Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

There's a question every founder eventually has to answer: Do we build it, buy it, or wait?

I've had to make that call more than once, and the answer is never as clean as the press release.

This week, a utility, a distributor, a wealth firm and a cyber company each made that call in public. And the latest venture numbers show about $153 million invested locally last quarter, even as the number of deals cooled.

Big moves, but very different bets. The interesting part is what happens after the announcement.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here's what's on the board:
⚡ $1B Question for Tampa's Power Grid
🔌 Fortune 100 Giant Finds a New Specialty
💰 $153M Quarter Comes With a Catch
💼 A Tampa Wealth Firm Jumps a Weight Class
🛡️ Cybersecurity Buying Spree Continues
🚒 Local Investors Back a Better Firehouse Alarm
🛰️ Tampa Defense Contractor Finds $12M in Federal Work

Scroll down for the signal…

⚡ENERGY / AI INFRASTRUCTURE

TECO Plans Potential $1.05B Battery Build as Data Centers Eye Tampa Bay

AI needs a lot more than chips. It also needs somewhere to plug them in.

Tampa Electric is evaluating four 150-megawatt battery projects, potentially adding 600 megawatts of storage capacity between 2029 and 2032 at an estimated $1.05 billion. The utility says prospective data centers and other large customers could bring roughly 1,000 megawatts of new demand to West Central Florida.

None of those batteries is a done deal. TECO hasn't announced sites or signed customers for them. Under a new tariff filed with regulators, large users would need long-term commitments and would pay for the infrastructure required to serve them.

⚡Why It Matters: The AI boom could create real opportunities for local electrical contractors, builders, fiber providers and landowners. But the key question is whether the customers actually sign, and who pays if they don't.

Read the full report

🔌TECHNOLOGY / M&A

TD SYNNEX Agrees to Acquire BlueStar, a Specialty Tech Distributor

Clearwater's largest publicly traded company is going deeper into specialized technology distribution.

TD SYNNEX agreed to acquire BlueStar, a company with more than 50 locations, known for RFID, point-of-sale systems, mobility, digital signage, robotics and related technologies.

BlueStar brings something harder to build than a catalog: people who know these products, the vendors behind them and the resellers that install them.

The purchase price wasn't disclosed. The transaction still needs regulatory approval, and both businesses will operate independently until it closes.

⚡Why It Matters: Distribution may sound unglamorous, but specialization is valuable. TD SYNNEX is betting that combining BlueStar's technical relationships with its global reach creates more opportunity than simply adding another line of products.

💰VENTURE CAPITAL / STARTUPS

Tampa Bay Startups Raise $153M in Q3 as Deal Flow Slows

The latest local venture numbers are in, and they tell two stories at once.

Tampa Bay metro startups raised about $153 million across 21 deals in Q3, per PitchBook data reported this week.

That's meaningful capital for the region. But it came from fewer deals: 21 in Q3, down from 25 in Q2.

For founders, the distinction matters. A healthy total doesn't necessarily mean it's getting easier to raise a first or second check.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay is attracting serious investment, but the fundraising environment remains selective. If you're preparing to raise, pay attention to what investors are actually funding, not just the headline total.

Read the Q3 funding report

🤖FEATURED EVENT / AI

Techapalooza: AI Frontier Edition | November 19

AI is moving too fast for another panel explaining what it is.

We're teaming up with Disrupt The Bay to bring together voices from Microsoft, Google, SOFWERX, RebelEdge Advisory and Byte Strategy AI for a conversation about what's useful now.

Real use cases. Better workflows. Tools worth trying. What's overhyped. What's next.

Plus, speed networking with founders, executives and technologists who are actually working with this stuff.

📅 November 19 | 5–8 PM
📍 SOFWERX, Tampa

→ Save your spot at Techapalooza

💼WEALTH / M&A

Concurrent Adds $5.4B Spire Platform, Reaches $28.6B in AUM

Instead of recruiting another advisory team, Tampa-based Concurrent Investment Advisors acquired an entire platform.

The purchase of Spire Investment Partners adds roughly $5.4 billion in client assets and more than 30 advisor teams. Concurrent now reports $28.6 billion in assets under management, up from $16.8 billion at the start of 2026, plus another $18 billion in retirement assets under advisement.

Importantly, the $5.4 billion figure is Spire's asset base, not the price Concurrent paid. Financial terms weren't disclosed.

Both firms built their models around independent advisors who own their client relationships while sharing technology, operations and other support.

⚡Why It Matters: Buying scale is one thing. Preserving what made those independent practices successful is another. The real test will be whether Concurrent can integrate a national network without making its advisors feel less independent.

Read more about the acquisition

🛡️CYBERSECURITY / M&A

CyberFOX Acquires Optimize365 in Second Deal of 2026

Tampa-based CyberFOX isn't waiting to build every piece of its cybersecurity platform from scratch.

Its latest acquisition, Optimize365, brings continuous Microsoft 365 security monitoring and configuration hardening alongside CyberFOX's existing password, privileged-access, DNS and secure-network products.

It's the company's second acquisition this year, following Timus Networks in June and a nine-figure growth investment earlier in 2026. CyberFOX has grown from about two people to roughly 160 employees.

Optimize365 will keep its brand in the near term while the teams work on product and partner integrations.

⚡Why It Matters: For IT teams, another security product is only helpful if it reduces complexity rather than adding to it. That's the challenge for CyberFOX now: make the combined tools easier to deploy and manage, not just bigger on paper.

Read about the deal

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by pingolito on Giphy

I rarely make the headline when two companies join forces.

I begin after the handshakes and congratulations.

Get me right, and one plus one can become three.

Get me wrong, and even a great deal can become an expensive mistake.

What am I?

(Answer at the bottom. No peeking.)

🚒STARTUPS / VENTURE CAPITAL

Tampa Bay Ventures Invests in Firefighter-Tech Company Kortek

Some startup ideas solve a problem you can explain in one sentence: fire-station alarms shouldn't wake everyone when only part of the crew needs to respond.

Tampa Bay Ventures invested in Kortek Solutions, the Pinellas-based company behind EaseAlert. Its alerting system uses targeted wearable vibrations instead of relying entirely on a jarring station-wide alarm.

The aim is to make dispatch more precise while reducing unnecessary sleep disruption. Kortek's technology connects with fire-station alerting workflows, and the investment amount wasn't disclosed.

⚡Why It Matters: This is a local VC backing practical technology for the physical world. The next milestone worth watching is how widely departments adopt it, and whether the company can show measurable results for firefighter health and response operations.

Read the investment story

🛰️DEFENSE / GOVERNMENT CONTRACTING

C3EL Reports $12.08M in New Federal Prime Contract Awards

A Tampa government contractor quietly closed out the federal fiscal year with a busy September.

Woman-owned C3EL reported three new prime awards valued at an estimated $12.08 million combined. The largest, approximately $8.39 million over five years, covers secure communications and conferencing work for the Coast Guard. Additional awards cover technology modernization for the FCC and Department of the Interior.

The company also reported Air Force cybersecurity work, positions on NASA and missile-defense contracting vehicles, and CMMC Level 2 certification. Being named to a contract vehicle creates eligibility to compete; it does not guarantee future revenue.

⚡Why It Matters: This is the less-visible side of Tampa Bay's defense economy: local firms earning credentials, prime contracts and access to future bids. For smaller cyber and systems-integration businesses, those wins can also create subcontracting opportunities.

Read C3EL's announcement

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

Caption: When “we'll build it ourselves” turns into a three-year roadmap.

⚡QUICK HITS

🚀 Wave + ARK Labs Connect Both Sides of the Bay
Tampa Bay Wave selected 13 U.S. and U.K. startups for FinTech|X, including Riverview's PayShore and St. Pete's PredictQ. Wave and spARK Labs by ARK Invest also launched Bridging the Bay to connect founders and investors across the region.

🧪 Tampa Deep-Tech Startup Opens Its Lab to Outside Customers
Detect-ION launched an analytical-services offering that makes its mass-spectrometry capabilities available to external research and industry partners.

🚚 Global Logistics Firm Expands Downtown Tampa Team
Traffic Tech took 7,000 square feet for a team that has grown from about 15 to approximately 80 people, with room for further expansion.

🏭 Pinellas Manufacturer Plans 200K+ SF Campus
Hammer Haag Steel is planning more than 200,000 square feet of industrial and manufacturing space on a 10.5-acre Largo site.

🏥 TGH Receives First-Ever Neuro Spine Designation
Tampa General became the first hospital program to receive the Surgical Review Corporation's Neuro Spine Surgery Center of Excellence accreditation.

🏨 281-Room Hotel Cala Heads to the Riverwalk
The former downtown Riverwalk hotel is set to reopen in January 2027, with two Tao Group restaurant concepts and approximately 10,000 square feet of event space.

🎯OPERATOR’S TAKE

Whenever I see a big acquisition announced, my first question isn't what the buyer paid.

It's what happens Monday.

TD SYNNEX has to keep the expertise that makes BlueStar valuable. Concurrent has to bring 30-plus advisor teams onto a bigger platform without making them feel less independent. CyberFOX has to make another security product easier to use, not just add another logo to its homepage.

TECO's challenge is different. It's doing the math before the customer signs, because nobody wants existing ratepayers footing the bill for a speculative data-center bet.

I deal with versions of these decisions all the time. Growth choices tend to look obvious in an announcement. Execution is where you find out what you missed.

So the part I'll be watching isn't just how big these companies get. It's whether these moves actually make the business better for the people paying for the product or service.

We'll know a lot more a year from now.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 38 (FEAR) | CNN Business
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 59.2% | CoinMarketCap

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RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Integration.

Simple explanation:
Buying a company or combining two operations is only the beginning. The real work is getting people, products, systems and customers working together well enough to create more value than either business could alone.

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Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Apparently, AI got promoted before most of us did.

President Trump signed an executive order this week directing federal agencies to start calling Artificial Intelligence “Super Intelligence,” or SI, in official communications. Existing laws and contracts are not suddenly getting a global find-and-replace, but Washington officially has a new acronym.

Slightly awkward timing for our Techapalooza: AI Frontier Edition in November.

We already made the graphics, so AI it is.

Fortunately, Tampa Bay had plenty happening outside the naming department.

Local angels are writing more checks. A Tampa startup is tackling the boring data problem underneath AI. Honeywell is adding specialized aerospace testing capacity. A Brazilian technology company picked Manatee for its North American headquarters. A Tampa healthcare company bought closer to the point of injury. And another $125 million cleared for downtown St. Pete.

Here’s the board.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🤖 Washington Gives AI a Promotion
👼 Local Angels Start Writing Bigger Checks
🧠 A Tampa Startup Goes After AI’s Least Sexy Problem
✈️ Clearwater Adds Another Layer of Aerospace Muscle
🌎 A Foreign Tech Company Picks Tampa Bay for 200 Jobs
🏥 A Healthcare Platform Buys Closer to the Injury
🏗️ Nine-Figure Money Clears for Downtown St. Pete

Scroll down for the signal…

🤖AI / NATIONAL SIGNAL

Federal Government Starts Calling AI “Super Intelligence”

Credit to Getty Images

No, your ChatGPT bookmark does not need to change.

President Trump signed an executive order September 29 directing federal executive agencies to use “Super Intelligence” and “SI” instead of “Artificial Intelligence” and “AI” in official correspondence, websites, reports and other non-statutory communications.

Existing regulations, contracts, grants and historical documents stay untouched.

The order also asks the White House science and technology office to propose legislative language for a federal definition of “Super Intelligence” within 60 days.

For everyone outside the federal government?

You can keep saying AI. For now.

⚡Why It Matters: The funny part is the branding. The important part is how quickly AI is moving from a software trend into government policy, procurement and regulation. If you sell into defense, healthcare, government or another regulated industry, the vocabulary and rules around this technology are going to keep moving.

.👼STARTUPS / CAPITAL

Bridge Angel Investors Deploys $1M+ as Membership Hits 47

Executive Director Kim Miele and Board Chair Peter Offringa @ Bridge Angels

The Gulf Coast angel pool is getting deeper.

Sarasota-based Bridge Angel Investors has grown to 47 members, up from roughly eight coming out of the pandemic, and expects to cross 50 by year-end.

More importantly, the money is following.

Bridge has made eight investments totaling more than $1 million in 2026, more than double the $450,000 it deployed across three companies last year.

Over the past six years, the group has invested roughly $3.5 million across 23 companies, with about 63% going to Florida businesses.

Many of the newer members are founders who sold companies and relocated to the region, bringing both capital and operating experience with them.

⚡Why It Matters: Startup ecosystems need more than VC funds. They need people willing to write the first checks. More exited founders turning into local angels gives early-stage companies another path to capital before institutional venture money makes sense.

🧠AI / ENTERPRISE

Tampa’s nCore Tackles the Data Problem Underneath AI

Everybody wants AI. I mean, SI.

Far fewer companies have clean enough data to actually use it.

Tampa-based nCore Data Management is commercializing ANNA, software designed to turn information buried in invoices, contracts, PDFs and other unstructured files into structured data that business systems and AI tools can actually use.

The system runs on CPUs instead of requiring GPU infrastructure and is designed so nontechnical employees can train it on the fields they need extracted.

In one health-benefits use case, CEO Jordan Rhoads says ANNA structured a batch of information in 47 seconds that previously required several employees working over multiple days.

Five additional organizations are now testing or applying the technology.

⚡Why It Matters: A lot of companies are buying AI before fixing the information underneath it. nCore is betting that making enterprise data usable may be just as valuable as the model sitting on top.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by ibo_kai on Giphy

I can arrive as a hire, an acquisition, a machine or a piece of software.

Yesterday you could not do something.

Today, because of me, you can.

I make companies more valuable without necessarily making them bigger.

What am I?

(Answer at the bottom. No peeking.)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🤖FEATURED EVENT

Techapalooza: AI Frontier Edition

Call it AI. Call it SI. Just don’t fall behind it.

On November 19, we’re bringing together leaders from Microsoft, Google, SOFWERX, RebelEdge Advisory and Byte Strategy AI to focus on what’s actually useful right now.

Real use cases. Better workflows. New tools. What’s working. What’s overhyped. What’s next.

If you want a sharper understanding of how this technology can actually help you build, operate and compete, this is the room to be in.

📅 November 19
📍 SOFWERX, Tampa

→ Reserve your spot

✈️AEROSPACE / MANUFACTURING

Honeywell Adds $3.5M Aerospace Testing Expansion in Clearwater

Honeywell is adding another piece to one of Tampa Bay’s largest advanced-manufacturing operations.

The company is moving forward with a roughly $3.5 million, 3,300-square-foot specialized testing addition at its Clearwater aerospace campus.

The new space at Plant 6 will house testing equipment including a centrifuge used to evaluate components.

Honeywell’s Clearwater operation employs roughly 2,200 to 2,500 people and supports the company’s space business, including components used in NASA’s Orion spacecraft and Artemis program.

No new jobs have been announced as part of the expansion.

But when one of Pinellas County’s biggest private employers adds specialized testing infrastructure, the square footage is less interesting than what happens inside it.

⚡Why It Matters: Engineering talent plus expensive testing equipment creates industrial capability that is difficult to replicate elsewhere. That makes Clearwater’s aerospace footprint stickier and strengthens the supplier and talent ecosystem around it.

🛡️TECH / NEW IN TOWN

Rustless Technology Picks Manatee for 200-Job North American HQ

Photo credit to Elizabeth King

A Brazilian technology company is planting its North American flag in Manatee County.

Rustless Technology selected the region for its North American headquarters and plans to eventually employ approximately 200 people.

The company develops proprietary technology for monitoring and protecting metal assets against corrosion across ports, marine infrastructure, energy and industrial facilities.

Rustless will initially operate from the International Trade Hub at SeaPort Manatee while searching for a permanent location.

Its customer history includes names such as Bosch, John Deere, Siemens, Unilever and the Brazilian Navy.

⚡Why It Matters: This is the kind of headquarters win that fits the region instead of simply landing here. Marine infrastructure, ports, engineering and industrial customers already exist around Tampa Bay, giving Rustless a reason to build something deeper than an address.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

lol

🏥HEALTHCARE / M&A

Carisk Partners Acquires FirstCare Onsite

Tampa-based Carisk Partners just moved closer to the moment a workplace injury actually happens.

Carisk acquired FirstCare Onsite, which operates occupational healthcare clinics directly inside employer workplaces.

FirstCare says its model has historically resolved roughly 30% of workplace injuries onsite without a workers’ compensation claim ever being opened.

When an injury does need more complex treatment, Carisk can now connect that employee directly into its specialty clinical, behavioral-health and complex-care platform.

FirstCare’s existing onsite model stays in place, with Carisk planning to invest in expanding

⚡Why It Matters: This is vertical integration that makes sense immediately. Instead of waiting for an expensive claim to arrive downstream, Carisk now owns a doorway much closer to where the injury happens.

🏘️REAL ESTATE / CAPITAL

Edge Collective II Lands $125M for Downtown St. Pete Tower

Construction money is still expensive.

Downtown St. Pete just found $125 million of it anyway.

PTM Partners secured a three-year floating-rate construction loan from an affiliate of GID for Edge Collective II, a 330-unit multifamily tower planned in the EDGE District.

The project will rise 20 stories and include approximately 19,000 square feet of retail.

It is the second phase of PTM’s broader Edge Collective development. Phase one already delivered the 163-room Moxy St. Petersburg Downtown hotel.

Completion of the residential tower is targeted for 2028.

⚡Why It Matters: A nine-figure construction loan is more than another rendering. It means an institutional lender underwrote the project and decided the numbers still work in one of the most difficult financing environments developers have faced in years.

🤖 Referral Giveaway: Refer the most new readers this month and win a year of ChatGPT Plus, a $240 value. 

Just make sure they enter your email in the referral field when they subscribe.

⚡QUICK HITS

🚁 $10M Goes Into the Drone Stack
Unusual Machines and an unnamed U.S. investment fund each put $5 million into Draganfly, supporting the drone company’s growing U.S. defense business and working capital needs.

🔌 Tampa Fiber Platform Buys the Design Desk
Tampa-headquartered Triage Partners acquired 45-year-old Universal Network Development Corporation, adding network design, permitting and field-data capabilities across 12 states to its existing fiber construction operation.

