By Nancy Dahlberg
South Florida was well represented in the Inc. Female Founders 100 list. It’s all about empowering a passionate team, knowing your industry and your numbers inside and out and leaning on your sisterhood, say three honorees leading Miami area tech companies.
Honorees Maxeme Tuchman, Jaclyn Baumgarten and Olivia Ramos were part of the second annual list of 100 women building America’s most inspiring businesses. They were amongst some very good company, including Serena Williams (shoutout to the 561 too!), Rebecca Minkoff, Sallie Krawcheck, Audrey Gelman, Rihanna, Alli Webb and Eileen Fisher.
The final list honors entrepreneurs of every age, background and locale — from early-stage founders to women who have taken companies public or sold them to big buyers, or have spent decades building and running their businesses. The founders selected have each made their mark on their industry in the past year, by setting audacious goals or by achieving business milestones, Inc said. This is the first time Miami founders have been honored.
To mark this #MiamiTech milestone, we caught up with our winners.
Olivia Ramos, co-founder and CEO of Deepblocks, said to expect the startup’s AI-driven real estate modeling platform to go global before the end of the year. “Our machine learning work will begin to offer local zoning limits, construction costs, and market data to more than 1,000 U.S. cities,” said Ramos, who founded Deepblocks at Singularity and has been growing it in Miami.
Her advice to other female founders: “Build a team that is just as in love with the vision as you are, and empower every single one of them to lead.”
“My ultimate goal for Boatsetter is to enable incredible experiences on the water for anyone, anywhere,” said Jaclyn Baumgarten, CEO and co-founder of Boatsetter, based in Fort Lauderdale. Boatsetter is the only company in the United States that can provide insured peer-to-peer boat rentals, since it has an exclusive contract for the nation’s only peer-to-peer boat rental policy, with the country’s top marine insurer, BoatUS/GEICO, she added. Boatsetter recently raised another $10 million in venture capital.
“My best advice for other female entrepreneurs is to know your stuff inside and out: When launching any startup, you’re probably going to be pitching investors and partners constantly. For that, you have to know your industry, your operations, and your numbers inside and out – people want to know they are taking a risk with someone who is at the very top of their game,” Baumgarten said.
“Be ready to work twice as hard as everyone else: The boating industry is very traditional and cautious about change. If you want to innovate in any established industry you’re going to have to work twice as hard to affect that change. That said, it is precisely in such established and more traditional industries that there are tremendous opportunities for powerful and profitable innovation.”
Maxeme Tuchman, CEO and co-founder of Caribu, had this advice for other female entrepreneurs in South Florida: “There is a true sisterhood in the Miami entrepreneur ecosystem. Lean on us. Let us know when you need support. And let us know about your successes so we can clap loudly for you!”
She said Caribu, the No. 1 way to video call with your grandkids, has a renewed focus on its Glamma (Glamorous Grandmas) customer base. The ed-tech startup just raised $1M+ in equity crowdfunding to hire a Head of Marketing and make Caribu a household name at Glamma’s house this holiday season, she said.
Local investors in these startups include the Miami Angels (led by Rebecca Danta) for Caribu; Krillion Ventures (co-founded and led by Melissa Krinzman) for Deepblocks; and TheVentureCity (founded and led by Laura Gonzalez-Estefani) for Boatsetter.
To see the complete Female Founders 100 list go to: https://www.inc.com/2019-female-founders-100. Inc.’s Female Founders 100 issue (October 2019) will be on newsstands beginning September 24.
Follow @ndahlberg on Twitter and email her at [email protected]
- Human ingenuity, inspiration, a call to action: Miami Tech Talent Coalition takes the stage at eMerge Americas - April 24, 2024
- Miami Tech Month, where developers get their own conference, VCs take the stage, and anything is POSSIBLE - April 23, 2024
- Full circle moment for Johanna Mikkola, the new CEO for Tech Equity Miami - April 22, 2024