At the end of 2020, the first year of pandemic, one of the founders of Founders Fund - one of the most important Venture Capital funds in the State of Florida - Delian Asparouhov, wrote a tweet proposing to "move Silicon Valley to Miami". "How can I help?" was the response of Francis Suarez, mayor of the city famous for its beaches, parties and shopping.

Since that time, the city has "attracted companies with USD 2 billion of AUM to Miami; 81 new companies have added USD 1 billion to the city's wage economy and we are ranked number one in the growth of technology related jobs"Suarez himself tells DFMÁS.

The translation of Venture Capital is "Venture Capital ": investments in small companies, with an innovative business model, often based on the strong use of technology and with a great potential for growth and scaling to other markets. 

These are the so-called startupswhere the most important thing -according to most investors- is the team of founders. Precisely, Venture Capital is a kind of "bet" on entrepreneurs, where many times the return can be zero, but in some occasions, and hopefully the majority, the return can be equivalent to 300x in case of "hitting the nail on the head" by investing in the next Uber, Cornershop, Netflix or Spotify. These are companies that initially had valuations of no more than a couple of million dollars, but were later sold for hundreds or billions.

Venture Capital investments worldwide have grown exponentially, especially during 2021. This is the case of Miami, where investments exceeded USD 3.8 billion in 2021, while only the first half of 2022 have exceeded USD 2.5 billion, according to PitchBook. These figures only complement the fact that large funds dedicated to this type of assets have multiplied their efforts in this new epicenter of North American and Latin American entrepreneurship: Softbank, Citadel, Andreessen Horowitz, and even Microsoft are opening offices in the city.

But not only that, the founders of the main unicorns (startups) are unicorns(startups with valuations in excess of USD 1 billion) worldwide are choosing Miami as their new home. In fact, founders of two of the top three unicorns Chilean unicorns have already moved to Florida: Daniel Undurraga (Cornershop) and Eduardo della Maggiora (Betterfly) are part of this trend.

To this we must add the effect produced by the pandemic: teleworking accelerated and Americans themselves took the initiative to move to Miami when they noticed that Florida was one of the first states to open when the others were closed. The low taxes (there are no personal taxes) and the good climate accentuated this trend. 

In fact, according to the Financial Times, between July 2020 and July 2021, more than 220,000 Americans will arrive in Florida, more than in any other state in the country. Now, in addition, Latin American entrepreneurs are arriving, marking such a strong trend that there has even been an increase in lease values of almost 50% in Miami.

Thus, this city has positioned itself as a new epicenter for Latin American Venture Capital, where investment expectations do not rest and point to funds in the region, which focus on local entrepreneurs and take advantage of synergies and exposure to large markets and investors who are increasingly settling in Miami, which, far from affecting investment in Chile, can mean a great boost to enhance it .

By: Tomás Latorre