🚢 St. Pete Startup Takes Aim at America’s Shipyards
Space Grid AI is building 3D-over-time planning software that helps shipyards model vessels, equipment and future capacity, with a longer-term goal of matching ships needing work with yards that actually have room.

🏆 Tampa Youth Sports Company Nears $15M in Revenue
Signature Athletics expects to exceed $15 million this year after topping $10 million in 2025 and is raising up to $4.28 million to fund acquisitions and expand its sponsorship business.

🌱 $50M Renewable Gas Facility Heads to Manatee
Nopetro Energy is moving forward with a roughly $50 million landfill-gas-to-renewable-natural-gas facility in Manatee County, with operations planned for 2027.

🏠 Tampa Bay Home Prices Fall 6.6%
The metro’s median listing price fell 6.6% year over year to about $385,398 in September, while more than a quarter of listings saw price cuts.

🍽️ A ~$20M Convention Center Food Deal Is in Play
Tampa recommended Volume Services to take over food and beverage operations at the Convention Center and The Sail, a business the city modeled at roughly $20 million in first-year sales. The recommendation is not yet final.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

I've spent enough time running companies to know that growth usually gets less glamorous the closer you get to it.

The headline might be revenue, funding or a new market.

The actual work is figuring out what you cannot do yet and fixing that before it becomes the bottleneck.

That is what a lot of this week looked like to me.

Carisk wanted to get closer to where workplace injuries happen, so it bought FirstCare. Honeywell needs more testing capability, so it is adding specialized equipment in Clearwater. Rustless wants the North American market, so it is putting people here. Bridge Angels wants to fund more companies, so it built a bigger group of people who can actually write checks.

Even nCore is solving the thing everyone skips over when they talk about AI: your shiny new model is not very useful if the data underneath it is a mess.

That is the part of growth I find most interesting.

Not just getting bigger.

Getting able to do something you could not do before.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 31 (FEAR) | per CNN Business Markets
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): ~$91.76/bbl (-3.0%) | per NYMEX

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❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Capability.

Simple explanation:
Capability is what lets a company do tomorrow what it could not do yesterday. Sometimes you build it. Sometimes you hire it. Sometimes you buy another company because they already figured it out.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

For years, a lot of Tampa Bay’s growth story has been about what we can attract here.

Wave connected Tampa founders with Vanderbilt and Nashville. A-LIGN bought its way into Australia. A Tampa education startup raised fresh capital to take on a national problem. Local investors put money behind $300 million of student housing in three college towns. And more than $100 million in aerospace investment is turning Tampa-area manufacturing into parts that can fly around the world.

That is a different kind of growth. Not just companies coming here.

Companies, capital and expertise starting here and reaching somewhere else.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🚀 Tampa’s Startup Engine Adds Another Gear
🎓 Fresh Money Goes After One of Education’s Messiest Problems
✈️ A Nine-Figure Manufacturing Bet Starts Paying Off
🏥 A 15-Minute Life-Saving Test Moves Into the ER
🛡️ Tampa Cybersecurity Goes International
🌊 National Money Comes for Local Coastal Know-How
🏘️ Tampa Capital Makes a $300M College-Town Bet

Scroll down for the signal…

🚀STARTUPS / HEALTHTECH

Wave Crosses $2B Raised + Adds Vanderbilt to HealthTech|X

Tampa Bay Wave had two milestones worth putting together this week.

Its portfolio of more than 670 startups has now raised over $2 billion, reaching its second billion less than two years after crossing the first. Wave also reports more than 7,600 jobs created and 34 exits across its portfolio.

Then came Vanderbilt.

Wave partnered with Vanderbilt Health’s Brock Family Center for Applied Innovation for its 2026 HealthTech|X accelerator, focused specifically on behavioral health and addiction.

The program will operate across Tampa and Nashville, with founders getting access to Vanderbilt clinicians, researchers, informaticists and health-system leaders, plus potential paths into clinical research, technology transfer and licensing.

Wave’s model remains zero-equity.

⚡Why It Matters: The $2 billion tells you what Wave companies have already done. The Vanderbilt partnership is more interesting for what comes next. Founders now get another major clinical ecosystem where they can test products, build credibility and find customers without having to build those relationships from scratch.

.🎓EDTECH / FUNDING

Scholar Education Raises $2M to Scale Special Education AI

A Tampa startup raised fresh capital today to go after a problem families can spend months trying to solve.

Scholar Education closed a $2 million seed round backed by OneSixOne Ventures, strategic industry investors and existing shareholders.

Scholar started by building AI-powered tools for classrooms and says its technology now reaches more than 20,000 teachers and students.

The next push is Scholar Health, which focuses on special education evaluations and the fragmented process families navigate to get children the support they need.

Scholar says families can wait 12 to 18 months and spend roughly $3,500 to $5,000 on evaluations. The company wants to use technology alongside licensed professionals to shorten that timeline and connect evaluations more directly to accommodations and classroom support.

⚡Why It Matters: This is one of the more useful versions of the AI story. Scholar is not building another general chatbot. It is attacking a slow, expensive workflow with obvious users, measurable friction and a very large national market.

✈️AEROSPACE / MANUFACTURING

$100M+ Aerospace Investment Moves Into Tampa-Area Production

More than $100 million in engineering and manufacturing investment has turned into an FAA-approved aircraft component with Tampa Bay inside the supply chain.

Chromalloy and Lufthansa Technik secured FAA approval for a new high-pressure turbine Stage 1 blade used in the V2500 Select aircraft engine.

The investment covered design, development and certification, along with the Tampa-area smelting, casting, machining and coating capabilities needed to manufacture the part.

Chromalloy also added new anti-corrosion and multilayer thermal-barrier coating capabilities as part of the program.

Production is now ramping through 2027, with Lufthansa Technik serving as the launch customer.

⚡Why It Matters: Factories are much harder to move than desks. Certification, specialized equipment and trained workers create the kind of industrial footprint that compounds over time. This puts Tampa-area manufacturing directly into the global commercial aviation supply chain.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by wwe on Giphy

I can cross an ocean without moving a headquarters.

I can connect two cities without building a road.

One local win can give me thousands of miles.

The more of me a company gets, the smaller the world feels.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🤖FEATURED EVENT

Techapalooza: AI Frontier Edition

AI is moving too fast for another average panel.

On November 19, we’re bringing together leaders from Microsoft, Google, SOFWERX, RebelEdge Advisory and Byte Strategy AI to focus on what’s actually useful right now.

Real use cases. Better workflows. New tools. What’s working. What’s overhyped. What’s next.

If you want to leave with a sharper understanding of how AI can actually help you operate, build and compete, this is the room to be in.

📅 November 19
📍 SOFWERX, Tampa

→ Reserve your spot

🏥HEALTHCARE / CLINICAL TECH

TGH Deploys 15-Minute Test to Improve Sepsis Decisions

Tampa General is putting another piece of clinical technology directly into the emergency-room workflow.

TGH became the first academic health system in the Southeast to adopt MeMed BV, an FDA-cleared test that analyzes the body’s immune response to help clinicians distinguish bacterial from viral infections in about 15 minutes.

The important part is where it lives.

TGH integrated the test directly into its existing electronic sepsis-alert workflow rather than making clinicians open another standalone tool.

Research conducted with USF Health across 893 emergency-department patients found that adding MeMed BV reclassified 26% more patients as unlikely to have sepsis, reduced cefepime exposure by 33%, and reduced hospitalizations by 13% among patients triggering sepsis alerts.

Preliminary savings were estimated around $179,000 per 100 patients.

⚡Why It Matters: Healthcare technology gets much more interesting when it moves beyond the pilot. TGH is increasingly becoming a place where healthtech companies and researchers can point to actual deployment inside clinical workflows.

🛡️CYBERSECURITY / M&A

A-LIGN Acquires AssurePoint and Enters Australia

Tampa-based A-LIGN is taking its cybersecurity expansion overseas.

The company acquired Australian cloud-security assessment firm AssurePoint, adding capabilities around Australia’s Information Security Registered Assessors Program, better known as IRAP.

The deal gives A-LIGN its formal entrance into the Australian market and lets customers combine IRAP work with services such as SOC 2 and ISO 27001 under the same provider.

Australia has become an increasingly important market for technology companies pursuing government and regulated-sector business, where IRAP assessments can become a requirement rather than a nice-to-have.

This is also A-LIGN’s second acquisition in a matter of weeks.

⚡Why It Matters: A-LIGN is becoming a good example of a Tampa technology company using M&A to export its platform globally. Rather than waiting for international expansion to happen organically, it is buying capabilities and market access where its customers are already going.

😂MEME STREET

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Genius!

🌊INSURANCE / EXPANSION

Oakbridge Opens Tampa Bay Hub With St. Pete’s Northeast Underwriters

A national insurance brokerage is entering Tampa Bay by partnering with something difficult to import: local coastal-risk knowledge.

Oakbridge Insurance Agency, a Top 50 U.S. independent brokerage, partnered with St. Petersburg-based Northeast Underwriters to establish its Tampa Bay operation.

Northeast specializes in coastal property and condominium association insurance and will keep its existing St. Pete client-facing team.

Oakbridge brings broader carrier relationships, specialty capabilities and operating resources, while Northeast keeps the Florida relationships and local underwriting knowledge it has built over time.

Terms were not disclosed.

⚡Why It Matters: Florida property insurance is complicated enough that local expertise has become an asset worth buying into. This is national scale coming into the market without replacing the local team that understands the risk.

🏘️INVESTING / REAL ESTATE

Tampa Capital Backs $300M Student Housing Portfolio

Tampa money is making a sizable bet on college-town housing.

Society Hill Capital and Punit Shah’s Liberty Group, a Tampa family office overseeing more than $1.5 billion in investments, are backing three student-housing developments worth more than $300 million.

Together, the projects will add 1,681 beds near Florida State University, the University of Florida and the University of Tennessee.

Liberty previously backed a 693-bed FSU development that opened fully leased and was sold in 2025. It is now reinvesting alongside Society Hill across three additional projects.

The new portfolio includes 511 beds near FSU, 684 near UF and 486 near Tennessee.

⚡Why It Matters: This is Tampa capital exporting an investment thesis rather than importing one. Local firms are increasingly showing up outside the region not just as operators, but as capital partners behind large projects.

🤖 Referral Giveaway: Refer the most new readers this month and win a year of ChatGPT Plus, a $240 value. 

Just make sure they enter your email in the referral field when they subscribe.

⚡QUICK HITS

🚒 North Tampa Finally Gets Fire Station 24
Tampa Fire Rescue broke ground on a 17,000-square-foot station at Greco Park with four apparatus bays, living space and a training tower. It is designed to relieve Station 13, one of the city’s busiest stations.

🎨 Morean Plans $33.7M Downtown St. Pete Expansion
The Morean Art Center and Chihuly Collection are planning a five-story, 42,150-square-foot arts complex, with the first phase estimated at approximately $33.7 million and construction targeted for 2027.

🤖 St. Pete Explores Sidewalk Delivery Robots
City Council voted unanimously to study autonomous food-delivery services similar to those already operating in other major cities. The next question is how robots, pedestrians, restaurants and already-crowded sidewalks coexist.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

Something I noticed with this week is how many of these stories point outward.

The Wave is connecting Tampa founders to Nashville clinicians and investors. A-LIGN is entering Australia. Scholar is building for a problem that exists in school districts everywhere. Chromalloy is making components here for aircraft flying all over the world. Tampa investors are putting money to work in Tallahassee, Gainesville and Tennessee.

For a long time, a lot of the conversation around Tampa Bay was about attraction.

How do we get more companies here? More capital here? More talent here?

Those things still matter…

But I think another sign of a healthy market is when companies built here start exporting something valuable back out: technology, expertise, products, capital or ideas.

You don’t become a serious business market just by convincing people to move in.

Eventually, you have to build things other markets want and we’re seeing more of that at home.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 35 (FEAR) | per CNN Business Markets
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 59.1% | per CoinMarketCap Global Charts
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): ~$96.62/bbl (-5.2%) | per NYMEX

Founder Perks 
🤯 Looking for calmer, more focused energy?
Try Graymatter, a daily plant-based drink designed to support cognition and focus.

💼Hire the top 1% of remote talent for up to 80% less than US equivalents with Somewhere. Trusted by over 5,000 companies to build their remote teams. Zero risk: you only pay if you hire.

🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control?
Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support.

👀 Looking for sharper founder conversations?
Join a private founder network with small, vetted monthly groups in your city. No advisors, no spectators, no fluff. Just real answers from founders who have already wrestled with the problem in front of you.

Masterminds 
🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Reach.

Simple explanation:
Reach is what lets a company, investor or ecosystem extend its impact beyond where it started. This week it showed up through Nashville healthcare connections, Australian cybersecurity expansion, national education technology, global aerospace production and Tampa capital deployed across multiple states.

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Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

A Tampa company agreed to a $7.7 billion take-private without leaving town.
A defense manufacturer looked at Texas and chose to put $58 million into Hillsborough instead. Embarc committed to five years in St. Pete. An industrial landlord bought the next 30 acres before its existing park was full.

Capital is choosing an address and behaving like it plans to stay.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🏢 Baldwin Group Agrees to $7.7B Take-Private Deal
🏭 Tampa Brass Chooses Hillsborough for $58M Expansion Over Texas
🦁 Hillsborough Advances $75M ZooTampa Match for $150M Expansion
🚀 Embarc Collective Gets a Five-Year St. Pete Home
🧪 H Clinical Takes Majority Investment to Expand Across 22 LatAm Markets
📦 EastGroup Pays ~$12M to Expand East Tampa Logistics Park by 70%
🏫 Tampa Bay Christian Academy Buys 160K SF Floriland Campus

Scroll down for the signal…

🏢INSURANCE / CAPITAL

Baldwin Group Agrees to $7.7B Take-Private Deal

One of Tampa’s largest public companies is heading back into private hands.

The Baldwin Group agreed to an all-cash take-private transaction valued at roughly $7.7 billion with Sequence Holdings and DFO Management, Michael Dell’s family office.

Shareholders would receive $32.50 per share, an approximately 88% premium to Baldwin’s June 17 closing price before reports of a potential sale surfaced. The deal includes about $4.6 billion in equity value plus roughly $3.1 billion of assumed or refinanced net debt.

Eligible Baldwin employees will have the opportunity to roll equity into the new company, while CEO Trevor Baldwin remains at the helm.

The transaction is expected to close in Q1 2027, subject to shareholder and regulatory approvals.

And importantly for Tampa: the headquarters stays here.

⚡Why It Matters: A $7.7 billion ownership change involving a Tampa-headquartered company is a major capital event by any local standard. Going private could also give Baldwin more room to invest in technology, talent and acquisitions without managing around public-market expectations every quarter.

.🏭DEFENSE / MANUFACTURING

Tampa Brass Chooses Hillsborough for $58M Expansion Over Texas

Texas made the shortlist. Tampa kept the factory.

Tampa Brass & Aluminum plans to invest $58 million in new machinery and equipment at its Hillsborough County headquarters following new Air Force and Navy work.

The expansion is expected to create 50 jobs averaging about $83,200 annually, including roles in nondestructive testing, welding inspection, quality control and nuclear engineering.

The company manufactures mission-critical components used in missiles, submarines and other defense systems, handling everything from raw materials through machining, fabrication, testing and finished production.

Leadership considered expanding in Amarillo, Texas, before deciding to keep the investment in Tampa.

⚡Why It Matters: The $58 million is important. Choosing Tampa over another state is the bigger signal. Advanced manufacturing jobs create deeper local roots through suppliers, training programs and specialized talent that are much harder to relocate later.

🦁CIVIC / ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Hillsborough Advances $75M ZooTampa Match for $150M Expansion

ZooTampa’s next major expansion just moved closer to reality.

Hillsborough County commissioners voted 5–2 to advance a proposed $75 million county partnership structured as a dollar-for-dollar match toward ZooTampa’s roughly $150 million expansion and renovation program.

The 15-year agreement would provide approximately $5 million annually as ZooTampa matches public dollars through fundraising, operating surplus and endowment support.

Roughly $86 million of the overall plan is aimed at a two-phase redevelopment of the zoo’s South America area, with additional projects planned for Asia habitats, an Australia-themed family coaster and capital improvements.

ZooTampa attracts roughly 1.2 million visitors annually.

⚡Why It Matters: This is both a tourism investment and a construction pipeline. It also establishes an important precedent as several other major Tampa cultural institutions line up behind their own public-funding requests.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by JazzePinkman on Giphy

I can shrink a public company without making it smaller.

I can keep a factory from moving 1,000 miles away.

I can turn an old mall into a school and empty land into warehouses.

You rarely see me, but you can usually see where I went.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🚀STARTUPS / ECOSYSTEM

Embarc Collective Gets a Five-Year St. Pete Home

Embarc is officially crossing the bay.

Blake Investment Partners and Embarc Collective announced a partnership that will give the Tampa-based startup organization a dedicated St. Petersburg presence through a five-year office commitment from Blake.

Founded in 2019, Embarc now supports more than 300 founders and co-founders across 145+ startups and attributes more than 1,400 net new Florida jobs to companies in its network.

A number of Pinellas startups are already part of the community, including Spontivly, BlockSpaces, Cvergenx and Knack.

Until now, founders wanting the full Embarc experience typically crossed the bridge.

Now the bridge has a return address.

⚡Why It Matters: Startup ecosystems get stronger when founders, mentors and investors can collide more frequently. A permanent St. Pete presence makes Embarc more accessible to Pinellas founders while connecting two sides of Tampa Bay’s startup community more tightly.

🧪LIFE SCIENCES / INVESTMENT

H Clinical Takes Majority Investment to Expand Across 22 LatAm Markets

A St. Pete life-sciences company is adding capital to an already international footprint.

H Clinical announced a majority investment from Emerald Square Ventures, an operator-led investment platform focused on clinical research and life-sciences businesses.

H Clinical operates teams across 22 Latin American countries, helping pharmaceutical sponsors, CROs and research sites with staffing, in-home visits, community recruitment and logistics.

