StartUP FIU fosters and supports innovation and entrepreneurship at FIU and beyond

By Irene Ferradaz

Everywhere you go these days, Miami is abuzz with the energy of innovative technologies, dazzling new inventions and reports on the creative entrepreneurs who turn these ideas into reality. As Miami Tech Month comes to an end, the excitement is just getting started.

Back when our city’s tech movement was just beginning, Florida International University identified the need to nurture those efforts. StartUP FIU was created to foster and support innovation and entrepreneurship at FIU and beyond.

FIU News interviewed Emily Gresham, assistant vice president for research, innovation and economic development and co-founder of StartUP FIU, to learn more about how StartUP FIU began, how it supports students, faculty and local community entrepreneurs, and what’s in store for the future.

What prompted you and StartUP FIU co-founder Robert “Bob” Hacker to create StartUP FIU?

Believe it or not, StartUP FIU was born while I was working on the University’s BeyondPossible2020 strategic plan in 2014. While creating this ambitious plan for FIU, I had the opportunity to meet and speak to about 200 people who served on various committees. One of the topics that constantly came up was the need for infrastructure to support innovation and entrepreneurship.

I actually met Bob at a social entrepreneurship committee and we began our conversation not agreeing on how to create infrastructure for entrepreneurship. I remember he told me: “That will never work!” in his growly voice and my response was to get curious: “It won’t work? Tell me more.”

This served as the jumping-off point to explore how we could nurture the Miami entrepreneurial ecosystem at FIU. As we saw the promise of the nascent tech community in Miami, we knew it would only continue to grow and that FIU should play a significant role in preparing individuals for the opportunities and challenges to come.

StartUP FIU supports students, faculty and researchers and local community entrepreneurs. What do you consider to be the biggest benefits StartUP FIU provides each of these stakeholders?

I always say we help people develop a roadmap to get them from where they are with their ideas/inventions/companies to where they want to go.

Our students, faculty and small business owners run the gamut from folks who are tinkering around with an idea to those who need help growing their existing company.

Our goal is to provide entrepreneurs with information and a plan to successfully help them advance their goals. We have the programs, tools and network to help them get there.

We know that StartUP FIU works with students and faculty and researchers, but how do you assist the larger South Florida community?

As Miami’s only public research university, we feel a responsibility to go outside our campus walls and support local community entrepreneurs by leveraging our unique resources.

I am so proud to report that all of our 65 small business cohort companies made it through the pandemic. We also had unprecedented attendance at our virtual events, serving nearly 2,500 local small businesses.

Working with the small business community during the pandemic, we saw the need to pool resources, and combined StartUP FIU Food and StartUP FIU Procurement into StartUP FIU Local to diversify and streamline our services to support even more.

Additionally, we work closely with FIU’s amazing faculty and staff to leverage their industry know-how for our entrepreneurs. We also utilize the one-of-a-kind facilities on campus – such as our commercial kitchen at the Chaplin School and the Engineering Center’s fabrication lab – to help small businesses grow their companies.

You won’t find many programs as comprehensive, collaborative and customized as StartUP FIU.

What are some of StartUP FIU’s accomplishments you are most proud of?

If we’re talking strictly numbers, I am most proud that our team has attracted more than $12 million in funding, has informed and educated 14,000 people who have come to our events, and worked with over 300 companies at various stages of their life cycle, including 24 student-started companies. We’ve helped our students raise $50,000 in prize money, been instrumental in teaching local entrepreneurs how to increase their revenue from 20% to 300% and attracted more than $10 million in follow-on funding. We increased faculty innovation as well, helping to grow the number of NSF I-Corps teams by 200% in just the last four years.

However, one of the most important things about StartUP FIU is we’re not just about starting companies.

Take, for example, our students. Whether or not they ever start their own business, the skills they learn at StartUP FIU – pitching, financial models, value proposition – build up their confidence and make them feel like they belong in a room with industry leaders and investors. Many of our students are accepted to prestigious graduate school programs, such as Harvard and MIT, and obtain employment with leading companies like Accenture, Amazon and Microsoft.

Our specially-designed programs allow faculty to learn valuable startup skills such as customer discovery and product roadmaps. This helps them improve their research approach as well as secure more grants. Those we’ve worked with at StartUP FIU have grown tremendously under our support – be that economically, intellectually or personally – which gives us a sense of deep satisfaction and is something we can all be proud of.

What are some of your favorite “standout” or “success” stories?

There are so many! We have Jason Dettbarn, the FIU alumnus who created Addigy and was able to scale his company from two to 50+ workers and Jose Maldonado, who worked on Pilot VR, a virtual reality platform for physical therapy as a student. He also helped co-found the prestigious Upsilon Pi Epsilon (UPE) while hanging out with his friends at StartUP FIU’s hub. He’s now working at Microsoft but still engages with UPE and helps current FIU students with their tech interviews!

There's also Patricia Garcia, who won Venture Bites, a student competition hosted by Miami Angels and Mayor Suarez, last year. She was a member of one of only two female-led teams (out of five total), both from FIU. Even our alumni staff are success stories. Daniela Cadena now works for Chiper, a B2B e-commerce ecosystem for the corner store market in Latin America that just raised a Series A. Giselle Latorre now works at Virgin Voyages handling Learning Strategy & Service Experience! And Alexandria Alvarido is now a product manager at Juniper by IMC, an online wholesale marketplace. We hired these three women fresh from graduating from FIU…now six years later, they are amazing managers in the industry.

We can’t wait to continue sharing our amazing stories of those who’ve leveraged all StartUP FIU has to offer to create successful futures for themselves.

What are some last thoughts about StartUP FIU you want to share?

We are about more than startups. We collaborate across the university and community to build a culture of innovation.

I also oversee our Technology Management and Commercialization office. When StartUP FIU launched in the Fall of 2016, FIU had a total of 18 patents. Today, we have nearly 350! We are just getting started. It’s a marathon, not a sprint – but we are starting to get tangible examples of that culture shift.