Founders, don’t miss your opportunity to compete in a global pitch competition with your fellow South Florida startups. It’s designed to be a fun competition taking place over three days this summer, and ending with one startup being chosen to compete this fall in the global finals of the Startup World Cup in San Francisco, with its $1 million grand prize. But you can’t compete if you don’t enter, and you need to enter by July 1 (updated).
It’s a new name this year – SPARC (Startup Pitch Accelerator Regional Competition) South Florida, says Hilmon Sorey, co-founder of The Source Groups, which is organizing the regional competition.
“I like acronyms that actually mean something,” says Sorey, an investor, advisor and serial founder who moved to Miami from San Francisco in 2022. “We’re going to ignite the ecosystem.”
Once that July 1 deadline passes, 40 (updated) startup semifinalists will be chosen. Sparc South Florida will provide a week advice and guidance on their pitch deck and presentation – which will be available virtually and in Source’s downtown Miami office, and the top 40 will take part in a Demo Day, where judges and the public can cast their votes on who should move on. Then the top 10 will pitch on stage to the judges and one will be crowned the South Florida winner and go to San Francisco, all expenses paid.
He and his The Source Group’s partner, music entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Lucas, are planning for a bigger competition than last year, its inaugural year. After an orientation on July 24, the demo day is currently planned for Aug. 22 and the top 10 pitch competition is planned for Aug. 23, when the winner will be announced.
“The goal this year is to see how best we could get this entire South Florida ecosystem pulling together, working together. Our motivation is for startup founders to be able to raise their platform, to elevate their visibility to both the community as well as to other founders, investors and accelerators,” said Sorey, adding that a number of last year’s competitors went on to participate in accelerators and/or received venture funding.
Last year’s South Florida winner was Raquel de Antonio Crespo, co-founder of Sargassum Eco Lumber, a Miami startup aiming to solve the environmental challenges of deforestation, the Sargassum seaweed invasion and the plastic crisis with a sustainable alternative for lumber. She is currently raising a seed round and is planning to build a manufacturing facility for the startup.
She appreciated the pre-competition mentorship and especially enjoyed Demo Day, where she could talk with and give demos to judges and community members for much of the day. And then to be chosen for the top 10, pitching on stage on a separate day? “It was amazing – the energy,” she said. “I made really good friends. It was a competition but at the same time we were helping each other.” One of the founders even accompanied her to San Francisco, supporting her there.
While de Antonio didn’t win in San Francisco last October, where she was competing against more than 80 startups from all over the world over a couple of days, it too was an amazing experience, she said. “I made a lot of connections, and I am still in conversations with huge global engineering company from Japan that wants to partner with us to bring our product to the Asian market.”
Sorey recommends that startups who competed last year reapply. Startups of course develop and pivot, and “if nothing else, it gives you a chance to just continue to talk about your product and to get all of that great coaching from experts in go to market strategy, product, finance and investment. It’s all free, so there’s no reason not to apply.”
He also suggests startups who enter have an MVP and a product that is demo-able. “Demo Day is a four and a half hour marathon open to the public as well as our judges …so you get a rapid fire opportunity with both your target audience, which could be members of the public, as well as investors and accelerator leaders.”
Last year the Demo Day startups spanned 21 different categories, ecommerce, clean tech, FinTech, health tech, AI, web3, etc. — which is “the beauty of South Florida,” said Sorey. The only requirement for participating in SPARC South Florida is that one of a startup’s founders must be based in Miami-Dade, Broward or Palm Beach County or the startup must have a physical presence in South Florida.
There’s a community-wide benefit, too, Sorey says. The year-old The Source Groups has made seven startup investments, launched a Source Media Group to help creators monetize, graduated 118 students in B2B tech sales through its nonprofit arm, and held regular Tech Tuesday meetups open to all and other events, but even so it’s often hard for his organization and other ecosystem players to collaborate with one another.
“Working with Mana Tech, the AI Hub and others that will be involved this year gives us all a chance to really pick our head up from our desk for a minute and say, so what are you doing? How can we support that? Coming from San Francisco, where there’s such a sense of collaboration, I think that it’s been really impactful for everyone to know each other, participate together, and all chime in with support of a South Florida group of founders,” Sorey said.
For the community, it’s also fun to root for the home team – all the way to the world stage.
What’s de Antonio’s advice for this year’s competitors? Present your compelling story in a way that’s understandable to everyone and back that up with your numbers. Then focus on pitch timing. “Practice, practice, practice,” she says. “Don’t forget that you’re competing for a million dollars.”
Find out more and enter by July 1 (deadline extended) at sparcsouthflorida.com.
Editor’s note: Some of the contest dates and details changed after the original posting of this story and have now been revised. But doublecheck the SPARC website for the latest dates and details.
Photos: Photos below and above are from last year’s pitch competition and show the regional competition and mentoring sessions. Photos provided by The Source Groups and Raquel de Antonio.
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