The investment will be used to expand those operations. The company is also adding Ben Joers as CFO and Eddie Hannush as Chief Commercial Officer.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s life-sciences story is not limited to hospitals and university research. H Clinical shows that locally headquartered healthcare companies can build globally distributed operating businesses while keeping leadership in the region.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

📦INDUSTRIAL / REAL ESTATE

EastGroup Pays ~$12M to Expand East Tampa Logistics Park by 70%

EastGroup is buying tomorrow’s warehouse space before today’s is full.

EastGroup Properties paid roughly $12 million for approximately 30 acres in East Tampa, giving the industrial REIT room to significantly expand its Crossroads Logistics Park.

The existing park includes three buildings totaling around 500,000 square feet.

The additional land could support two more buildings and push the development to approximately 850,000 square feet, a roughly 70% increase.

EastGroup’s overall portfolio was about 97.1% leased as of August 31.

In other words, this is not land banking because nobody knows what to do next.

It is buying capacity before tenants force the question.

⚡Why It Matters: Industrial real estate is where e-commerce, distribution, manufacturing and population growth eventually meet. Adding 350,000 potential square feet in East Tampa is a useful signal about where operators expect future demand.

🏫EDUCATION / ADAPTIVE REUSE

Tampa Bay Christian Academy Buys 160K SF Floriland Campus

An old Tampa mall is getting another life.

Tampa Bay Christian Academy acquired the approximately 160,000-square-foot Floriland Office Center at 9309 N. Florida Avenue for a new school campus.

The academy currently serves roughly 600 students and plans to use the property for classrooms, offices, dining, recreation and future enrollment growth.

Floriland originally opened as a regional mall in 1972 before being converted into office space in the early 1990s.

The school spent about two years searching for a property large enough to accommodate growth while remaining close to Tampa’s urban core, I-275 and Busch Boulevard.

The acquisition was financed through tax-exempt bonds.

⚡Why It Matters: Adaptive reuse does not always mean apartments. Large obsolete office and retail properties can also become schools, healthcare facilities and other community infrastructure without requiring new greenfield development.

🤖 Referral Giveaway: Refer the most new readers this month and win a year of ChatGPT Plus, a $240 value. 

Just make sure they enter your email in the referral field when they subscribe.

⚡QUICK HITS

🏟️ Tampa Sports Authority Gets Rays Design Oversight
Hillsborough commissioners voted 5–2 to put the Tampa Sports Authority in charge of reviewing stadium design documents, materials, schedules and budgets. Near-term county design-review costs are expected to be roughly $300,000.

🏗️ Clearwater’s 25-Acre Development Deadline Hits Friday
Developers have until September 18 to submit proposals for nearly 25 acres across 17 county-owned downtown Clearwater sites that could eventually support housing, hotels, retail and commercial development.

🏠 Mangrove Lands on QuoteRUSH
St. Petersburg-based Mangrove Property Insurance is now available through QuoteRUSH’s comparative rating platform, giving independent Florida agents another admitted homeowners-insurance option.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

This week felt less like a startup week and more like a balance-sheet week.

Baldwin is changing ownership in a $7.7 billion deal. Tampa Brass is putting $58 million into equipment and jobs instead of taking the expansion to Texas. EastGroup is buying another 30 acres because it sees enough demand to keep building. ZooTampa is lining up a long-term public match. A school bought 160,000 square feet instead of building from scratch.

None of that is especially flashy.

But these are the kinds of decisions that tell you how people with real money are thinking about a market.

They are buying land before they need it. Expanding factories where they already have talent. Keeping headquarters here after ownership changes. Reusing old buildings instead of waiting on perfect new ones.

That is probably a better measure of confidence than another ranking or press release.

Tampa Bay still has plenty of gaps, but when companies and institutions keep making long-term bets here, that is worth paying attention to.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 26 (FEAR) | per CNN Business Markets
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 58.8% | per CoinMarketCap Global Charts
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): $96.64/bbl (-2.25%) | per NYMEX

Founder Perks 
🤯 Looking for calmer, more focused energy?
Try Graymatter, a daily plant-based drink designed to support cognition and focus.

💼Hire the top 1% of remote talent for up to 80% less than US equivalents with Somewhere. Trusted by over 5,000 companies to build their remote teams. Zero risk: you only pay if you hire.

🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control?
Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support.

👀 Looking for sharper founder conversations?
Join a private founder network with small, vetted monthly groups in your city. No advisors, no spectators, no fluff. Just real answers from founders who have already wrestled with the problem in front of you.

Masterminds 
🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Capital allocation.

Simple explanation:
Capital allocation is simply where money gets put to work. This week it showed up in a take-private deal, a $58M factory expansion, industrial land purchases, public funding, and adaptive reuse across Tampa Bay.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Tampa Bay made two sounds this week. One was an opening bell in Manhattan. The other was a shovel going into old fairway dirt north of Fletcher.

One sound is capital finding a public address. The other is a plan finally meeting the ground. Different instruments, same region deciding to get bigger on purpose.

I like the pairing a lot more than I like either sound by itself.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🤖 XTEND Hits NYSE With ~$110M Behind Its Tampa Robotics Push
🏗️ USF Breaks Ground on Nearly $500M Uptown Landing
🏭 AEVEX to More Than Double Tampa Production Across 83K SF
🏦 OnePoint BFG Acquires Tampa’s Bast Financial and Its ~$400M Book
🧠 USF Unveils Bellini AI College Site After $40M Gift + $35M State Funding
🍝 Yo Mama’s Foods Buys $2M Clearwater Armory to Scale Beyond 25K Stores
🏠 Marinova at Coquina Key Advances With 456 Units + 20K SF Retail

Scroll down for the signal…

🤖DEFENSE TECH / PUBLIC MARKETS

XTEND Hits NYSE With ~$110M Behind Its Tampa Robotics Push

Tampa has another publicly traded defense-tech company.

XTEND AI Robotics completed its business combination with JFB Construction Holdings on September 3 and began trading on the NYSE under XTND the following day. The company rang the opening bell September 8.

The transaction brought roughly $110 million in total capital, with about $67.7 million in cash at closing.

XTEND builds drones and robotic systems powered by its XOS operating system for defense, homeland security and commercial applications. The company says more than 12,500 systems have been deployed across 30+ countries and five combat zones.

Then came another check. Orlando-based Unusual Machines added a $20 million strategic investment on September 9, bringing its total position in XTEND to $27.5 million.

⚡Why It Matters: A publicly traded Physical AI company headquartered in Tampa gives the region another serious anchor in robotics, defense and advanced manufacturing. The next signal to watch is what follows in suppliers, engineering talent and MacDill-adjacent partnerships.

🏗️UNIVERSITY / DEVELOPMENT

USF Breaks Ground on Nearly $500M Uptown Landing

The old Claw golf course officially has a new job.

USF broke ground September 8 on Uptown Landing, the mixed-use district previously known as the Fletcher District, on roughly 30 acres north of Fletcher Avenue.

Phase one represents nearly $500 million in planned development, including about $270 million in public-private mixed-use investment and roughly $225 million for a new Translational Research Institute.

Plans include 700 student housing beds, 150 apartments, four to six restaurants plus retail, a 150-room hotel and conference center, and research space designed for roughly 100 NIH-funded investigators alongside a much larger research community.

USF keeps ownership of the land through ground leases, with a target opening in fall 2028.

⚡Why It Matters: Housing, hospitality and life-science research are being built together instead of in isolation. That creates a much denser environment for talent, commercialization and companies around USF.

🏭DEFENSE / MANUFACTURING

AEVEX to More Than Double Tampa Production Across 83K SF

Tampa’s defense-tech story is increasingly becoming a factory-floor story.

AEVEX Corp. is expanding and consolidating its Tampa manufacturing operation, with plans to more than double production capacity over the next year.

Its local footprint runs roughly 83,000 square feet and will add high-volume production, a dedicated additive manufacturing line, space for uncrewed surface vehicles, and more room for manufacturing, engineering and program teams.

The expansion is being driven by demand for autonomous unmanned systems and also includes a new customer-facing office in Arlington, Virginia.

This is not another headquarters announcement.

It is more things actually getting built here.

⚡Why It Matters: Manufacturing creates a deeper regional footprint than an office alone. More production means more demand for suppliers, technicians, engineers and companies that can plug into Tampa Bay’s growing autonomous-systems ecosystem.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by qmliberteedit on Giphy

I can be measured in dollars, square feet, beds, workers or units per year.

Companies chase me.

Factories run out of me.

Cities build infrastructure to create more of me.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🏦WEALTH / M&A

OnePoint BFG Acquires Tampa’s Bast Financial and Its ~$400M Book

Another Tampa wealth-management practice is joining a much larger platform.

New Jersey-based OnePoint BFG Wealth Partners acquired Bast Financial Group, bringing founder Rebecca Bast and six colleagues onto a platform with more than $18 billion in advisory assets.

The Tampa team brings roughly $400 million in assets under management and serves business owners, executives and multigenerational families.

The practice will remain in Tampa while transitioning to the OnePoint BFG brand.

The deal also continues OnePoint’s 2026 Florida expansion following earlier acquisitions of Voyage Wealth Architects and Armstrong & Sinoff.

⚡Why It Matters: RIA consolidation is increasingly following where entrepreneur and executive wealth is being created. Tampa Bay advisory books becoming acquisition targets is another signal that the local capital base is getting harder to ignore.

🧠AI / TALENT

USF Unveils Bellini AI College Site After $40M Gift + $35M State Funding

USF’s new AI college now has a future front door.

President Moez Limayem unveiled the site and renderings for the Bellini College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing during his fall address on September 9.

The building is planned near the university’s main Tampa entrance at Lee Roy Collins Boulevard and USF Alumni Drive.

The college launched in fall 2025 following a $40 million gift from Arnie and Lauren Bellini. Another $35 million in state funding has been secured for the future building, alongside additional philanthropic support.

A construction start date has not yet been announced.

⚡Why It Matters: The Bellini College is becoming a physical talent hub, not just an academic program. Combined with CyberBay, USF research and Tampa’s defense-tech cluster, it gives employers a clearer pipeline for AI, cybersecurity and computing talent.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

Well, that escalated quickly.

.🍝CPG / LOGISITICS

Yo Mama’s Foods Buys $2M Clearwater Armory to Scale Beyond 25K Stores

From National Guard armory to sauce logistics.

Clearwater-based Yo Mama’s Foods purchased the former armory at 706 N. Missouri Avenue for roughly $2 million, with plans to turn the property into an expanded e-commerce and operations campus.

Planned uses include warehousing, distribution, light manufacturing, packaging, office space and R&D.

The redevelopment also includes requirements tied to commercial activation, North Greenwood hiring and adaptive reuse of the historic building.

Earlier estimates put total investment near $5 million with the potential for 20 to 30 jobs.

Yo Mama’s products are already sold in roughly 25,000 stores across about 20 countries.

⚡Why It Matters: This is what scaling a homegrown consumer brand eventually looks like. Distribution, fulfillment and production capacity start becoming just as important as the product sitting on the shelf.

🏠DEVELOPMENT / ST. PETE

Marinova at Coquina Key Advances With 456 Units + 20K SF Retail

Image from Colliers

Another large residential project is moving through the St. Pete pipeline.

Bayline Group is advancing Marinova at Coquina Key at 575 45th Avenue South, replacing the former Coquina Key Plaza on a 14.5-acre site acquired for $8.9 million in 2021.

Plans call for 456 multifamily units across nine four-story buildings, plus more than 20,000 square feet of retail across two additional buildings.

NDC Construction is the general contractor and BDG Architects is handling design.

Construction is anticipated in late 2026 or early 2027.

⚡Why It Matters: South St. Pete continues adding residential density outside the downtown core. Marinova brings hundreds of new households plus neighborhood retail to a site previously dominated by an aging commercial plaza.

🤖 Referral Giveaway: Refer the most new readers this month and win a year of ChatGPT Plus, a $240 value. 

Just make sure they enter your email in the referral field when they subscribe.

⚡QUICK HITS

✨ Tampa Luxe Launches 30+ Curated Experiences
Tampa Luxe rolled out more than 30 Tampa Bay experiences, an AI concierge and a Luxury Stays collection launching with three private properties.

✈️ TPA Maps Out $312M+ Capital Pipeline
Tampa International Airport’s FY2027 outlook calls for roughly 25 million passengers, about $540.1 million in operating revenue and more than $312 million across 32 capital projects.

🏟️ Rays Deal Still Has Gates to Clear
A Community Benefits Agreement remains one of the conditions that must be satisfied before city and county dollars begin moving toward the proposed stadium project.

🏭 PE Firm Acquires Plant City Manufacturer Producing 2B+ Lids a Year
Boca Raton-based New Water Capital acquired family-owned LidWorks, with plans to expand production capacity and pursue additional acquisitions. Terms were not disclosed.

⚖️ MiQroTech Founder Agrees to Plead Guilty
Temple Terrace founder Meade Lewis agreed to plead guilty to one count of wire fraud under a federal plea agreement involving fundraising representations to investors. The agreement includes $7.9 million in forfeiture.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

At some point, every growing company runs into the same wall: capacity.

You need more people. More capital. More production. More distribution. More room to operate.

That is what stood out to me this week.

XTEND now has a public ticker and roughly $110 million behind it. AEVEX is more than doubling manufacturing capacity. Yo Mama’s bought an armory because a consumer brand eventually needs serious logistics. USF is building housing, research infrastructure and an AI talent pipeline at the same time. Marinova is adding another 456 households to St. Pete’s development pipeline.

None of those are vanity metrics. They are infrastructure.

As an operator, I have learned that growth gets much less glamorous once you actually have to support it. Selling more is great until you cannot fulfill it. Hiring is great until you run out of systems. Capital is great until there is nowhere productive to deploy it.

Strong companies build capacity before they desperately need it.

Strong regions do the same thing.

This week, Tampa Bay did a lot of that work.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 36 (FEAR) | per CNN Business Markets
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 59.0% | per CoinMarketCap Global Charts
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): $101.62/bbl (+9.4%) | per NYMEX

Founder Perks 
🤯 Looking for calmer, more focused energy?
Try Graymatter, a daily plant-based drink designed to support cognition and focus.

💼Hire the top 1% of remote talent for up to 80% less than US equivalents with Somewhere. Trusted by over 5,000 companies to build their remote teams. Zero risk: you only pay if you hire.

🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control?
Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support.

👀 Looking for sharper founder conversations?
Join a private founder network with small, vetted monthly groups in your city. No advisors, no spectators, no fluff. Just real answers from founders who have already wrestled with the problem in front of you.

Masterminds 
🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Capacity.

Simple explanation:
Capital creates financial capacity. Factories create production capacity. Housing creates residential capacity. Universities create research and talent capacity. Growth eventually depends on how much of each you can actually support.

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

ADVERTISE WITH US // JOIN THE FB GROUP

*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Some weeks are full of announcements. This one was about what happens after the announcement.

A stadium deal cleared its local funding votes. Waymo moved from testing to real passengers while Tesla scaled up its own Tampa Robotaxi footprint. A-LIGN went shopping for cybersecurity capabilities. A major lending platform changed hands without taking its Tampa headquarters with it. And TGH and USF started turning a clinical advantage into something bigger.

Different industries, same pattern.

Plans are easy to announce. Execution is where they become real.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🏟️ Tampa Bay’s Biggest Civic Bet Clears a Major Hurdle
🚗 Tampa’s Robotaxi Race Is Getting Real
🔐 A Cybersecurity Company Goes Shopping
🏦 A $3B Lending Platform Changes Hands, But Tampa Keeps the HQ
🏥 TGH and USF Turn a Clinical Edge Into a Research Bet
🏗️ A Familiar St. Pete Site Is Ready for $225M Redevelopment
⚓ One of Tampa’s Working Waterfront Assets Gets a New Owner

Scroll down for the signal…

🏟️CIVIC / REAL ESTATE

Hillsborough Approves Nearly $796M for Rays Stadium Deal

The local funding stack for Tampa Bay’s proposed new Rays stadium is now in place.

Tampa City Council approved $80 million, followed by a 5–2 Hillsborough County vote for nearly $796 million. Together, local government commitments total roughly $876 million toward the approximately $2.36 billion ballpark and mixed-use project planned for Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus.

The Rays would contribute about $1.37 billion, cover cost overruns, pay $4 million annually in rent, and commit to staying for 35 years. The county would own the stadium after substantial completion, with an opening targeted for 2029.

There is another piece worth watching: Hillsborough College President Ken Atwater says the agreement could help unlock $150 million to $180 million in state funding to rebuild the aging Dale Mabry campus.

The votes are done, but roughly 28 conditions still stand between approval and public dollars actually flowing.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s biggest civic development bet just cleared its local funding votes. Now comes the harder part: turning agreements into financing, construction, redevelopment, and potentially a rebuilt college campus next door.

🚗AUTONOMOUS MOBILITY / TRANSPORTATION

Waymo Launches as Tesla Builds Out Tampa Robotaxi Hub

Tampa’s autonomous vehicle race is no longer theoretical.

Waymo began welcoming public riders on September 1, opening service across roughly 50 square miles from Westshore toward Highland Pines and through neighborhoods including Hyde Park. Tens of thousands of people are already on the waitlist.

At the same time, Tesla is expanding its Tampa Robotaxi footprint with an 11-acre site on Dale Mabry designed to support local operations.

That creates an unusual situation: two of the biggest names in autonomous driving are building real commercial operations in the same metro.

Waymo began testing locally in late 2025. Tesla already has Model Y Robotaxi activity in the market. Now the competition shifts from demos and mapping runs to actual riders, fleet support, and everyday use.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa is becoming a live testing ground for how autonomous transportation works at city scale. That touches much more than mobility, from insurance and regulation to real estate, commuting patterns, fleet operations, and eventually how cities design streets and parking.

🔐CYBERSECURITY / M&A

A-LIGN Acquires Pathfynder as Cybersecurity M&A Push Accelerates

Tampa-based A-LIGN has acquired Pathfynder, expanding beyond compliance deeper into active cybersecurity defense.

Pathfynder specializes in services like penetration testing, red teaming, adversary emulation, and incident response, giving A-LIGN more tools to help companies test how well their defenses actually hold up when attacked.

The acquisition fits a broader expansion strategy for A-LIGN, which already serves more than 6,400 organizations and has been accelerating M&A following investment from Hg.

