Editor’s Note: GeekWire has partnered with UP Global and Chase to cover four Startup Week events around the country, starting with the Tampa Bay Startup Week from Feb. 2-6. GeekWire will be filing daily reports from this emerging startup hub this week.
ST. PETERSBURG— Bays, channels and other waterways can define a city — serving as playgrounds for tourists and important economic engines.
But waterways, especially when as pervasive as they are in the Tampa Bay area, also can serve as geographic and psychological divides.
Tampa and nearby St. Petersburg face this challenge with a giant bay separating the two cities, a waterway which absolutely divides these sun-drenched communities.
As Tampa resident and Geek Breakfast co-organizer Mitch Neff told me this morning after an awesome omelette with BBQ sauce, the bridges between Tampa and nearby St. Petersburg might as well be 50 miles long. (The Gandy bridge is just over 2.5 miles long).
“It is not that far geographically, but every time you have a bridge it divides the community,” said Tonya Elmore, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Innovation Center.
It’s a common refrain I’ve heard in my discussions with technology and political leaders here, and it is one that many up-and-coming regions face. How do you work together toward a common purpose when historical and cultural boundaries exist?
“We need to knock down these bridges, and quit thinking about Tampa or St. Petersburg or Brandon or Lakeland,” said Reliaquest CEO Brian Murphy, who also serves as chairman of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum. “Our workforce issue is not between Tampa and St. Pete. Our workforce issue is keeping people from leaving the University of South Florida and going to Atlanta or Charlotte or cities that are not an average 72 degrees and has the greatest airport in the country.”
Since arriving here on Sunday, I’ve spent most of my time on the Tampa side of the Bay, primarily in the historic former cigar making enclave of Ybor City.
On Wednesday, I hit the road. I headed southwest across the I-275 bridge to St. Petersburg — known for art galleries, retirees and endless beaches.
While Tampa’s downtown was sleepy on my visit the other day, St. Petersburg was bustling. Bars and restaurants were crowded in late afternoon. Rents are skyrocketing, and there’s a vibe that draws people to the downtown and nearby neighborhoods. A waterfront trail and park system makes the downtown more walkable and energized.
I was in St. Pete to attend an event known as StartUp Xchange, a place where volunteer mentors offer business advice to entrepreneurs. The StartUp Xchange is one of many programs operated by the Tampa Bay Innovation Center, a fixture in the community for 11 years.
Originally started as the Star Technology Enterprise Center with an emphasis on defense-oriented companies such as Homeland Intelligence Technologies and Alakai Defense Systems, the organization now operates from a 6,000 square-foot co-working and incubator space in the St. Petersburg College Downtown Center.
Things are booming at the space, with entrepreneurs stopping by to receive mentorship or temporary space. Things are going so well that the Tampa Bay Innovation Center is looking to build a new 40,000 square-foot center in downtown St. Pete that includes lab space for the region’s thriving biotech and health sciences industry, as well as space for marine science.
That’s a far cry from when Tonya Elmore, president and CEO of the Tampa Bay Innovation Center, launched the organization 11 years ago.
“When I first started, I had to educate the general public of what an incubator is and what it does and what it means to be a startup and an entrepreneur,” said Elmore, whose organization runs the TekGarage co-working space and incubator. “Now, it is sexy to work with entrepreneurs, and everybody has an incubator.”
Elmore said that the education process has been part of an “interesting journey,” and she now feels as if the Tampa Bay region is well positioned to thrive. The community and political leadership are largely on board, and everyone is starting to row in the same direction.
“You see a lot of players in the marketplace that want to help entrepreneurs and incubators, and that shows to me that there’s a demand and an acceptance,” she said.
Unlike Seattle which boasts big-brand powerhouses such as Amazon, Microsoft and T-Mobile, Tampa Bay doesn’t really have an established tech giant.
“There’s no Microsoft, no Amazon,” she said.
Elmore added that every region just needs to find out what they are good at, and build on that. In a fireside chat this morning, Murphy of the Tampa Bay Technology Forum echoed that sentiment.
“I do think we have to be careful not getting hung up trying to be someone else. We just have to be us,” said Murphy, speaking Thursday as part of the Startup Week festivities. “And that’s a tough definition because it really is a diverse area.”
That diversity makes it hard to just slap a slogan on the region, just as Nashville gets labeled as music lover’s paradise or Seattle as a hip urban coffee-drinking land of software geeks.
Business and civic leaders need to give up on the idea of trying to be something like the “Silicon Valley of the south,” said Murphy. And they need to continue a long-drawn-out process of incorporating a more regionally-focused mindset. “It is less about ego, and more about how we get something done,” he said.
Even still, the Tampa Bay region is still at the point where it is very much trying to define itself. In today’s chat, Murphy struggled with an audience member’s question when pressed to name the defining characteristics of Tampa, those things where the region is absolutely the very best in the world.
“We need to think about who we are,” said Murphy. “What is Tampa?”
