The Digital Diaspora 1st Edition: The Tweet Heard Round The Valley
The Digital Diaspora - 1st Weekly Edition
Welcome to the first edition of The Digital Diaspora, a weekly short column covering the rise of new tech hubs outside of Silicon Valley. This week’s post will center on the meteoric rise of Miami (at least on Twitter) led by Mayor Francis Suarez.
The Tweet Heard Round The Valley (aka, The Rise of Miami)
It started with a simple tweet.
When Francis Suarez (Miami’s Mayor) replied to Delian Asparouhav (Varda Space co-founder) in the otherwise-quiet afternoon of December 4th, Miami as an alternative technology hub to Silicon Valley instantly transformed from a lofty concept with a few die hard proponents into a non-stop trending topic on ‘Tech Twitter’.
Engagement in that thread was impressive, with honest feedback given to Mayor Suarez about some of the key challenges Miami would face today trying to compete with Silicon Valley — most notably a relatively sparse pool of engineering talent and Florida’s rigid enforceability of employee non-compete clauses.
But more impressive than engagement in that specific thread has been the persistent drumbeat of SV -> Miami commentary over the 3+ weeks that have since ensued. Mayor Suarez has personally courted Silicon Valley notables with meetings at City Hall over Cuban Cafecito, including highly publicized sessions with Lucy Guo (ex- Scale AI co-founder) and Joey Gonzalez (Barry’s Bootcamp CEO).
A retweet from Mayor Suarez has become the new Silicon Valley status symbol, akin to TestFlight access to Clubhouse in early-2020 or a Superhuman e-mail invite in mid-2019. And the momentum has shown no signs of abating.
One interesting angle to consider with this story is not the “what”, but rather the “why” — why has the Silicon Valley-based tech community been so receptive to Mayor Suarez’s recruitment efforts? Although there are theories abound, I would principally highlight two:
The tech community increasingly feeling “unwelcome”, or even “vilified” by the political environment in the San Francisco Bay Area, and;
Growing frustration with the Bay Area’s living conditions, especially in the city of San Francisco
I have no intention of chiming in on the merits of AB5 & Prop 22, the “Venture Capitalists vs. The Media” feud, or the lack of prosecution of street crimes in San Francisco. Other writers have beaten those topics to death, and the proverbial temperature on these issues is already sufficiently high. But it can’t be ignored that whether these slights to the tech community are real or perceived, they have primed the pump for ambitious mayors like Francis Suarez to try to recruit away technologists and investors seeking greener pastures.
Lastly, while not strictly related to this column’s focus on Miami as an emerging tech hub, I’d be remiss not to highlight how impressed I’ve been with Mayor Suarez’s innovative grassroots approach to politics via social media. In speaking directly to constituents over Twitter and hosting 1:1 cafecito meetings, Suarez has taken a page straight from the Y Combinator playbook — in the early stages of your startup, you should “Do Things That Don’t Scale”.
Though their politics are quite different, the strategy is reminiscent of a young, high-profile congresswoman from the Bronx whose political star has risen sharply over the past two years. Regardless of Miami’s near-term viability as a technology hub, I expect the mayor’s career to follow a similar trajectory.
Thank you so much for reading this week’s edition of “The Digital Diaspora: Is Tech Really Fleeing Silicon Valley? And to Where?”.
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About The Columnist: Matt Levine is currently the CEO & Founder of ValueTrace, an early stage enterprise software startup built to help finance teams keep their company’s SaaS spend under control. Prior to founding ValueTrace, he worked on the operating team at Andreessen Horowitz, and as an M&A banker advising technology clients at J.P. Morgan.