Miami Mayor Francis Suarez would very much like Miami to be the next hub of high-tech innovation. He’s so serious about attracting startup companies and the deep-pocketed investors who dump money into them that he’s taken out cheeky billboards in San Francisco that encourage anyone thinking of moving to Miami to DM his Twitter account. No idea if any billionaire investors have actually DM’d the mayor but his campaign to make Magic City the next Silicon Valley is proving quite effective.
Whether fed up with the divisive politics, frustrated by high taxes or just looking to escape the hyper-insularity of Silicon Valley, there is a definite and increasingly brisk exodus from the Bay Area. For some years now Austin has been the favored city of high-tech California expats — Elon Musk has officially moved Tesla’s headquarters to the Lone Star State — but Miami, with its constant sunshine and pristine beaches, sophisticated food and art scenes, diverse and educated workforce, and, perhaps most attractively, lack of state income tax is quickly pulling up from the rear and overtaking Austin as the go-to city for tech investors in search of the next unicorn.
Reddit co-founder and tech investor Alex Ohanian moved to South Florida several years ago — it didn’t hurt that his tennis icon wife Serena Williams has long made her primary home in the Sunshine State — and many others have followed. Early-stage startup investor Keith Rabois, general partner at Founders Fund and a former executive at a slew of startups including PayPal, LinkedIn and Square, made a lot of noise when he relocated to Miami last year, as did billionaire Shutterstock founder and CEO Jon Oringer, who just about a year ago plunked down $42 million for an ultra-modern Miami Beach mansion once owned by Alex Rodriguez. (Oringer’s oceanfront home in the Hamptons was for sale earlier this year but failed to sell with its $52 million price tag.)
Up-and-coming young angel investor and…