Demian Bellumio, chief operating officer for Senzari, a Big Data content recommendation company based in Miami, seems in motion even while calmly answering questions seated at a desk in the company’s conference room. It’s late summer and part of this, no doubt, is because today he’s waiting for a call from a potential sponsor for this year’s SIME MIA, a two-day conference that merges entrepreneurship, media technology and the arts.

Senzari COO Demian Bellumio by Carolina Wilson on Flickr.

Born in Argentina but raised in Miami, Bellumio has been instrumental in organizing events such as the MIA Music Summit, which brought together people in music and technology, entrepreneurs and investors, and also bringing SIME, a Europe-based event, to South Florida. Last year’s gathering was a partnership between SIME and MIA Collective, of which Bellumio is a founding partner, with support provided by Knight Foundation through 2015. But on this day, he says, more sponsors are needed. And if a potential backer is interested, he’s happy to talk.

As it develops an ecosystem for high-tech entrepreneurs and investors, Bellumio is one of Miami’s most enthusiastic pitchmen. He has a success story to tell—and a passion for his hometown.

“I love the city. I came here when I was little and don’t want to move. It’s my home,” he says. “I went to Belen Jesuit High School; I graduated at the top of my class. I could’ve gone to any university in the country but I didn’t want to leave, so I went to FIU. For some, it might not have seemed the smartest thing to do at the time, but I’m happy, and I love that I can play a role impacting the city and help others.”

“SIME is something I personally have been thinking about for a long time,” he explains. “Mostly because I’ve been lucky to go to a number of amazing events around the world, and thanks to those events I’ve been able to develop a network of contacts and friends who have been instrumental in everything in my life, from business to personal. So when I’d get back to Miami, I’d keep thinking, ‘I’d love to have that in Miami.’”

Matt Haggman, Knight’s Miami program director, underscores the importance of exemplary success stories and a pay-it-forward, virtuous cycle to nurture a productive ecosystem for technology creators, entrepreneurs and investors in Miami.

 “And Demian is leading in multiple ways,” Haggman says. “SIME and the MIA Music Summit are transformational events, not only by bringing amazing speakers to Miami, but also by providing new and compelling ways for people to connect and gather here.”

“But then, in addition, Demian is putting together a quite remarkable company, amazingly diverse. To build that and set that kind of example is transformative.”

An enterprising attitude

Bellumio began his career in banking as an intern at Barclays Capital, the investment-banking arm of Barclays Bank PLC. How he negotiated his way into such opportunity speaks of his enterprising attitude.

At the time, Bellumio was still in college and selling flooring products on weekends. When he found out that one of his clients was the managing director of Barclays Capital, he called him and proposed a deal: a 50 percent discount on the products in exchange for an internship. Initially, the man thought he was “crazy,” Bellumio says, but asked him for his resume. It gave him his start.

Barclays hired him officially after a year of his traveling and making deals, but in the summer of 1999, while he was waiting to start, Bellumio became intrigued by Miami’s budding Silicon Beach community. He didn’t take the permanent job at Barclays. Instead, he worked at the local offices of DeRemate.com as an intern, “and I saw that they had raised $50 million and were buying companies so I basically started advising these companies after hours.” That turned into BroadSpan Capital, a boutique technology investment bank — and he was on his way.

Eventually he realized he wasn’t a banker.  “People would come to me with passion and deals and my job was to get them money. So in that process I felt part of the team, but then the deal closed and you moved on to the next deal—and I wanted to be part of the creative, the passion side. We actually thought of starting a film production company. My family in Argentina is in the film business.”

That wasn’t a perfect fit either. “Making movies is probably riskier than technology and more complicated,” he says, “and as I was in that process, Manny Medina called me and offered me a job at Terremark.”

Bellumio became the vice president of corporate finance and development at Terremark Worldwide Inc., a leading provider of Internet infrastructure services, and worked there for four years. Verizon acquired the company in 2011.

Bellumio joined Senzari the same year. It was a new company, developing technology to analyze music, social data and personal preferences to make customized real-time recommendations. The company now has 30 employees and offices in Miami, San Francisco and Berlin.

“For most people, technology is not on the radar when talking about Miami,” he says. “It’s not on the radar from a business point of view or from an academic point of view, so the hardest challenge is to show people that you could do business here. Fundraising for us hasn’t been easy. We have raised less than 5 percent of the money here [including an investment from Knight Foundation’s Enterprise Fund]. It’s been really hard to access big-ticket investments in cutting-edge technology in Miami. The money has come mainly from the West Coast, Atlanta and New Jersey.”

For Haggman, one of the main challenges for Miami is “the lack of awareness about what is going on here,” he says. “We not only have success stories such as  .Co, Mako, Open English or Senzari, but we also have a critical mass of universities. The Miami metropolitan area is seventh in the nation in college students per capita. “

Changing attitudes

Inviting the world to events such as SIME MIA might go a long way in changing that perception.

The phone rings and Bellumio excuses himself. This is the would-be sponsor from Denmark, and Bellumio’s pitch has as much to do with the event as with the city and its potential as a tech hub.

“We knew [SIME MIA] was a multi-year effort,” says Bellumio, back at the conference room table without missing a beat. “This year’s event will be different from last year’s. The first day will be an afternoon session of 400 people by invitation only. … It will have a lot more interaction between speakers and guests and also more workshops. … We are almost picking [certain people] to be together and see if we can spark conversations there that then we can carry on to the second day, which will be more the typical keynote big venue event. For this one the general public is invited.”

The objectives are simple, Bellumio says. “First, give visibility to Miami; [second] is having the knowledge transfer from these amazing people to our community. For me it’s not just about passing data, but seeing someone, touching someone. Then is when you perhaps get to the idea that ‘Yes, I can do that too.’ … And lastly, it’s for people to consider making Miami a place where to do business. We hope these events help bring these people into the community, into the ecosystem and help grow it.”

Fernando González is a South Florida-based arts and culture writer

SIME MIA is slated for Dec. 1-2 at New World Center in Miami Beach and The LAB Miami in Wynwood. To view the agenda and to register, visit simemia.co.