Building boss ladies: Meet the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program's inaugural cohort

Earlier this year, FIU launched a program to help founders of color leverage the #MiamiTech movement and scale their ventures to the next level. In collaboration with the City of Miami’s Venture Miami team, and with support from JPMorgan Chase, the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program locked in 10 female business owners of color in its inaugural cohort who are gearing up for social capital and influence, one-on-one growth strategies with venture capitalists and angel investors, exclusive access to resources, and much more.

“It’s been more than a year since the launch of Mayor Francis Suarez’s ‘How Can I Help’ campaign, which has sparked a historical movement in our Miami,” said FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program Director Kenasha Paul. “This program will help these women take their ventures to the next level, helping us further our mission of ensuring local and minority communities aren’t left behind as #MiamiTech continues to grow.”

The 14-week program is completely free to participants and will provide them with pitch deck reviews, pitch practices, and one-on-one coaching sessions to prepare the inaugural cohort for raising their next series of capital. Throughout the program, Paul will be working closely with the cohort members to cover the strategies needed to take their ventures to the next level — from marketing strategies, growth strategy plans, financial decisions, and investor lists, to building out their future rock-star team. 

From retail to hospitality to real estate and tech, the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program inaugural cohort is ready to tackle the future of #MiamiTech. Meet three of the entrepreneurs below.

Tech superstar ⏩ tech entrepreneur

What better way to promote a hot new spot than with a digital menu? That’s when Sophronia McKenzie ’09 discovered that that type of menu was nonexistent.

“You work in technology – why don’t you build that type of menu yourself?” she thought.

And that’s when a lightbulb went off and visuEats Imagery Solutions, the one-of-a-kind dining and customer experience mobile app, was born.

Born in Jamaica, McKenzie migrated to the United States with only $100 to her name, hungry for a fresh start. McKenzie found a job as an IT project manager, which sparked her passion for technology. Now, she works as a Senior IT project manager by day, and creator of visuEats Imagery Solutions by night.

“As a project manager, I had to develop the discipline to be organized and manage tasks from start to finish,” said McKenzie. “With this discipline, I was able to build my startup from scratch; create milestones, work on monthly goals, and create strategies to build the company from the ground up.”

visuEats Imagery Solutions aims to enhance the dining and customer experience by showcasing photos of a restaurant’s menu in a mobile app. Some features of the app include crowdPlease, a feature that provides customers suggestions by showcasing popular items; alertEat, allowing customers to filter the menu based on their food preferences or restrictions; and dineDime, which filters menues based on their budget. 

“Our goal with visuEats is to get customers hungry when they look at each menu item,” McKenzie said. “We work with professional photographers to bring out the best of each of our partner restaurants’ menu, preparing the customer for a unique and delicious dining experience.”

“Being a part of the Spring 2022 cohort of the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program is affording me the privilege of access and support,” she adds of the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program. “I am really excited about the doors and opportunities that lie ahead!”

Promoting self-love: #BetterAsIAm

Mitali Saxena, born and raised in India, is an engineer at heart. But, when the need for change in the fashion industry became overwhelmingly apparent to her, she combined her two passions — engineering and fashion — to create something that would really break barriers in both the fashion and engineering industries.

“I was fed up with the disparity between the fashion industry’s beauty standards and the needs of real women,” Saxena said. “I felt a need for change on how we look at fashion and clothing, which is how Fashom was born.”

Fashom, a blend of the words “fashion” and “om,” the universal meditation sound, promotes self-love and body positivity in women. Essentially a styling service, Fashom retrieves the customer’s data collected by the styling quiz and delivers personalized outfits — hand-selected by professional stylists — to customers’ doorsteps using AI/ML algorithms to find the best clothing choices based on body shapes.

“At the core of Fashom’s mission is an unwavering support of body positivity and body confidence,” Saxena added. “We want to make millions of women across the globe feel like the best versions of themselves, just the way they are. Our goal is to provide clothing choices that don’t belong to a certain size and shape but fit every unique body shape.”

“I am most excited about meeting other women founders of color with similar goals and visions for their ventures,” added Saxena of the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program. “I’m ready to gain valuable resources and opportunities to really scale my venture to the next level!”

Welcome home: showcasing the dream

Packed schedules and tight deadlines make for a realtor’s worst nightmare – especially during housing spikes and market jumps. But entrepreneur Nadia Davis has a solution.

Born and raised in South Florida to Jamaican parents, Davis knew a thing or two when it came to a realtor’s busy schedule before launching Show Agents.

 It started with her father.

“One day, I was late to Thanksgiving dinner because my family had to accommodate a showing for my father, a real estate broker,” Davis said. “My father said something to me when we left the showing that inspired Show Agents – ‘I wish I could have paid someone to do that for me.’”

Throughout her life, Davis witnessed her father get pulled away from family events, such as birthdays, anniversaries and holiday gatherings, to maintain his real estate business. She knew that with a service like Show Agents, she could alleviate realtors’ workload in a meaningful way, allowing them to spend more time with family, friends and loved ones without worrying about quality service for their clients.

"What Show Agents really does is connect realtors to showing assistants, offering realtors convenience and ease when their schedules are consistently jam-packed,” Davis said. “Realtors can leverage our resources to increase their productivity, improve efficiency and develop a better work-life balance.”

“I really believe the FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program will catapult my business to the next level,” Davis added. “I’m excited to fine-tune our customer-acquisition strategies, perfect our business pitch, and become a part of Miami’s successful startup ecosystem.”

#MiamiTech is not a moment, it’s a movement – and these ladies are about to make it their own.

Meet the full FIU-Venture Miami Opportunity Program inaugural cohort and learn more about the program.