awarded a $40,000 grant from the American Association of Community Colleges (AACC), Dell Technologies and Intel as part of the Artificial Intelligence Incubator Network Initiative. The college plans to build a hybridized AI incubator that will allow students to train and prepare for a workforce that may soon rely heavily on this new technology.
“Artificial intelligence is quickly expanding and playing a noticeably important role in numerous industries,” says Jeffrey Nasse, provost and senior vice president for academic affairs at Broward College. “Broward College wants to ensure that our students are familiar with all aspects of the industry. Working with other colleges and partners, such as the AACC, Dell Technologies and Intel, will allow us to go above and beyond in providing this unique resource to our students.”
FAU’s Institute for Ocean and Systems Engineering (SeaTech) engages students in ocean engineering research and technology development in areas such as acoustics, hydrodynamics and physical oceanography, and ocean energy technologies.
The program, which is part of FAU’s Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering and the College of Engineering and Computer Science, is housed in a 50,000-square-foot building that features classrooms, oceanfront research labs and labs for building and launching autonomous underwater vehicles.
“Our program is very niche in the sense that students take classes in a number of areas — there is the mechanical engineering side of things and the electrical engineering side of things. They also take courses in underwater applications, and they are required to complete a capstone project before graduation,” says Francisco Presuel-Moreno, director of SeaTech, FAU’s director of graduate programs, and a professor in the university’s Department of Ocean and Mechanical Engineering.
Presuel-Moreno says many graduates go on to work as researchers or engineers at the Atlantic Undersea Test and Evaluation Center Complex (AUTEC), a U.S. Navy project in nearby West Palm Beach that offers underwater testing, in-air test facilities and support to U.S. and other military and civilian organizations. Others enter the private sector, Presuel-Moreno says, but the training they receive at SeaTech all but guarantees their success.
“Many of our graduates go on to become team leaders in whatever industry they choose because they’ve been exposed to these different areas and because of their experience with the senior design project,” he says.
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