Cybersecurity is also changing quickly as AI gives attackers new ways to automate reconnaissance, phishing, and other threats. Compliance still matters, but companies increasingly need to prove that their defenses work outside the audit room.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay already has one of Florida’s strongest cybersecurity clusters. A-LIGN adding offensive security capabilities shows how local companies are scaling from specialized services into broader platforms through acquisition.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by steveharvey on Giphy

I can come from a city, a board, an investor, or a regulator.

I do not build the stadium, launch the car, or close the deal.

But without me, none of them move.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🏦FINANCE / HEADQUARTERS

Velocity Acquires Toorak Platform as Water Street HQ Stays in Tampa

Velocity Financial is acquiring Toorak Capital’s operating platform, while a separate buyer takes ownership of Toorak’s roughly $3 billion business-purpose loan portfolio.

Velocity will manage that portfolio after the transaction. The operating platform itself is expected to cost roughly $62 million plus tangible book value, according to transaction materials.

Toorak CEO John Beacham will remain in his role and also become an executive vice president at Velocity Commercial Capital. The company has roughly 280 employees globally.

But the most interesting local detail is simple:

Toorak’s Water Street Tampa headquarters is staying put.

The company relocated its headquarters to Tampa less than a year ago, and the acquisition is not pulling that decision-making base elsewhere.

⚡Why It Matters: Acquisitions often move leadership toward the buyer. This one keeps a major lending platform, its brands, and its Tampa headquarters intact while adding the scale of a public lender.

🏥HEALTH / R&D

TGH and USF Launch Lymphatic Research Center With $150K Grant

Tampa General Hospital and USF are building on Tampa’s growing expertise in lymphatic care.

TGH secured a one-year, $150,000 Interdisciplinary Center Preparation Grant through USF to establish the Center for Lymphatic Education and Research, or CLEAR.

The center builds on TGH’s robotic lymphatic surgery program, which recently completed its 100th case and was the first program of its kind in the Southeast.

The near-term goal is to organize research collaborations and position CLEAR for larger NIH grants. Longer term, the team wants to build a national hub for lymphatic science, physician training, and patient care.

⚡Why It Matters: This is how clinical expertise turns into research infrastructure. Tampa already has the surgical capability. CLEAR creates a path to turn that advantage into grants, talent, research, and potentially new commercial opportunities around lymphatic medicine.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

.🏗️REAL ESTATE / DEVELOPMENT

$225M St. Pete Twin-Tower Project Clears Demolition Milestone

The former UPC Insurance headquarters in downtown St. Petersburg is officially gone.

That clears the three-acre site at 800 2nd Avenue South for Echelon and Third Lake Partners to build not one, but two 31-story towers with 824 apartments, more than 30,000 square feet of retail, and roughly 1.7 million square feet overall.

The project is expected to cost around $225 million, with the first tower targeting spring 2029 and the second following around 2031.

Demolition is not a glamorous milestone but it’s the one where renderings finally become real.

⚡Why It Matters: Downtown St. Pete continues converting older commercial sites into housing and mixed-use density. This project adds another major piece to a skyline increasingly shaped by residential growth.

⚓PORTS / LOGISTICS

Watco Buys Tampa’s Port Sutton Terminal for $56.4M

Watco Transloading has acquired Kinder Morgan’s Port Sutton property in Tampa for $56.42 million as part of a broader transaction that also includes Port Manatee Terminal and Paddy Ryan Crane.

The Port Sutton site spans roughly 92 acres, with nearly 187,000 square feet of buildings, two docks, CSX access, and about 41,000 feet of rail.

The terminal handles bulk commodities including fertilizer, animal feed, scrap, aggregate, and coal.

Watco already operates short-line railroads, ports, and terminals across North America and Australia, making the property a natural fit inside its logistics network.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s port economy runs on more than cruise ships and container counts. Industrial terminals like Port Sutton are part of the infrastructure moving raw materials through the region every day.

🤖 Referral Giveaway: Refer the most new readers this month and win a year of ChatGPT Plus, a $240 value. 

Just make sure they enter your email in the referral field when they subscribe.

⚡QUICK HITS

🏥 Tampa Healthcare Firm Buys California Analytics Company
Imagenet acquired California-based Analytica Consulting, adding data engineering, analytics, AI, and visualization capabilities to a healthcare operations platform that has already processed more than 1 billion documents.

🛡️ Tampa Bay Gets More Defense Ecosystem Fuel
New state awards send $225,000 to LANDWERX for dual-use agricultural technologies tied to MacDill and USSOCOM, plus $125,000 to USF for its Regional Defense Community Inventory.

⚽ Tampa Investors Buy Into Another European Football Club
Catalyst Sports Ventures reached a deal to acquire a minority stake in Scotland’s Kilwinning Rangers FC, its second European football investment.

🏠 Car Wash Out. Affordable Housing In.
The Vicente broke ground on Nebraska Avenue with 20 affordable apartments and ground-floor retail, replacing a car wash that had operated there since 1964.

♻️ American Circular Joins spARK Labs
The Clearwater AI-supported electronics recycling and refurbishment startup has joined spARK Labs by ARK Invest in St. Petersburg.

🦴 TGH Performs World-First Pelvic Hardware Procedure
Tampa General and Florida Orthopaedic Institute used the new EVOS pelvic and acetabular system on August 28, marking its first use globally.

🏭 Whitney Village Goes Factory-Built
Blake Investment Partners plans a 60-unit Vessel Technologies building in St. Pete, Vessel’s first Florida project.

🎭 Manhattan Casino Reopens September 19
St. Pete’s historic Deuces venue returns as a city-operated event space following a $4.8 million renovation.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

One thing building companies teaches you pretty quickly: the announcement is usually the easy part.

What matters is what happens next.

The Rays got the votes, but now they have to clear the conditions and finance the thing. Waymo went from testing Tampa to carrying actual passengers, while Tesla is putting real estate and infrastructure behind its own Robotaxi push. A-LIGN is not just growing organically, it is buying capabilities it wants. Toorak changed hands without Tampa losing the headquarters. TGH and USF are taking a clinical advantage and trying to turn it into research infrastructure.

Even the less flashy stories fit the pattern. A demolished office site is becoming 824 apartments. A port terminal changed owners but keeps moving the same goods through Tampa.

That is what I pay attention to as an operator.

Not how many things get announced, but how many make it to the next stage.

Strong ecosystems compound the same way strong companies do. One successful step makes the next one easier.

Talent attracts capital. Capital attracts companies. Companies build infrastructure. Infrastructure creates reasons for more people to stay and build here.

Tampa Bay still has plenty to prove. But this week had a lot less “coming soon” and a lot more “now what?”

That is usually where the interesting work begins.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 36 (FEAR) | per CNN Business Markets
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 59.6% | per CoinMarketCap Global Charts
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): $92.86/bbl (+11.2%) | per NYMEX
🏠 US Housing Months' Supply: 9.6 Mos (+12.6% MoM) | per U.S. Census Bureau
(Up from 8.5 months in June to 9.6 months in July)
🚐 RV Wholesale Shipments: 19,948 (-21.7% MoM / -11.9% YoY) | per RV Industry Association
(July shipments fell sharply from June; YTD shipments remain down 13.9%)

Founder Perks 
🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control? Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support.

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🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy, without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter 

Masterminds 
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📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: The green light.

Simple explanation:
Ideas and plans can sit around for years. A green light, whether it is an approval, vote, investment, permit, or sign-off, is what allows the next stage to actually begin.

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

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Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Press releases tell you what a city wants you to notice. Signed documents tell you what it is actually doing.

This week we read the signed ones.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🛡️ Wave Gets $1.38M to Build a Defense Accelerator
🏟️ The $2.3B Rays Deal Hits the Vote This Morning
🏥 TGH Turns 24 Industrial Acres Into a Medical Campus
🦵 USF ACL Tech Gets a Tampa Manufacturer
🏦 Suncoast Becomes a $22B Credit Union
💼 This National Bank Just Paid Up for a $1B Tampa Book
🏢 A Fortune 500 Fills Ybor’s New Office
♻️ 30-Year Tampa Apple Shop Gets a Buyer


Scroll down for the signal…

🛡️DEFENSE / ACCELERATORS

Wave Gets $1.38M to Build a Defense Accelerator

Tampa Bay Wave just landed funding for the hardest part of defense tech.

The EDA put in $1.38 million. Hillsborough, Pasco, the City of Tampa, USF, and a government-contracting nonprofit put in match. Full project: more than $1.7 million. Thirty early-stage companies. Two cohorts. Eighteen months. SOFWERX runs the technical work. Wave runs mentors, investors, and the government Rolodex. Demo Days land at SOF Week in 2027 and 2028.

The interesting part is the problem they picked. Not another pitch night. The valley of death. That ugly stretch between “cool prototype” and “actual contract.” Wave thinks the pilot creates 113 jobs, keeps 75, and pulls in more than $14.8 million in private money.

Sixth federal prime grant since 2022. Still no equity. Still founder support first, not ownership first.

⚡Why It Matters: MacDill is already here. SOCOM is already here. The question has always been whether that turns into companies. This is Wave building a pipe for that, not another conference badge.

🏟️SPORTS / ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

The Rays Deal Hits the Vote

The renderings can sit down. The packet is out.

A $2.36 billion ballpark at Hillsborough College’s Dale Mabry campus is now a stack of definitive agreements. Rays: about $1.37 billion (call it 60%) and every overrun. Hillsborough: about $796 million. Tampa: $80 million in four $20 million advances, to be paid back from tax-increment growth. No city CIT in this version.

County owns the building. Team pays $4 million a year for 35 years and agrees not to leave. Opening Day target: 2029. There is also a community-benefits framework for housing, hiring, and small business. Sixty-five percent county, 35 percent city. No dollar total. That last part is doing a lot of work.

Tampa City Council is on it today. The last time they lined up, it was 4–3: Clendenin, Young, Viera, Carlson yes; Hurtak, Miranda, Maniscalco no. County is tomorrow at 9. AECOM Hunt and Turner would build it.

⚡Why It Matters: This is not a vibe anymore. It is a rent number and a vote. The next 48 hours decide if Tampa Bay’s biggest live development bet becomes a job site or a PDF.

🏥 HEALTHCARE / REAL ESTATE

TGH Turns 24 Industrial Acres Into a Medical Campus

Tampa City Council said yes to a Tampa General campus on 24 acres of East Ybor industrial land.

Sixteen parcels by 26th, Adamo, the Selmon, and the CSX tracks. Almost 3 million square feet on the table: hospital and medical office first, plus up to 522 homes, a 200-room hotel, and a pile of commercial. It sits next to TGH’s existing Ybor innovation hub.

The fight at the hearing was not density. It was water. The site is evacuation zone A. TGH said patient floors and the mechanicals go above the flood line, same lesson as the AquaFence on Davis Islands.

They’ll cut the land into 11 blocks and punch a new North 28th Street through it. The metal recyclers already there can stay while this turns into something else. East Ybor is having a moment. This is the version with scrubs, not just studio apartments.

⚡Why It Matters: A hospital campus is a different anchor than another tower. People show up every day. Housing and retail have a reason to follow.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by nbcthevoice on Giphy

I am the unglamorous part of every announcement.

I look like a council vote, a grant drawdown, a signed lease, or a closed deal.

Founders celebrate me quietly. Cities argue about me in public.

Without me, last week’s news is just last week’s news.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🦵MEDTECH / UNIVERSITY

USF ACL Tech Gets a Tampa Manufacturer

Most university IP leaves town in a PDF. This one is staying for the sewing machine.

Excite Medical (Orca Medical Technologies, Tampa) licensed USF research that spots the ugly movement right before an ACL goes. Working name: ARMOR-Knee. A sleeve that buzzes when you’re about to do the dumb pivot. USF’s models hit about 86–90% in the lab work.

The interesting part is not the AI slide. It’s the factory. Orca already has U.S. Orthotics in Tampa (medical textiles since 1979, they sell to the VA) and an electronics shop that stuffs circuit boards. CEO Saleem Musallam is also walking into USF to teach how medtech actually gets out of the building. License landed Aug. 19.

If this works, the research, the fabric, and the boards all stay in the same metro. That almost never happens.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay is good at inventing. It is less good at making the thing. A local manufacturer grabbing USF IP is the commercialization story people keep asking for.

🏦FINANCIAL SERVICES

Suncoast Becomes a $22B Credit Union

Kevin Johnson, President & CEO @ Suncoast Credit Union

No app. No launch party. Just a member vote and a much bigger balance sheet.

Launch Credit Union on the Space Coast approved a merger with Tampa-based Suncoast. 79.5% of those who voted said yes. Boards and the NCUA were already there. Legal day one: September 1. Combined: more than 1.5 million members and about $22 billion in assets, under the Suncoast name.

Suncoast started in 1934 as the Hillsborough County Teachers Credit Union. It already had 81 branches and $20.9 billion. Launch brings 17 branches and 86,000 members. Those branches will wear a “Launch, a branch of Suncoast” nametag while the systems combine through 2027.

This is a Tampa institution getting bigger and staying a credit union. Nobody is pretending it’s a fintech.

⚡Why It Matters: Usually the out-of-town bank buys the local name. This runs the other way. A Hillsborough-born shop is now one of the biggest credit unions in the country.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

The packet that could have been a text…

.💼WEALTH

A National Bank Just Paid Up for a $1B Tampa Book

Katie Bickle (left) and Chris MacLellan (right)

Citizens wanted a Tampa wealth team. It did not grow one from a brochure.

Chris MacLellan and Katie Bickle left Northern Trust and showed up as MacLellan Bickle Wealth Partners inside Citizens Private Wealth. Prior book: more than $1 billion. New desk: 4211 W. Boy Scout Blvd., where Citizens already does commercial banking. He runs the investments. She runs the planning (trust and estate law background).

Twelfth team Citizens has lifted since 2024. They already have Florida wealth shops in Boca and Naples. The bank itself is a $234 billion thing out of Providence. Announced Aug. 26.

When a national bank pays up for a Tampa book, it is not a branding exercise. It is a bet that the money here is sticky enough to fight over.

⚡Why It Matters: Wealth teams follow operators. This is one more sign the local pile of capital is real, not a weekend from Miami.

🏢NEW IN TOWN

A Fortune 500 Fills Ybor’s New Office

Ferguson leased the rest of Gasworx’s first office building before the elevators work.

About 50,570 square feet at 1301 E. Fourth. Grow Financial already had a chunk. Kettler says the six-story is now full, with a December finish and Ferguson moving people in April 2027 for executives, ops, and training. HQ stays in Newport News. Headcount: nobody’s saying.

Ferguson is a $31.3 billion construction-products distributor, about 35,000 people, new to the S&P 500. CEO Kevin Murphy’s line was Tampa’s reach across the U.S. and Canada, plus a building that can double as a training hub.

Gasworx is the 50-acre Kettler / Darryl Shaw / PPF bet to stitch Ybor to downtown. A Fortune 500 taking the first big office while it’s still a hard-hat zone is the proof that project needed.

⚡Why It Matters: Empty amenity offices are a national joke. This is a company choosing Ybor for people, not pallets.

♻️MERGERS & ACQUISITIONS

A 30-Year Tampa Apple Shop Gets a Buyer

Michael Snyder, CEO @ Mac of All Trades

Mac of All Trades is still Mac of All Trades. It just has a bigger parent.

Arizona’s Full Circle Electronics (Tide Rock) closed on the Tampa Apple refurbisher in mid-August. Terms: undisclosed, obviously. Name stays. 25,000-square-foot HQ stays. 40 people stay, for now. CEO Michael Snyder stays 12 to 18 months. The buyer spent Monday in the building meeting the team, which is the opposite of a logo-and-leave deal.

Plan: send more Apple product to Tampa, then later copy some of that know-how to Chicago and the Bay Area. Full Circle already had 10 sites. Mac of All Trades had the Apple brain.

Not a strip-and-flip. A 1995 shop that still has a floor.

⚡Why It Matters: Exits do not have to mean the work leaves. This is how Tampa stays on the map instead of becoming a slide in someone else’s deck.

⚡QUICK HITS

✈️ Clearwater Simulator Shop Is Being Sold
FlightSafety is buying Acron’s commercial training unit. Price quiet. Close targeted Q4. Local job impacts have not been disclosed.

🏗️ The Old Rocky Point Hotel Is Coming Down
Northwood Ravin started The Kimball: 14 stories, 296 units, 14-slip marina, old Chase Suite Hotel site.

🏢 Carillon Office Complex Changed Hands
ESN Group bought Castille at 400/450 Carillon Parkway. About 105,000 square feet, 93% leased. Public number floating around: $19.5 million.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

Follow-through is a boring word. It is also the only one that fits this week.

A grant is a budget. A rendering is a suggestion. A definitive agreement is something you can vote on.

Wave took federal money and pointed it at the worst part of defense contracting. The Rays did not drop another mood board. They dropped terms, a rent number, and a community-benefits plan that still needs a dollar figure. Tampa votes today. The county votes Friday.

TGH got 24 acres rezoned and had to talk about flooding in public. Excite Medical licensed USF research and already has a factory that can sew the thing. Suncoast stayed a credit union and became a $22 billion one. Citizens paid up for a Tampa book. Ferguson leased an office that is still being built. Full Circle bought a 30-year shop and spent Monday meeting the 40 people inside it.

That is what a market looks like when it gets more serious.

Not louder. More binding.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS

Market Signals 
⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 59 (GREED) | per CNN Business Markets
₿ Bitcoin Dominance: 59.7% | per CoinMarketCap Global Charts
🛢 WTI Crude Oil (7d): $81.82/bbl (-5.77%) | per NYMEX
🚀 US VC Capital Concentration: 48.1% | per PitchBook-NVCA Venture Monitor Report
(a16z / Thrive / Founders Fund dominance; deal counts at 10-year lows)
🏠 US Housing Months' Supply: 5.3 Mos | per U.S. Census Bureau
(Highest inventory since 2014; average 30Y mortgage at 6.65%)
🚐 RV Wholesale Shipments: -8.2% YoY | per RV Industry Association
(Projected 314,000 units; leading consumer recession signal active)

Founder Perks 
🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control? Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support.

