Photo Credit: Flickr user Thomas Hawk

Tomorrow night at the Lightbox in Wynwood, 60+ Miami entrepreneurs will be pitching their startups to a panel of Silicon Valley investors capable of helping kickstart their ideas. 

These companies have been part of the NewMe Pop-Up accelerator, which has provided local Miami startups with advice and coaching over the past two days from experienced investors like Scott Kupor of Andreesen Horowitz and Erik Moore of BaseVC.  

NewMe, a California accelerator dedicated to promoting a diverse base of tech entrepreneurs, partnered with Lab Miami, a Wynwood based co-working space and startup network, to help identify Miamians who could benefit from the workshop.

Knight has sponsored NewMe’s presence here as part of our effort to connect, educate and inspire Miami innovators and help ignite our local start-up culture.

NewMe’s focus on diversifying the base of tech entrepreneurs is particularly exciting as it can help accentuate the uniquely diverse mix of local Miami startups amid a national tech scene where minority and women entrepreneurs each make up less than 8% of tech company founders.

The NewMe accelerator is part of a wave of startup activity that has been building over the last year, and we will see a number of exciting events before year end including a HackDay Miami a $50,000 Hackathon (12/8-12/9), Demo Day’s for Incubate Miami and Wayra Global (12/12), TekFight an entrepreneurship tournament (12/7), and the Americas Venture Capital Conference (12/13-14).

By Ben Wirz, director/business consulting at Knight Foundation