👀 Join a private founder network with small, vetted monthly groups in your city. No advisors, no spectators, no fluff. Just real answers from founders who have already wrestled with the problem in front of you.

🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy, without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter 

Masterminds 
🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Follow-through

Simple explanation:
Follow-through is what turns a press release into a payroll. This week it looks like a grant, a vote, a rezoning, a lease, and a close. Paperwork week. That’s a good week.

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

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Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Cities don’t usually change with one big announcement. They change like a tide.
Quiet at first, then suddenly hard to ignore.

This week, Tampa Bay had that kind of pull. Capital moved. Talent pipelines expanded. Infrastructure projects advanced. And founders kept finding practical problems worth building around.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🏆 Wave Cracks the Accelerator Big Leagues
🛡️ Defense Tech Adds a NATO Stamp
✂️ A Nasdaq Company Cuts Miami for Tampa
🤖 AI Agents Get a Control Room
📦 Warehouse Chaos Gets a Tampa Check
⚓ Tampa’s Working Waterfront Gets Federal Fuel
🏗️ Westshore Plaza Gets a Second-Life Blueprint


Scroll down for the signal…

🏆ACCELERATORS / STARTUPS

TIME Ranks Tampa Bay Wave Among America’s Top 3 Accelerators

Image credit: Tampa Bay Wave

Tampa Bay Wave just landed one of its biggest national credibility signals yet.

TIME Magazine ranked Wave the No. 3 startup accelerator in the United States, behind only Techstars and MassChallenge, while also naming it the top accelerator in Florida.

The ranking comes as Wave’s portfolio companies are posting serious numbers: $500 million raised in 2025, 670+ startups supported, 7,300+ jobs created, and an estimated $450 million in annual economic impact.

The most interesting part is the model. Wave does not take equity from the companies it supports, making its national ranking a rare win for a nonprofit accelerator built around founder support, not ownership.

⚡Why It Matters: Accelerator rankings are really ecosystem rankings in disguise. Wave cracking the national top three gives Tampa Bay a stronger proof point that founders, investors, and partners outside the region can take seriously.

🛡️DEFENSE TECH

Tampa’s XTEND Secures $15M NATO Drone Deal Before Going Public

Tampa-based XTEND secured a multi-year contract worth up to $15 million with a European NATO member’s Ministry of Defense.

The deal includes $4.5 million in year-one commitments and comes as XTEND prepares to rename itself XTEND AI Robotics, Inc. and begin trading on the NYSE under the ticker XTND after its planned transaction closes.

The timing matters. XTEND’s Tampa-based XFAB manufacturing facility and NDAA-compliant supply chain position the company as a domestic alternative as allied governments look for trusted drone and robotics platforms.

⚡Why It Matters: Defense drones are becoming a supply chain story as much as a battlefield story. XTEND gives Tampa Bay another company sitting at the intersection of AI, robotics, manufacturing, and allied defense demand.

✂️ HEALTHTECH / NEW IN TOWN

AirSculpt Moves Public Company HQ From Miami Beach to Tampa

AirSculpt Technologies is moving its headquarters from Miami Beach to Tampa.

The Nasdaq-listed company, which offers minimally invasive fat removal and skin-tightening procedures, will set up at 2023 W. Platt St. AirSculpt has more than 30 locations nationwide and went public in 2021.

The company reported $42.9 million in Q2 revenue, down slightly from the same quarter last year, and had 363 employees at the end of last year. Full timing and staffing details for the Tampa move have not been disclosed.

⚡Why It Matters: Headquarters moves bring decision-making, leadership, hiring, and vendor activity into a market. AirSculpt choosing Tampa adds another public healthcare-related company to the region’s business map.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by schittscreek on Giphy

I have no office, no payroll, and no product.

But I can help a founder get the meeting, win the check, land the partner, or attract the team.

I am built slowly, tested often, and lost quickly.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🤖AI / ENTERPRISE SOFTWARE

Force Equals Launches Agent Momentum to Manage AI Agents at Scale

Marc Shabot, Cofounder & CEO @ Force Equals

AI pilots are easy. AI operations are where things start getting weird.

Tampa-based Force Equals launched Agent Momentum, a product built to help companies manage AI agents once they move beyond a few experiments and into real workflows.

The platform monitors agent behavior in real time, routes decisions to the right human before actions go out, and helps teams adjust oversight without touching code. In plain English: it gives companies a control layer before AI agents start running too far ahead of the business.

⚡Why It Matters: The next phase of AI will not be about who launches the most agents. It will be about who can manage them safely, clearly, and usefully. ForceEquals is building for the messy middle where AI hype becomes actual operations.

📦VENTURE CAPITAL

Ballast Point Leads $9.25M Series A for Warehouse AI Startup Takt

Takt co-founders, from left to right: Glynn LoPresti, Co-Founder & CEO; Alex Rhea, Co-Founder & CTO; and Noah MacMichael, Co-Founder & CPO

Tampa-based Ballast Point Ventures led a $9.25 million Series A investment in Takt, a Reston, Virginia startup building real-time warehouse intelligence software.

Takt brings labor, robotics, and automation data into one dashboard so warehouse operators can make better decisions while shifts are still happening. The company is already live in more than 100 warehouses across U.S. and international markets.

The early performance signals are strong. One Kenco facility reportedly cut cost per pallet by 15%, saving about $229,000 annually. Ballast Point partner Sean Barkman is joining Takt’s board.

⚡Why It Matters: Warehouses are becoming more automated, but that does not automatically make them easier to run. Takt is building for the operational layer where people, robots, data, and decisions collide, and Tampa capital is helping fuel that growth.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

.⚓MARITIME / WORKFORCE

Gulf Marine Repair Lands $1M Federal Grant for Tampa Shipyard Upgrades

Gulf Marine Repair Corp. is receiving $1.01 million in federal funding to upgrade its Tampa shipyard.

The grant comes through the U.S. Maritime Administration’s Small Shipyard Grant Program, which is distributing $35.1 million across 45 shipyards nationwide in 2026.

Gulf Marine plans to use the funding to upgrade three berths, purchase new wheel loaders, and build out its training center. That makes this both an infrastructure story and a workforce story.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa’s waterfront economy is not just cruise ships and cargo. It is also repair yards, skilled trades, maritime employers, and industrial infrastructure that keeps the working side of the port economy moving.

🏗️REAL ESTATE

Westshore Plaza Files Plan for 53-Acre Mixed-Use Redevelopment

One of Tampa’s most familiar retail sites is being lined up for a second life.

Third Lake Capital has filed rezoning plans to transform Westshore Plaza’s 53 acres into a mixed-use district with up to 1,765 residences, a 240-room hotel, roughly 900,000 square feet of retail, and 500,000 square feet of office and medical space.

The plan would break the site into 14 individual blocks, giving the team flexibility to develop the property in phases instead of waiting for the entire project to move at once. No construction timeline has been set, and each phase still needs city approval.

⚡Why It Matters: Old malls are becoming some of the most important redevelopment canvases in growing cities. Westshore Plaza’s next chapter could reshape a major Tampa corridor by turning retail land into a denser mix of housing, hospitality, office, medical, and commercial space.

⚡QUICK HITS

🏟️ Rays Pick Builder for $2.3B Stadium Plan
The Tampa Bay Rays selected AECOM Hunt as construction manager for the proposed Tampa ballpark, while financing details are still being worked through.

🏘️ Affordable Housing Gets a New Bay Area Model
SERI USA launched in Tampa Bay with a platform tying together affordable housing, workforce development, mental health support, and small-scale development education. Its first property is under contract in south St. Pete.

💰 The Fed Keeps Investors Guessing
Fresh Fed minutes showed policymakers are still divided, with inflation concerns keeping the possibility of future rate hikes alive. For founders, that means capital costs, valuations, real estate financing, and customer budgets may stay choppy.

🪙 Crypto Gets a New Rulebook Attempt
The SEC proposed new crypto asset rules aimed at giving entrepreneurs clearer pathways to raise capital under federal securities laws. That is worth watching for anyone building around tokens, stablecoins, fintech, or digital asset infrastructure.

⚡ AI Infrastructure Money Keeps Getting Weirder
Nvidia is providing up to a $105 billion guarantee tied to OpenAI’s Ohio data center, another reminder that AI’s next bottleneck is not just models. It is power, financing, chips, land, and long-term infrastructure commitments.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

I keep coming back to one idea this week: every story is a bet on the future of Tampa Bay.

A NATO contract says this region can produce defense technology governments trust. A public company relocating from Miami Beach says Tampa’s operating case is getting stronger.

A mall redevelopment plan says familiar land can become something much more valuable. A federal shipyard grant says the working infrastructure under this economy still matters.

And then there’s the Wave.

Third in the country. Behind only two massive national accelerator brands.

That doesn’t just happen because of hype. It happens because founders show up, stay connected, raise capital, create jobs, and build companies that make the rest of the country notice.

Cities don’t change all at once.

They change when enough serious people start placing serious bets in the same direction.

This week felt like one of those moments.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: SIGNALS, EVENTS, PERKS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 54 (NEUTRAL) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 59% See chart

• 🎁 Need help getting bookkeeping and taxes under control? Collective is offering 1 month free on any tier, including bookkeeping and tax support. 👉 Claim the offer here

• 👀 Join a private founder network with small, vetted monthly groups in your city. No advisors, no spectators, no fluff. Just real answers from founders who have already wrestled with the problem in front of you.

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Credibility.

Simple explanation:
Credibility is what makes people take the next meeting, write the check, join the company, or bet on the region. This week’s stories all point to Tampa Bay earning more of it through national rankings, defense contracts, headquarters moves, venture checks, and major redevelopment plans.

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

This week, the region feels like it is quietly upgrading its operating system.

City Hall is figuring out AI guardrails. Social service agencies are getting AI phone support. Coastal infrastructure is attracting real capital. Flying cars are moving into production planning. A boating giant is being folded into a much larger marine platform. And even ice cream shops are reminding us that local operators still know how to spot opportunity.

Different industries. Same signal.

Tampa Bay and the broader Florida corridor are not just chasing flashy innovation. They are building around the practical stuff: infrastructure, trust, resilience, mobility, public services, and businesses that solve everyday problems.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🏛️ St. Pete Moves From AI Policy to AI Strategy
📞 AI Picks Up the Phone for Social Services
🌊 Living Seawalls Get a $10M Boost
🚤 MarineMax Gets a $1.5B Boat Ride
🚁 Flying Cars Are Coming to Polk County
📋 Sign In App Quietly Lands on the Inc. 5000
🍦 Brandon’s Ice Cream Icon Gets Scooped Up


Scroll down for the signal…

🏛️CIVIC AI / LOCAL GOVERNMENT

St. Pete Moves From AI Policy to AI Strategy

St. Petersburg is moving quickly from AI rules to AI strategy.

Just days after adopting its first administrative policy for how city employees can use generative AI, the City Council voted unanimously to send a proposed citywide AI strategy to its Public Services and Infrastructure Committee.

Council Member Mike Harting pushed the referral, asking the city to look at how AI should be used, what guardrails should come with it, and what implementation could cost.

The Welch administration is also running a parallel process, with a public comment period and an open house focused on the city’s AI direction.

The interesting part is the sequence. St. Pete is not treating AI like a one-time memo. It is setting a baseline, then immediately asking whether that baseline is enough.

⚡Why It Matters: Local governments can’t ignore AI, but they also can’t treat it like a toy. St. Pete’s approach gives Tampa Bay an early example of municipal AI governance that tries to balance speed, public trust, cost, and responsible use.

📞 SOCIAL IMPACT

AI Picks Up the Phone for Social Services

Chip Kennedy (left) and Jocelyn Howard (right), co-founders @ CivicReach

CivicReach is now operating out of spARK Labs by ARK Invest in St. Petersburg, bringing an AI-powered phone answering platform built for social service organizations into the local startup community.

The company was founded by Chip Kennedy, who previously ran a homelessness nonprofit and saw how often people in need could fall through the cracks when agencies did not have enough staff to answer calls. Jocelyn Howard, CivicReach’s chief strategy officer and a St. Pete native, is representing the company locally from spARK Labs.

The concept is painfully practical: social service agencies are often understaffed, overloaded, and dealing with call volume they cannot consistently handle. CivicReach uses AI to answer those calls so human staff can focus on more complex work.

⚡Why It Matters: Most AI companies chase enterprise budgets first. CivicReach is building for a sector where the need is obvious but the tools are often outdated. For Tampa Bay, it is a strong example of AI moving into civic infrastructure, not just corporate productivity.

🌊 CLIMATE TECH / SUSTAINABILITY

Living Seawalls Get a $10M Boost

Wave accelerator alum Kind Designs has raised a $10 million Pre-Series A round to scale its 3D-printed living seawalls.

The company is building coastal infrastructure that does more than hold back water. Its seawalls are designed to strengthen shoreline resilience while also supporting marine habitats, turning a traditionally gray piece of infrastructure into something closer to an environmental asset.

Kind Designs has grown from $1 million in revenue to $10 million in contracted work, with a reported $175 million pipeline that includes projects connected to major hospitality brands and the U.S. Navy.

⚡Why It Matters: Coastal resilience is not a future problem for Florida. It is an operating reality. Kind Designs shows how climate adaptation can become a serious business category when infrastructure, design, environmental restoration, and customer demand all line up.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by ifhtfilms on Giphy

I am often ignored until something breaks.

I can be a phone nobody answers, a seawall that fails, a permit that stalls, a policy that is missing, or a system nobody has updated in years.

Founders notice me because I create opportunity.

Cities notice me because I create risk.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🚤M&A / MARINE INDUSTRY

MarineMax Gets a $1.5B Boat Ride

Oldsmar-based MarineMax has agreed to be acquired by Safe Harbor Marinas, a Blackstone Infrastructure portfolio company, in a deal valued at approximately $1.5 billion.

The transaction would take MarineMax private if approved by shareholders and regulators. MarineMax operates across boat sales, marina and storage facilities, yacht brokerage, boat manufacturing, financing, insurance, service, and charter operations.

Safe Harbor already owns a large marina platform. MarineMax adds more of the customer relationship around boat ownership, from the first purchase through service, storage, financing, and resale.

⚡Why It Matters: This is not just a boating deal. It is a platform deal. Blackstone is pairing marina infrastructure with the businesses that surround marine ownership, giving Tampa Bay a front-row example of how investors are consolidating lifestyle, infrastructure, and recurring customer spend.

🚁ADVANCED MOBILITY / MANUFACTURING

Flying Cars Are Coming to Polk County

Israeli smart aircraft developer AIR is partnering with the Florida Department of Transportation to establish its U.S. headquarters and build electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft at SunTrax in Polk County.

The company plans to lease a 20,000-square-foot space at the Auburndale testing site and use it as a production and flight hub. AIR intends to manufacture its AIR ONE personal eVTOL aircraft and an autonomous heavy-lift cargo aircraft in the U.S. by the end of the year.

The move makes AIR the first advanced air mobility company to manufacture and operate eVTOL aircraft in Florida.

⚡Why It Matters: Advanced mobility is moving from concept art into real testing, production, and regulatory work. With SunTrax, Florida is trying to become more than a place where future transportation gets discussed. It wants to be where it gets built and tested.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

.📋GROWTH COMPANIES / INC. 5000

Sign In App Quietly Lands on the Inc. 5000

St. Petersburg-based Sign In App landed at No. 1,966 on the 2026 Inc. 5000 list of America’s fastest-growing private companies.

The company builds visitor management and access intelligence software, helping organizations track who is entering their buildings, when they arrive, and why they are there. It is not a flashy category, but it is a durable one across healthcare, education, government, corporate real estate, and other large facilities.

The Inc. 5000 placement reflects sustained growth over a three-year period, not a one-week headline.

⚡Why It Matters: The companies that strengthen an ecosystem are not always the loudest ones. Sign In App’s ranking is a useful reminder that quiet execution, recurring customer need, and steady growth can matter just as much as funding announcements.

🍦LOCAL OPERATORS / SMALL BUSINESS

Brandon’s Ice Cream Icon Gets Scooped Up

The owners of Dairy Joy have purchased Campbell’s Dairyland, a Brandon ice cream shop that has been part of the community for more than four decades.

Chris and Karrie Mueller, who own Dairy Joy locations in South Tampa, Seminole, and Jacksonville, plus Rodeo Whip in DeLand, bought Campbell’s after seeing the business listed for sale. They plan to keep the shop open, retain its employees, and make cosmetic upgrades like new equipment, furniture, paint, and refreshed outdoor playground features.

The best part: they are not trying to erase what made Campbell’s work. They want to preserve the individual identity of the shop while improving the experience.

⚡Why It Matters: Not every growth story needs venture capital. Sometimes the best operator move is buying a beloved local business, keeping the team, respecting the brand, and making it a little better. That is entrepreneurship too.

⚡QUICK HITS

🏎️ Luxury Cars Get a Private Club in Sarasota
A proposed Sarasota Motor Club would convert a former warehouse and drone manufacturing space into a private club with storage for luxury, exotic, and collector cars, plus dining, events, simulators, and concierge vehicle management.

🚀 Florida Space Firms Get a UK Bridge
Space Florida and the U.K. Space Agency announced a partnership to support joint aerospace research, commercialization, and innovation projects through a new international aerospace fund.

🗺️ Founder Resource: St. Pete Innovation Ecosystem Map
The St. Pete Innovation District’s ecosystem map helps entrepreneurs find support organizations based on stage, industry, customers, and founder needs.

📊 Resource Watch: Tampa Bay EDC Industry Report
The Tampa Bay EDC’s June industry report offers useful workforce and labor market intelligence for founders, employers, and operators tracking regional hiring trends.

🎯OPERATORS TAKE

What I like about this week is that the stories are not all wearing the same costume.

We have AI in city government. AI in social services.
Climate tech in coastal infrastructure.
A billion-dollar marine industry acquisition.
Advanced air mobility production.
A quiet software company showing national growth.
A local ice cream institution getting a new operator.

That is what real ecosystems look like.

Not one sector. Not one headline. Not one company carrying the whole narrative.

Tampa Bay’s opportunity is not just to become more innovative.

It is to become better at turning practical problems into durable companies, stronger institutions, and better systems.

That is where the real signal is this week.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 66 (GREED) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.4% See chart

• Your invite to join a Private Network for Founders — Eight vetted founders who meet monthly in your city. No advisors. No spectators. No fluff. Get real answers in 60 minutes from 1,100+ founders who have solved your problem.

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A gap.

Simple explanation:
A gap is the space between what people need and what the current system can handle. This week’s stories show Tampa Bay companies, founders, and institutions trying to close gaps in AI policy, social services, coastal resilience, mobility, marine infrastructure, and local business continuity.

❤️Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder, investor, operator, or local business owner who should be paying attention to Tampa Bay.

📰Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Some weeks are about companies raising money.

This week is about the stuff that helps companies, cities, and entire industries move faster.

Tampa Bay is adding new early-stage capital. Blue economy startups are getting plugged into the region. Blood delivery by drone is moving from sci-fi folder to emergency response planning. The port is finally breaking ground on a long-awaited cruise terminal. KnowBe4 is using AI to make cybersecurity training easier to produce. And a local founder is turning e-waste into computers, access, and opportunity.

Not every signal this week is loud. But a lot of them are foundational.

That is usually where the interesting stuff hides.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

💸 Florida Founders Get a New First Check
🌊 Blue Economy Startups Pull Into Tampa Bay
🩸 Blood Delivery by Drone Gets Real
⚓ Port Tampa Bay Finally Breaks Ground
🔐 KnowBe4 Turns AI Into a Training Studio
🧑‍💻 A New STEM Pathway Opens Between Polk and Florida Poly
♻️ E-Waste Turns Into Opportunity


Scroll down for the signal…

💸VENTURE CAPITAL

Florida Founders Get a New First Check

The Florida Funders Team. Senior investment associate, Zach Brodsky, far left. Managing partner Saxon Baum, fifth from left.

Tampa-based Florida Funders has launched Florida First Check, a statewide pre-seed program built to invest up to $100,000 in early-stage technology startups.

The initiative, created in partnership with the Florida Institute, is aimed at founders still in the idea, prototype, or earliest customer-discovery phase. That is the stage where a small check, the right introductions, and a little structure can make the difference between a concept that stalls and a company that gets its first real momentum.

For Florida Funders, the move extends its role earlier into the startup pipeline, before companies are ready for larger seed or Series A rounds.

⚡Why It Matters: Florida needs more support at the earliest stage of company formation. A statewide pre-seed program gives founders more room to test ideas, build proof, and become fundable before they are expected to look polished. For Tampa Bay, this reinforces the region’s growing role in Florida’s venture capital stack.

🌊 BLUE ECONOMY / ACCELERATORS

Blue Economy Startups Pull Into Tampa Bay

Tampa Bay Wave has selected five startups for the second BlueTech|X Accelerator, a six-week, no-cost, no-equity program focused on ocean and coastal technologies.

The cohort includes 1Print LLC, Dreadnot, ONA Protocol, SampleServe Inc., and SwimSmart Technology LLC. The program is delivered with NOAA and The Continuum, with founders spending time embedded in Tampa Bay as they work on commercialization across coastal resilience, maritime industries, and the broader Blue Economy.

The timing fits the region. Tampa Bay is surrounded by water, exposed to storm risk, and increasingly focused on resilience, port infrastructure, coastal planning, and maritime innovation.

⚡Why It Matters: Coastal resilience is not just an environmental issue. It is an economic development issue. Programs like BlueTech|X help position Tampa Bay as a place where ocean, climate, maritime, and infrastructure startups can build around real regional problems.

🩸 HEALTHTECH

Blood Delivery by Drone Gets Real

Gordon Folkes, CEO & Founder @ Archer First Response Systems

Tampa General Hospital, Hillsborough County Fire Rescue, and Archer First Response Systems are working on what is expected to become the nation’s first EMS-driven drone delivery program for whole blood.

The goal is simple and powerful: get blood to emergency scenes faster. The program is designed to deliver whole blood in under three minutes, potentially helping trauma patients receive critical support before they reach the hospital.

Operations are expected to begin in October 2026, pending county approval.

⚡Why It Matters: Healthcare innovation gets more meaningful when it changes what happens in the first few minutes of an emergency. If this works, Tampa Bay could become a national reference point for how drones, hospitals, and first responders work together in trauma care.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Giphy

I am not the headline, but the headline depends on me.

I help money move, talent grow, patients get help, ships arrive, and startups survive their earliest days.

When I am weak, everything feels stuck.
When I am strong, progress looks faster than it really is.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

⚓INFRASTRUCTURE

Port Tampa Bay Finally Breaks Ground

Port Tampa Bay has begun construction on its fourth cruise terminal, a $100 million project expected to increase annual passenger capacity to more than 2 million.

The new terminal is expected to open in 2029 and help the port accommodate more ships after years of capacity constraints. The project is also expected to generate roughly $100 million in additional economic impact.

This is not just a cruise story. It is a tourism, infrastructure, hospitality, transportation, and regional-growth story.

⚡Why It Matters: Ports are economic engines hiding in plain sight. Expanding cruise capacity gives Tampa Bay more room to capture visitor spending, support hospitality jobs, and compete for ships that might otherwise go elsewhere.

🔐CYBERSECURITY / AI

KnowBe4 Turns AI Into a Training Studio

Clearwater-based KnowBe4 has launched a Custom AI Video Builder for security awareness training.

The tool lets administrators create avatar-led training videos directly inside the platform, using Synthesia integration. It supports more than 160 languages and allows up to 120 minutes of narrated content per user annually.

That means companies can produce professional-looking security training without needing a full video production team.

⚡Why It Matters: Cybersecurity training has to stay current, but traditional content production can be slow and expensive. KnowBe4’s new tool shows how AI is moving from novelty into workflow, helping companies create training faster, more personally, and at much larger scale.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

.🧑‍💻WORKFORCE / TECH TALENT

A New STEM Pathway Opens Between Polk and Florida Poly

Florida Polytechnic University and Polk State College have created the Eagle to Phoenix Pathway, a new articulation agreement designed to make it easier for students to move from associate degrees into bachelor’s programs.

The agreement is focused on expanding access to STEM degree options and strengthening the engineering and technology talent pipeline across the region.

That matters because the talent conversation is no longer abstract. Startups, hospitals, manufacturers, cybersecurity companies, defense contractors, and infrastructure firms all need more technical workers.

⚡Why It Matters: Talent pipelines are ecosystem infrastructure. The easier it is for students to move into technical degrees, the stronger the region becomes for companies that need engineering, computing, cybersecurity, and applied technology talent.

♻️SOCIAL ENTERPRISE / SUSTAINABILITY

E-Waste Turns Into Opportunity

U.S. Senator Rick Scott (left) with Tony Selvaggio, Founder @ eSmart Recycling

Tampa Bay founder Tony Selvaggio has grown eSmart Recycling into a $1.5 million business by turning discarded electronics into refurbished computers.

The model connects two problems that usually get treated separately: e-waste and digital access. Instead of letting old devices sit unused or end up in landfills, eSmart refurbishes electronics and redirects them toward people, schools, and communities that need technology access.

The company also ties its work to workforce training, giving the model a broader social impact layer.

⚡Why It Matters: Some of the best businesses hide inside waste streams. eSmart Recycling shows how circular economy models can create revenue, reduce environmental impact, and expand digital access at the same time.

⚡QUICK HITS

🛡️Praxis Names New CEO for Phase Two
Tampa-based property insurer Praxis Reciprocal Exchange named Ross Bowie CEO as it looks to accelerate growth across Florida after building a sizable book of business in its first year.

🧘 Pay-What-You-Can Yoga Comes to Tampa
A new yoga studio is opening with a pay-what-you-can model that directs half of donations to instructors, blending wellness access with direct support for local fitness professionals.

🏗️ Midtown East Lands $55.7M in Financing
JLL Capital Markets arranged $55.7 million in debt financing for Midtown East, an 18-story office building in Tampa’s Midtown district.

🌊 Picnic Island Coastal Resilience Moves Forward
The City of Tampa advanced a nearly $2 million agreement for engineering, design, permitting, and engagement tied to a coastal resilience project at Picnic Island Park.

👩‍⚕️ Nurse Founder Gets 40 Under 40 Nod
Dr. Jessica Chung, founder of J.C. Healthcare & Associates and the International Business Association for Nurses, was nominated for Tampa Bay Business Journal’s 40 Under 40.

📊 FFERM Debuts Four-Factor Risk Model
Tampa Bay-based FFERM Technologies introduced a four-factor enterprise risk management methodology aimed at helping financial firms identify systemic risk earlier.

🎯OPERATORS TAKE

What stands out this week is how many of these stories are about capacity.

Not just growth.

Capacity.

Can founders get their first check?
Can coastal startups test ideas in a region that actually understands water risk?
Can first responders get blood to trauma scenes faster?
Can the port handle more passengers?
Can companies train employees faster against cyber threats?
Can students move more easily into technical careers?
Can old electronics become tools instead of waste?

That is the unglamorous side of ecosystem building, but it is also the side that compounds.

Every region wants more startups, more investment, more jobs, and more attention. But the regions that actually win are the ones that build the pipes underneath the headlines.

Capital pipes.
Talent pipes.
Infrastructure pipes.
Healthcare pipes.
Resilience pipes.

This week, Tampa Bay added a few more.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 60 (GREED) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.8% See chart

• Your invite to join a Private Network for Founders — Eight vetted founders who meet monthly in your city. No advisors. No spectators. No fluff. Get real answers in 60 minutes from 1,100+ founders who have solved your problem.

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Infrastructure.

Simple explanation:
Infrastructure is the hidden system that makes growth possible. This week’s stories all point to Tampa Bay building more of it, from pre-seed funding and workforce pathways to port capacity, emergency drones, coastal resilience, and cybersecurity training.

ADVERTISE WITH US // JOIN THE FB GROUP

*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Some weeks are about flashy announcements.

This week is more about who is getting pulled closer to the center of the map.

ARK Invest is backing a St. Pete AI venture factory. CENTCOM is launching a new AI task force from MacDill. Moffitt is bringing a new cancer treatment capability online. Pinellas is carving out its own tech day. Tampa Bay Tech is trying to build the talent pipeline before the gap gets uglier. And the Fast 50 list is reminding everyone that regional growth is not only happening in software.

Different doors. Same hallway.

Tampa Bay is getting more serious about building the systems that help companies, institutions, and talent scale.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

🧠 ARK Just Put Tampa Bay AI on Its Map
🛰️ CENTCOM Builds an AI Bridge With the UAE
🌮 Fast 50 Shows Growth Is Not Just a Tech Story
🏥 Health AI Gets a Seat at the EDC Table
🧬 Cancer Care Gets a Proton Upgrade
📍 Pinellas Is Getting Its Own Tech Day
🛠️ Tampa Bay Tech Takes on the Talent Gap
🏗️ A Tampa Startup Wants to Unclog the Permitting Pipe


Scroll down for the signal…

🧠AI / FUNDRAISING

ARK Just Put Tampa Bay AI on Its Map

Dillon Auxier (2nd from right to left), co-founder @ Plato

St. Petersburg-based Plato has landed a $3.5M backing from Cathie Wood and ARK Invest, marking a major signal for Tampa Bay’s AI startup scene.

Plato is an AI-native venture factory co-founded by Dillon Auxier and JC Cornell, built around the idea of creating companies with deep industry experts at the center. The team reportedly chose ARK for strategic alignment, even over potentially larger checks, because of ARK’s focus on disruptive innovation and category expertise.

The milestone matters beyond one company. It is the first time ARK Invest has backed a Tampa Bay startup, giving the region a new credibility marker in the venture conversation.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay has been working to prove it can build serious AI companies, not just host AI conversations. ARK backing Plato gives the region a stronger signal to point to when founders, investors, and operators ask whether Tampa Bay can attract top-tier strategic capital.

🛰️ DEFENSE / AI

CENTCOM Builds an AI Bridge With the UAE

From its headquarters at MacDill Air Force Base, U.S. Central Command announced Task Force Talon Synapse, a new bilateral military AI task force with the United Arab Emirates.

The task force will focus on accelerating AI applications for intelligence support, critical infrastructure protection, and regional security monitoring. The initial launch is expected to include roughly 20 American and Emirati specialists working together on the effort.

This is not a typical local tech story, but it is a very Tampa Bay story. CENTCOM’s AI work reinforces the region’s role as a national security hub where defense, data, international collaboration, and emerging technology increasingly overlap.

⚡Why It Matters: Defense AI is moving from theory into operational structure. For Tampa Bay, CENTCOM’s new task force adds another signal that the region’s proximity to MacDill and SOCOM can keep pulling serious defense technology activity into the local orbit.

📈 GROWTH COMPANIES

Fast 50 Shows Growth Is Not Just a Tech Story

Adam Lierbman (left) and Ian Lieberman (right), co-founders @ FTB Services

Tampa-based FTB Services topped Tampa Bay’s 2026 Fast 50 list, taking the No. 1 spot among the region’s fastest-growing privately held companies.

FTB Services is a franchise operator behind Fuzzy’s Tacos and Dave’s Hot Chicken, showing that regional growth is not limited to AI, healthtech, or venture-backed startups. This year’s Fast 50 also included companies across energy, construction, residential services, and financial sectors, including Rev1 Energy, Springer Construction, Cascade Residential Services, Shelby Construction, and Menke Financial.

That mix is worth paying attention to. Fast-growing ecosystems are usually broader than the companies that get the loudest headlines.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s growth story is becoming more diversified. Restaurants, construction, energy, residential services, finance, healthcare, and technology all create jobs, vendor demand, and founder opportunities. A strong region needs more than one engine.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by trainual on Giphy

I can stop a building before the first shovel hits dirt.

I can slow a startup even when the idea is good.

I can make capital more expensive, talent harder to use, and momentum disappear in a waiting room.

But when I move faster, entire cities can grow differently.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🏥 HEALTHTECH / ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

Health AI Gets a Seat at the EDC Table

Don Glidewell, founder and CEO @ Blue Purpose

Don Glidewell, founder and CEO of healthcare AI company Blue Purpose, has joined the Tampa Bay Economic Development Council’s Board of Directors.

The appointment connects a local healthtech founder with one of the region’s primary economic development organizations. Glidewell has pointed to priorities like the Tampa Medical & Research District, investment attraction, job creation, and long-term regional growth.

It is a small governance move with a bigger signal underneath it: healthtech is becoming more central to Tampa Bay’s economic development strategy.

⚡Why It Matters: Boards help shape priorities, relationships, and how regions tell their economic story. Having a healthcare AI founder at the EDC table gives Tampa Bay another bridge between startup operators, health innovation, and regional growth planning.

📍TECH COMMUNITY

Pinellas Is Getting Its Own Tech Day

Tampa Bay Tech Week announced 727 Tech Day, a dedicated one-day event for the St. Pete, Clearwater, and Pinellas County tech community.

The event is being produced by the team behind Tampa Bay Tech Week, in partnership with HyLo Innovation and W3RTech. Named after the 727 area code, the format will include panels, hands-on workshops, networking, and a closing mixer.

The bigger story is not just another event on the calendar. It is Pinellas getting its own activation layer, instead of always being folded into a Tampa-first regional narrative.

⚡Why It Matters: A stronger Pinellas tech community makes the entire Tampa Bay ecosystem more competitive. When St. Pete, Clearwater, and surrounding cities have their own platforms for founders, operators, and investors to gather, the region starts looking less like one hub and more like a true network.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

.🛠️WORKFORCE / TECH TALENT

Tampa Bay Tech Takes on the Talent Gap

Meghan O’Keefe, Executive Director @ Tampa Bay Tech

Tampa Bay Tech held a July 29 event focused on how employers are using apprenticeships to address the region’s tech talent shortage.

The conversation centered on the Tampa Bay Tech Apprentice Network, which launched in November 2024 to help build a sustainable pipeline of local tech talent and improve retention for employers. The timing matters: AI is changing which skills companies need, the workforce is aging, and competition for experienced talent keeps getting tighter.

The apprenticeship model treats talent like a supply chain problem. Instead of only recruiting from outside the region, employers can help create the talent they need locally.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s tech sector cannot scale on job postings alone. If the region wants more companies to grow here, it needs more structured pathways for people to enter technical careers and stay in the local market. TBTAN is one of the more practical attempts to build that pipeline from the ground up.

🏗️ PROPTECH / AI

This Tampa Startup Wants to Unclog the Permitting Pipe

Arjun Choudhary, Founder @ Blitz AI

Tampa startup Blitz AI is tackling one of real estate development’s least glamorous but most expensive bottlenecks: permitting delays.

Founder Arjun Choudhary saw the problem firsthand while waiting on permits for a Central Florida development project. By the time approvals came through, rising interest rates had changed the math enough to make the project unprofitable.

That experience became the starting point for Blitz AI, which uses computer vision, inference models, and proprietary data to help local governments and architecture teams review construction drawings faster. The company is not trying to replace permitting systems. It acts more like an intelligence layer that can spot issues earlier, before projects get stuck in formal review.

Blitz AI launched last year and is already working across more than six states and countries, including Florida jurisdictions like Naples and Sanford. The company now has nearly 70 employees across the U.S., Europe, and India.

⚡Why It Matters: Permitting delays do not just slow down developers. They can reshape project economics, housing timelines, commercial growth, and local investment. Blitz AI is a good example of a Tampa startup using AI on a painfully specific government workflow where speed, trust, and accuracy actually matter.

🎯OPERATORS TAKE

What I like about this week is that the stories are not all trying to be the same kind of impressive.

ARK backing Plato is a venture signal.
CENTCOM’s AI task force is a defense signal.
Moffitt’s proton therapy is a medical infrastructure signal.
727 Tech Day is a community signal.
Tampa Bay Tech’s apprenticeship work is a workforce signal.
The Fast 50 list is a growth signal.

That is what healthy ecosystems actually look like.

Not one storyline. Not one industry. Not one magic company that carries the whole region.

The real question is whether the pieces start reinforcing each other. Can the AI founders find strategic capital here? Can the defense ecosystem create company formation? Can health institutions become startup customers and partners? Can the talent pipeline keep up? Can Pinellas, Tampa, and the rest of the region activate together without flattening what makes each area different?

That is the next level for Tampa Bay.

Not just more momentum.

More connection between the momentum.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 39 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.8% See chart

• Your invite to join a Private Network for Founders — Eight vetted founders who meet monthly in your city. No advisors. No spectators. No fluff. Get real answers in 60 minutes from 1,100+ founders who have solved your problem.

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A bottleneck.

Simple explanation:
A bottleneck is the hidden constraint that slows everything else down. This week’s stories show Tampa Bay trying to remove bottlenecks in permitting, defense AI, healthcare, talent, and startup growth.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

This week’s Tampa Bay stories all point to the same thing: the future is getting less theoretical.

AI is showing up in classrooms, hospitals, pharmacies, data centers, and even city streets. Startup support is expanding beyond local borders. Public-market moves are forming around health data and AI infrastructure. And one of the region’s biggest hospitals is using robotics at a scale so small it sounds almost impossible.

That is the fun part of tracking this ecosystem.

The future rarely arrives as one giant announcement.

It usually shows up as a bunch of smaller signals that start connecting.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

🎒 Kids, AI, and Money Lessons Collide
🚀 Florida’s Startup Map Just Expanded
🏥 A Health AI Rebrand Hits Nasdaq
🚗 Tampa Gets a Driverless Test Drive
⚡ AI’s Hunger for Power Gets a Local Player
🦾 Tiny Robots, Big Healthcare Signal

Scroll down for the signal…

🎒EDTECH / FINTECH

Electus Joins Embarc to Scale AI Learning for Kids

Tampa Bay startup Electus Global Education Co. has joined Embarc Collective as it scales Life Hub Infiniti AI, its AI-powered education platform for kids and teens.

The company is building what it calls a learn-to-earn ecosystem for ages 6 to 18, focused on financial literacy, AI readiness, career skills, health literacy, and entrepreneurship. The platform uses an AI learning coach called Fini to help connect digital learning with real-world skills and financial capability.

For Electus, joining Embarc gives the company access to coaching, founder community, and startup resources as it looks to expand partnerships with schools, youth organizations, governments, and financial institutions.

⚡Why It Matters: Financial literacy and AI literacy are becoming life skills, not bonus skills. Electus gives Tampa Bay another startup working on the future of education, where kids are not just learning concepts, but building practical skills they can carry into the real world.

🚀 STARTUP PIPELINE

Embarc Takes Ambition Accelerated Statewide

And to continue on the topic, Embarc Collective is helping expand startup support beyond Tampa Bay through a new partnership with the Florida High Tech Corridor tied to Ambition Accelerated.

The statewide program is built to help high-growth founders connect with executive coaching, strategic resources, university networks, investors, corporate partners, and government agencies.

The accelerator focuses on four sectors where Florida wants to build stronger companies: HealthTech, FinTech, Dual-Use & Defense Technology, and Resilience.

Embarc will support founders across the tracks while anchoring the Tampa Bay HealthTech Accelerator.

⚡Why It Matters: Florida’s startup story is moving from “come here because it’s cheaper” to “scale here because the network is getting stronger.” For Tampa Bay, Embarc’s role gives the region a bigger seat in the state’s founder pipeline, especially around healthtech.

🏥 HEALTHTECH / PUBLIC MARKETS

DataMEDS AI Starts Trading on Nasdaq as MEDS

Tampa-based DataMEDS AI has officially begun trading on the Nasdaq Capital Market under the ticker MEDS, completing its rebrand from Wellgistics Health.

The company is positioning itself around AI-powered health data, treatment decision support, patient engagement, and pharmacy technology. Its platform includes EinsteinRx, an AI health data system, and PharmacyChain, a blockchain-enabled platform tied to healthcare transactions and data workflows.

This is not a funding round or a product launch. It is more of a public-market identity reset.

⚡Why It Matters: Ticker changes do not build companies by themselves, but they do signal where a company wants the market to focus. DataMEDS is trying to plant its flag in AI health infrastructure, giving Tampa Bay another public-market company tied to healthcare, data, and digital health.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by mupabudapest on Giphy

I can make a company more valuable without changing its product.

I can help a founder find customers, capital, mentors, and credibility faster.

I am not a building, not a pitch deck, and not a check.

But when I work well, companies grow faster because they are no longer building alone.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🚗 TRANSPORTATION

Tesla Robotaxis Start Rolling in Tampa

Tesla Robotaxi has launched driverless ride service in Tampa and Orlando, bringing one of the most talked-about autonomous vehicle experiments into the local market.

In Tampa, the current service area is focused around downtown, Ybor City, Tampa Heights, West Tampa, and parts of East Tampa. Riders use the Robotaxi app to request a Tesla Model Y, while the vehicle relies on Tesla’s camera-based AI system instead of the lidar-heavy approach used by some competitors.

The rollout is still limited. Tesla has not disclosed how many vehicles are operating locally or when the service area may expand.

⚡Why It Matters: Autonomous vehicle technology only gets real when it leaves the demo track and hits actual city streets. Tampa becoming an early test market gives the region a front-row seat to how driverless mobility may change transportation, regulation, insurance, and urban planning.

⚡AI / INFRASTRUCTURE

TECfusions Eyes Nasdaq With $4B AI Data Center Deal

Clearwater-based TECfusions is planning to go public through a SPAC merger with Apex Treasury Corp.

The deal values TECfusions at a $4 billion pre-money equity valuation and implies a pro forma enterprise value of about $4.2 billion, assuming no redemptions. The transaction also includes a $35 million PIPE investment.

TECfusions builds AI-ready data center and power infrastructure, with a strategy focused on adaptive reuse of legacy industrial sites. In plain English: the company is trying to turn old physical infrastructure into faster-to-deploy data centers for an AI market hungry for power and capacity.

⚡Why It Matters: AI is not just a software story. It is a power, land, cooling, and infrastructure story. TECfusions gives Tampa Bay a local link to one of the biggest bottlenecks in tech right now: where the next wave of AI computing actually lives.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🦾HEALTHCARE / ROBOTICS

TGH Uses Robotic Microsurgery to Fight Lymphedema

Tampa General Hospital is using robotic microsurgery to help treat lymphedema, a painful swelling condition that can affect cancer patients after lymph node removal or radiation.

The hospital is using the Symani Surgical System, which allows surgeons to stitch extremely small lymphatic vessels with robotic precision. The technology can help doctors intervene earlier, before the condition progresses, and may reduce the need for additional future treatments.

Breast cancer patients are currently the primary beneficiaries, but TGH says the approach could eventually support other specialties, including colorectal, gynecologic, and head and neck procedures.

⚡Why It Matters: Some healthcare innovation happens at massive scale. Some happens at the size of a human hair. TGH’s robotic microsurgery work shows how advanced tools can move from futuristic concept to practical patient care, strengthening Tampa Bay’s role in high-precision medicine.

🎯OPERATORS TAKE

This week it’s not just about ideas, but how many of these stories are about real infrastructure.

A youth education platform needs a founder network to scale. A statewide accelerator needs the right partners to help companies grow beyond their first market. A health AI company needs the public markets to understand its new direction. Robotaxis need real streets. Data centers need power. Robotic surgery needs hospitals willing to bring advanced tools into daily care.

That is the part people sometimes miss about innovation.The exciting announcement is usually the visible part.

Underneath it is the harder work: distribution, trust, capital, regulation, talent, operations, and the right partners.

That is where ecosystems either get real or stay stuck in pitch-event mode.

For Tampa Bay, the signal is that more of these pieces are starting to connect. We are seeing AI move into education, healthcare, transportation, infrastructure, and public markets. Not as a buzzword, but as something companies and institutions are trying to deploy.

The next question is not whether Tampa Bay has interesting ideas.

It is whether we can keep building the systems that help those ideas scale.
I’m betting we do.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 39 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.8% See chart

• Your invite to join a Private Network for Founders — Eight vetted founders who meet monthly in your city. No advisors. No spectators. No fluff. Get real answers in 60 minutes from 1,100+ founders who have solved your problem.

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: An ecosystem.

Simple explanation:
A strong ecosystem connects founders to the people, knowledge, capital, customers, and support they need to grow. This week’s stories all show different parts of Tampa Bay’s ecosystem getting stronger, from accelerators and hospitals to AI infrastructure and public-market companies.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

This week’s stories feel like a map of Florida’s next business battlegrounds.

Tampa Bay's economy right now reminds me of a root system that nobody sees from the street. On the surface you notice the tree. Underground, the roots are already three blocks over, feeding something new before anyone above ground has noticed the growth. That's the pattern this week.

Here’s what moved recently.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

🛒 Your grocery receipt might be quietly buying you equity now.
🤖 A defense robotics studio just chose its new permanent city.
💊 One million prescriptions later, a pharmacy runs out of room.
🚁 A local drone just completed its first live military deployment abroad.
🚀 Florida's statewide startup engine just found its home base.
🧠 High schoolers built AI projects. Then they pitched them to the room.

Scroll down for the signal…

🛒STARTUP WATCH

Grifin Partners with Price.com to turn your cashback into a stock portfolio. Automatically.

Tampa-based Grifin and AI savings app Price.com partnered to let shoppers automatically invest their cashback into fractional shares of the brands they buy from. Starting at $1. Price.com Pro members get Grifin access included at no extra cost. Same the other way around. Each membership is worth over $100 per year.

Here's how it works: You earn cashback on Price.com. It flows straight into Grifin. You buy fractional shares of the companies you actually spend money at. You control it all: which stocks, spending limits, when to pause.

Price.com Pro members get 50% more cashback to work with, which means more capital flowing into your positions without you thinking about it.

⚡Why It Matters: Grifin is headquartered in Tampa, making this a local startup story with national reach, and a model that speaks directly to the cost-squeezed entrepreneurs and early-stage founders who are looking for smarter ways to build wealth alongside their businesses.

🤖 DEFENSE / ROBOTICS

Tesseract Ventures just moved its HQ to Tampa

Defense robotics studio Tesseract Ventures relocated from Kansas City to Tampa and they're hiring hard ahead of Series B. CEO John Boucard was direct about it: Tampa's startup community is more mature and professional than what he found in the Midwest. That's not a small compliment.

Tesseract holds multiple SBIR and DoD contracts. They're building PRISM, MOSAIC, and ECHO which are platforms serving military, construction, and agriculture customers. Their first Tampa hires are engineering, product, and systems roles focused on robotics, drone work, and data visualization.

This is what ecosystem momentum looks like. A company with government contracts and defense credibility didn't pick Tampa for tax breaks or real estate. They picked it because the founder network, investor sophistication, and talent pool are real.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa's startup community just got validated by someone who could have stayed anywhere. If you're building deep tech or defense applications, you're no longer competing against Kansas City or Austin, you're competing from a place that attracts serious founders and serious capital.

💊 HEALTHTECH / GROWTH

TelyRx just hit a million prescriptions. They're tripling their Clearwater HQ to keep up

TelyRx crossed one million prescriptions filled and posted 180% year-over-year revenue growth in Q1 2026. They're expanding their Clearwater headquarters by 3x and hiring hard across pharmacy, clinical, and fulfillment roles.

Here's the model: digital pharmacy platform, 450+ FDA-approved medications across 48 states, cash-pay pricing. Patients connect with licensed providers online, get meds delivered to their door. No insurance games. No middleman markup.

CEO Vanessa Slowey isn't talking about vanity metrics. She's focused on repeat order rates which is the clearest signal that patients actually want what you're building. When people reorder, they're voting with their wallet.

⚡Why It Matters: A Tampa Bay-based digital health company scaling to seven figures in prescriptions is proof that healthcare startups can grow and hire locally without relocating to a coastal tech hub.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by firstwefeast on Giphy

I show up in every great city before anyone calls it great.

I am not a building, a check, or a headline.

I am what happens when a researcher, a founder, and a federal contractor end up in the same room and realize they need each other.

Cities try to manufacture me at conferences, but I only really grow in the soil of repeated proximity.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🚁AI & INNOVATION

Tampa drone firm XTEND goes live with British Army

XTEND just validated autonomous strike drones for the British Army. And they're a Tampa company.

XTEND's SCORPIO 1000 autonomous strike drones just completed the British Army's first validated long-range autonomous strike missions with live kinetic payloads. The test happened during Ex RHINO BIZZ in Alberta which is a GPS-denied, contested comms environment with 350 soldiers. Five SCORPIO 1000 systems ran independently. No XTEND staff needed. Strike ranges hit 7.5 kilometers.

This is real-world validation at scale. The British Army ran your system unsupervised in a contested environment and it worked.

XTEND is also advancing in the U.S. DoD's $1 billion Drone Dominance program and heading to Nasdaq through a merger valuing the company at $1.5 billion under ticker XTND.

⚡Why It Matters: A Tampa company earning independent operational trust from a NATO ally's frontline soldiers is a signal that the region's defense tech ecosystem is producing globally deployable, mission-ready technology.

🚀COMMUNITY / ECOSYSTEM

Embarc Collective Powers Florida's New Statewide Accelerator

Ambition Accelerated is open for applications, and Embarc Collective just became Florida's official partner.

This isn't another generic accelerator pitch. Ambition Accelerated is a Florida Council of 100 initiative that connects high-growth founders with 75+ active CEOs, investors, and enterprise customers across the state.

Four tracks: HealthTech (anchored in Tampa Bay), FinTech, Dual-Use and Defense Tech, and Resilience. Programs run across Tampa Bay, the Gold Coast, and Southwest Florida.

If you're building something real and you're ready to scale it, this gets you direct access to people who can actually move the needle: mentors who've been through it, investors with dry powder, and customers looking to buy. You also score an Embarc Collective scholarship to stay plugged into Florida's startup ecosystem after the program wraps.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay founders building in HealthTech, FinTech, or Defense Tech now have a direct on-ramp to statewide executive networks and capital through a program anchored right here at Embarc Collective.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🧠EDUCATION

USF 5-Day AI Boot Camp Showcased in Front of Tampa Bay Tech Leaders

USF's Bellini College ran a five-day AI and machine learning summer intensive for high school students this week, July 13 through 17, 2026. The program targeted students in grades 10 through 12 and was designed to give them direct exposure to how AI is shaping the workforce and research landscape before they ever set foot in a college classroom.

The week ended with an Innovation Fair where students presented their final AI or machine learning prototypes to parents, USF faculty, and Tampa Bay technology leaders. The instructors included Dr. Raiyan Abdul Baten, Dr. FNU Kaleemunnisa, and Dr. Ankur Mali.

The pipeline logic here is straightforward. If Tampa Bay wants a deep local talent base in AI and cybersecurity a decade from now, the work starts with high schoolers today.

⚡Why It Matters: Workforce development at the high school level is slow-moving by nature, but it is also the most durable investment a region can make. USF running this program locally means Tampa Bay students are getting exposure that used to require traveling to a different city.

OPERATORS TAKE

What stands out this week is not any single story. It is the altitude at which Tampa Bay is now operating.

A drone company completing live military contracts overseas. A defense robotics studio relocating its headquarters here by choice. A pharmacy scaling so fast it outgrew its own building.

These are not startup stories anymore. They are operational stories. Companies that already proved the concept and are now scaling the infrastructure.

At the same time you have a university running AI intensives for high schoolers and a statewide accelerator anchoring itself locally.

That is the root system doing its work. The mature companies pulling in from outside and the young talent being cultivated from within are not separate trends.

They are the same trend at different stages of the same timeline. The question worth sitting with this week is not whether Tampa Bay is growing.

It is whether the people building here understand what they are actually building toward.

I think some of them do.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 42 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.4% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A cluster. The compounding effect of related institutions, companies, and talent concentrating in one place until collaboration becomes inevitable.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

This week’s stories feel like a map of Florida’s next business battlegrounds.

Capital is moving into employee benefits, AI, car washes, and driverless vehicles. Cities are wrestling with growth pains. Health systems are following population shifts. Startups are trying to fix broken systems for kids. And one fitness brand is taking its fight from the showroom to federal court.

Different industries, same signal:

The next version of Florida’s economy is being shaped by who gets funded, who gets regulated, who expands, and who builds faster than the old systems can keep up.

Here’s what moved recently.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

💰 A fintech backer just took a serious position in the employee benefits space.
🏙️ One Florida city is considering hitting pause on an entire industry for a year.
🤖 A serial founder's new AI venture just landed inside a high-profile incubator.
💸 A Sun Belt metro is now trading punches with the top venture markets in the country.
🏥 A major health system is quietly moving its footprint to follow where people live.
🧠 A startup is using AI to cut through a waitlist that has been failing kids for years.
⚖️ A fitness brand just took a competitor to federal court over hardware it copied.
🚗💦 A regional car wash chain just secured enough capital to become much bigger.
🚗 A driverless vehicle company picked Tampa as one of four cities to test its next move.

Scroll down for the signal…

💰FINTECH

Corestream Just Landed a Strategic Investment for the Benefits Platform Touching 6 Million Workers

Tampa-based Corestream secured a strategic investment from Lightyear Capital LLC this week, adding a fintech-focused institutional backer to a platform that already serves more than 6 million employees. The company automates the full voluntary benefits lifecycle, from enrollment through billing, reconciliation, and administration.

The numbers behind the business are not small. Corestream reconciled more than $500 million in payroll premiums in 2025. Lightyear Managing Partner Mark Vassallo pointed to the firm's experience across healthcare, insurance, brokerage, fintech, and payments as the reason the partnership made sense.

The interesting part is how quietly infrastructure like this operates. Voluntary benefits administration is not a flashy category, but it sits at the intersection of employer relationships, payroll systems, and insurance carriers. Corestream has been building that plumbing since 2006, and this investment suggests the market is starting to price that depth accordingly.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa has a growing cluster of B2B fintech and HR technology companies operating at enterprise scale. Corestream's investment is a signal that institutional capital is paying attention to that layer of the local ecosystem, not just the consumer-facing startups.

🏙️INFRASTRUCTURE / AI

Lakeland Is About to Vote on a 12-Month Pause on All New Data Centers

Lakeland is moving toward a formal vote on a 12-month moratorium on new data centers and large electrical load customers. Commissioners received an update on the drafted ordinance during a four-hour meeting on July 6. A public hearing is set for July 20, with a second hearing and final vote on August 3.

One detail from the meeting stands out. A city development official noted frustration with how loosely the term 'data center' is applied, covering everything from a small closet with servers to a 4.5-million-square-foot hyperscale facility. That definitional problem is not unique to Lakeland. It is showing up in municipal conversations across the state.

The moratorium is a pause, not a ban. But it signals that Lakeland wants time to build a regulatory framework before the next large proposal arrives. Given what is happening in Fort Meade, that instinct is not surprising.

⚡Why It Matters: Lakeland sits in the same Polk County corridor drawing hyperscale interest. A moratorium there, combined with the Fort Meade lawsuit, suggests that Central Florida's data center pipeline faces a new layer of friction that developers and investors will need to account for.

🤖 STARTUPS

Iron Meadow Joins spARK Labs After Its Founder Sold His Last Company to Kissmetrics in 2025

Iron Meadow, a company that acquires niche online businesses and applies AI to improve their operations, has joined the spARK Labs by ARK Invest incubator in St. Petersburg. Founder and CEO Steve McGarry moved his team into the ARK Innovation Center last month.

McGarry is not a first-time founder. He previously built SandStorm, a gaming analytics company that was acquired by Kissmetrics Holding in 2025. Iron Meadow applies a similar analytical lens to a different problem: finding undervalued online businesses and using AI to unlock more value from them.

The model sits at the intersection of acquisition entrepreneurship and AI operations, a combination that is attracting more attention as AI tooling makes it cheaper to run small digital businesses at scale. Landing inside spARK Labs gives McGarry access to ARK Invest's network and thematic research across AI, robotics, and blockchain.

⚡Why It Matters: spARK Labs is quietly building a roster of founders with real operating history. Iron Meadow adds another data point to the case that St. Petersburg is becoming a legitimate home for post-exit founders building their next thing.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Giphy

I can hold more data than any server farm, but I take up no physical space.
I can be built in a small town or a major city, but I am not a building.
Governments are scrambling to regulate me, but I was never on the permit application.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

💸VENTURE CAPITAL / FUNDING

Tampa Bay Hauled ~$300M in VC in H1 2026

Florida’s venture market cooled slightly in Q2, but Tampa Bay is still putting real points on the board.

PitchBook data reported by Refresh Miami shows Tampa Bay startups raised $209.8 million across 25 deals in Q2, bringing the region to more than $330 million for the first half of 2026. But the bigger number shows up when Sarasota is included, which often makes sense when looking at the broader Tampa Bay startup map.

With Sarasota added, the region attracted $232 million in Q2 and $657.8 million in the first half of the year, putting Tampa Bay on pace for its best venture year in at least 12 years.

The region also showed up in statewide deal activity. St. Petersburg’s Climate First Bank posted the largest Q2 raise outside South Florida at $67.5 million, while The Bank of Tampa followed as another major statewide deal with $50.2 million.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay does not need to beat Miami to matter. The more important signal is that local venture activity is getting deeper, more consistent, and less dependent on one-off headlines. If the region can keep pairing capital with stronger founder support, talent, and customer access, this could become one of Tampa Bay’s most important funding years yet.

🏥HEALTHCARE

Tampa's healthcare boom moves to the suburbs

Outpatient clinics are spreading across Pasco, Hillsborough and Pinellas counties as health systems follow Tampa Bay's shifting population instead of anchoring to downtown medical campuses. CBRE research shows younger workers and families are now relocating to Florida alongside retirees, widening demand beyond senior care into pediatrics, behavioral health, women's health and orthopedics.

The expansion is creating real technology opportunity:

• Florida holds 38% of all freestanding emergency room projects nationwide after repealing Certificate of Need rules in 2019

• Hyde Park Capital research found record-sized funding rounds flowing into automation, AI and multi-site healthcare software

• The U.S. medical imaging AI market is projected to hit $2.9 billion by 2030, growing at 33% annually

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa-area founders building healthcare operations software, AI diagnostics or multi-site workflow tools are sitting in one of the most active outpatient expansion markets in the country.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🧠AI / INNOVATION

Tampa Startup Wants to Fix Special Ed Waitlists

Tampa edtech company Scholar is launching a telehealth psychology practice that uses AI to speed up special education evaluations, a process that currently takes families nearly a full school year. The AI handles assessment scoring and draft report writing, while licensed psychologists retain control over diagnoses and final plans.

Founder Ed Buckley says the goal is ambitious but specific:

• Triple the number of evaluations psychologists can complete

• Cut evaluation costs by at least 50 percent

• Shrink the 12-month process to under one semester

Scholar already serves about 22,000 students across Florida districts through its IEP management platform. The new practice lets families seek evaluations directly, with completed plans feeding into the same software schools already use.

⚡Why It Matters: Scholar shows how Tampa founders are finding product expansion opportunities by listening to customer pain points rather than chasing AI trends.

⚖️INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY / POLICY

Fitness founder sues Florida studio over Alibaba knockoffs

Lagree Technologies has filed a federal patent lawsuit against St. Petersburg studio Studio Physique LLC and owner Christine Field, alleging the studio swapped its licensed Megaformer machines for cheaper overseas copies while still marketing classes as Lagree workouts. The 46-count complaint claims Studio Physique purchased knockoff machines through Alibaba in mid-2025, manufactured by a Chinese company, and even promoted them on Instagram as 'upgraded Megas.' Key details:

• Studio Physique held a Lagree license since 2015 and used genuine machines for nearly a decade
• Lagree reps visited the studio in September 2025 and confirmed the machines were unauthorized copies
• Lagree terminated the license via cease-and-desist shortly after, and a related case is also pending in California federal court

⚡Why It Matters: For Tampa Bay founders building licensed or IP-dependent businesses, this case is a sharp reminder that swapping out core licensed products while trading on a brand name can trigger costly federal litigation.

🚗TRADITIONAL / FUNDING ROUNDST

Tampa car wash chain lands $200M growth war chest

Bubble Down Car Wash just secured a $200 million capital commitment from Strategic Capital, an investment strategy within BTG Pactual Global Alternatives, to accelerate expansion across Florida and the Southeast. The Tampa-based operator currently runs eight express car wash locations in the Tampa Bay area.

Here is what the capital is earmarked for:

• Acquiring existing car wash operators in the region

• Developing new locations from the ground up

• Investing in technology and operational infrastructure

BTG Pactual, Latin America's largest investment bank, manages roughly $11.5 billion through its Global Alternatives business. Founder and CEO Bryan Zinober said the goal from day one was building something built to last, not just another car wash chain.

⚡Why It Matters: Bubble Down's raise shows that Tampa-based operators with disciplined growth strategies are attracting serious institutional capital, proving you don't have to be in a tech sector to land nine-figure backing.

🚗TRANSPORTATION / ROBOTICS

Waymo Brings Driverless Robotaxis to Tampa

Waymo is rolling out fully driverless robotaxi testing in Tampa, making it one of four cities in the company's latest expansion alongside Denver, Las Vegas, and San Diego. The initial phase is limited to Waymo and Google employees, so public rides are not yet on the table.

Key details:

• Tampa joins a short list of cities getting early access to Waymo's autonomous vehicle program

• No human safety driver in the vehicle during testing

• Employee-only access suggests a public launch could follow if testing goes well

⚡Why It Matters: Waymo planting a flag in Tampa signals that the Bay Area is becoming a serious proving ground for autonomous tech, which opens doors for local founders building in mobility, logistics, and AI infrastructure.

OPERATORS TAKE
Here is what I keep coming back to this week. Every single story in this edition is really about the same question: who gets to decide what a place becomes?

Lakeland is asking whether it wants to be a data center hub or something else entirely. Tampa's health systems are betting that the city's center of gravity has already shifted south and east.

Waymo did not ask Tampa's permission. It just showed up.
Bubble Down did not wait for the market to consolidate around them. They went and got the capital to do the consolidating.
Scholar is not waiting for the school system to fix its own waitlist problem.
And Corestream is not waiting for employers to figure out benefits on their own.

The pattern underneath all of it is the same. The operators who are winning right now are not the ones asking for permission or waiting for conditions to be perfect.

They are the ones who looked at a broken or slow or underserved system and decided to move before anyone else did. That is the week. That is the signal.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 47 (NEUTRAL) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.4% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Public Trust.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

We skipped last week to take a breather, but we’re back on track, and Tampa Bay did not exactly sit quietly while we were gone.

Think of our region like an operating system. The companies are the apps everyone sees. The real performance comes from the code underneath: talent pipelines, university partnerships, infrastructure, capital, acquisitions, and the founders working on problems most people do not notice until they become urgent.

This week, a lot of that underlying code got updated.

Here’s what moved recently.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:

🚑 A New Health Training Hub Opens in the Region
🛡️ Defense Firm Grows After Recent Regional Relocation
💍 Smart Jewelry Turns Personal Safety Into a Product
🛡️ Stealth Startup Targets a Costly Security Problem
🦊 Security Company Acquires Missing Tech Capability
🤖 Local Media Player Makes an AI Infrastructure Move
🔐 Cybersecurity Firm Strengthens Its University Pipeline

Scroll down for the signal…

🚑WORKFORCE / STEM

Pasco Gets a New Science and Innovation Hub

Pasco-Hernando State College officially opened the Wilton Simpson Science and Innovation Center at its East Campus in Dade City, giving the region a new 27,000-square-foot training ground for science, engineering, emergency response, drones, and robotics.

The $25 million facility includes a full mock ambulance where EMT students can train in realistic tight quarters, plus expanded drone and robotics labs tied to engineering technology, automation, and mechatronics programs. The building also includes smart classrooms designed to be upgraded as technology changes, giving the campus room to evolve with the industries it is training students to enter.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay founders building in healthtech, drone tech, robotics, and workforce development now have another hands-on talent pipeline forming in Pasco County. That matters as more startups need workers who can do more than understand the theory. They need people who have already touched the tools.

🛡️DEFENSE TECH

Defense Tech Firm Doubles Down on Tampa

Orion Edge is expanding its Tampa headquarters just eight months after relocating from Denver, signing a lease for 8,008 square feet in the Westshore District and committing $6 million to its next growth phase.

The electronic warfare company builds systems that disrupt enemy communications and counter drone threats, putting it in one of the fastest-moving areas of modern defense.

The company plans to move into its new space at 5555 W. Waters Ave. in early August and add 25 engineering and manufacturing jobs over the next three years, with average salaries around $120,000.

Proximity to U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base helped drive both the original move and the expansion.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa’s defense tech sector is becoming a stronger talent magnet, especially for founders building around AI, cybersecurity, electronic warfare, and autonomous systems. High-salary technical roles also help deepen the local bench for the next wave of hard-tech companies.

💍 STARTUPS / PERSONAL SAFETY

USF Athlete Builds Jewelry That Detects Drink Spiking

Addison Bounds, a former USF Division I beach volleyball player and current master’s student, co-founded Elora after turning a personal safety concern into a startup idea.

The Tampa-area company is developing wearable jewelry with miniature chemical sensors built into bracelets and pendants. The idea is simple but powerful: let users test a drink with a small drop before taking a sip, then trigger alerts through the Elora app if something dangerous is detected.

The company is targeting substances including Rohypnol, GHB, ketamine, and benzodiazepines, with co-founder Kiara Robichaud bringing biomedical engineering experience to the technical build.

⚡Why It Matters: Elora is a reminder that some of the most compelling startups are not born from trend-chasing. They come from founders close enough to a problem to know exactly why it needs solving.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by GlobalEsports on Giphy

I connect a classroom to a boardroom without anyone moving.
I turn a student into a founder before they graduate.
I make a university worth more to a company than any single hire.
I cost less than a salary but compound like equity.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🛡️STARTUPS / DEFENSE TECH

St. Pete Startup Wants to Stop Killer Drones Cheaply

Saint Petersburg-based Neura Defense Systems came out of stealth this week with an AI platform built to detect and neutralize drones that traditional defense systems can miss.

The company is focused on fiber-optic-tethered and fully autonomous FPV drones that emit no radio signal, making them difficult for radar jamming and RF detection systems to find. Its platform fuses radar, thermal, acoustic, and visual sensor data into one AI-driven threat picture, while its Raptor interceptor is being built with a target cost under $200 per round.

That is a sharp contrast to legacy defense systems that can cost $100,000 or more per shot. Neura says an MVP prototype is already available, with a flight demo planned for early 2027.

⚡Why It Matters: A Tampa Bay defense startup building dual-use AI hardware is exactly the kind of deep-tech company local founders and investors should be watching. As defense dollars move toward autonomous systems, lower-cost solutions could become a major wedge for new entrants.

🦊CYBERSECURITY

CyberFOX Adds a Zero Trust Piece

CyberFOX acquired Timus Networks, a cloud-based SASE provider, expanding its cybersecurity platform with zero-trust network access and secure web browsing capabilities.

The deal strengthens CyberFOX’s toolkit for managed service providers while allowing Timus Networks to continue operating under its own name. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the acquisition gives CyberFOX another layer in the identity, access, and network security stack.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay cybersecurity companies are increasingly using acquisitions to expand their platforms and compete for the small and midsize business security market. This deal shows how zero-trust tools are becoming less of a niche feature and more of a must-have layer.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🤖AI / ACQUISITIONS

Rumble Goes Big on AI Infrastructure

Rumble closed its acquisition of Northern Data AG, giving the video platform control of roughly 85% of the German AI and high-performance computing company.

The deal gives Rumble a much deeper hardware stack, including around 22,000 NVIDIA H100 and H200 GPUs, plus more than 200 megawatts of energy capacity that has not yet been turned into revenue. The company is now operating across two business divisions and positioning itself to compete more directly in AI cloud infrastructure.

Northern Data also raised its 2026 revenue outlook to between 170 million and 190 million euros following the deal.

⚡Why It Matters: AI infrastructure is becoming one of the biggest battlegrounds in tech. Tampa Bay founders building on or selling into AI platforms should be watching who controls the compute, because that will shape pricing, access, and leverage for years ahead.

🔐CYBERSECURITY / TALENT

ReliaQuest Puts More Money Behind Florida Cyber Talent

ReliaQuest is investing $1.5 million into the University of South Florida to deepen its AI and cybersecurity talent pipeline.

The Tampa-based company will fund the first endowed professorship in USF’s new College of Artificial Intelligence, Cybersecurity and Computing. It will also expand ReliaQuest Labs with a new AI-supported software engineering track covering software engineering, prompt engineering, and emerging AI tools.

ReliaQuest Labs launched in 2018 and has graduated more than 300 students, many of whom have gone on to cybersecurity jobs. This is also ReliaQuest’s second $1.5 million university commitment this year, following a similar partnership with Florida State University.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay’s tech ecosystem depends on local talent density, and ReliaQuest is treating universities like strategic infrastructure. For founders, that means the region’s AI and cybersecurity bench may get stronger without every company having to import talent from somewhere else.

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 31 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.0% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A structured academic partnership.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Friday! This is Mind Your Business.

Think of a city the way you think of a ship being loaded at port.

Every crane, every container, every decision about what goes where reflects a bet someone made about where things are headed. This week, a lot of bets got placed at once.

Here's what moved this week.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🚁 A publicly traded drone company just filled a critical gap in its fleet
🏠 One insurer is paying homeowners to prepare for the worst
✈️ Former pro athlete just changed the private aviation pricing model
⚓ This port infrastructure project years in the making just became real
📰 Legacy media company quietly entered a business it used to cover
🏭 Move over tourism: Big bet on the future of local manufacturing

Scroll down for the signal…

🚁ACQUISITIONS

Draganfly Snaps Up Fixed-Wing Drone Maker

Image credit to Draganfly

NASDAQ-listed Draganfly closed its acquisition of Tampa-based Skip Dynamix for up to $7.525M, adding low-cost, mass-producible fixed-wing drones to its defense lineup.

Unlike the rotary drones most people picture, fixed-wing models fly like planes: longer range, better fuel efficiency, more ground per mission. The deal moves Draganfly from a single-product maker toward a full drone solutions provider.

⚡Why It Matters:  Defense and dual-use drone tech is pulling serious venture and government dollars. Tampa Bay hardware and aerospace founders should watch how small acquisitions like this reshape the field.

🏠STARTUPS / INSURTECH

This Insurer Pays You to Hurricane-Proof Your Home

Dan Preston, cofounder & CEO @ Stand

Tampa-based Stand launched its first voluntary Florida homeowner's policy.

Instead of pricing by zip code, it runs aerospace-grade wind simulations on your specific home. Make targeted upgrades and premiums can drop up to 40% for the life of the policy. Early customers also get:

• Free smart leak-detection devices plus the first year of monitoring

• Pre-negotiated rates with vetted contractors

Stand already insures $10B+ in property and entered Florida through the Citizens depopulation program.

⚡Why It Matters: Florida's insurance crisis is a real cost for local founders and property owners. A carrier that helps reduce risk instead of just pricing it is worth watching.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Giphy

Every flight needs me before it ever leaves the ground.
Every startup counts how much of me is left.
Run out and you are grounded. Stretch me, and you soar.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

✈️STARTUPS / AVIATION

Ex-NFL Star Launches No-Fee Private Aviation Brokerage

Jim Pyne, founder @ PLS Aviation

Jim Pyne (NFL lineman, coach, and Wheels Up co-founder) launched PLS Aviation, a Tampa-based private jet brokerage with a simple pitch: no membership fees, no hidden costs, and someone answering the phone at 2am.

PLS offers on-demand charter, aircraft sourcing, and advisory to executives, athletes, and high-net-worth clients, with global fleet access and transparent pricing. Super Bowl-winning coaches Jon Gruden and Bruce Arians have both vouched for him.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay continues to attract founder talent with deep sports and entertainment networks, and PLS Aviation is a reminder that some of the most compelling startups here are built on relationships and trust as much as technology.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

⚓GENERAL BUSINESS / INDUSTRIAL

Tampa's Biggest Cement Terminal Just Opened for Business

Image credit to Port Tampa Bay

SESCO Cement opened a new import terminal at Port Redwing in Port Tampa Bay, eaturing the largest wheel-mounted ship unloader in operation and nearly 100,000 tons of silo storage.

SESCO says it will be Florida's largest cement terminal when fully built out. The custom unloader alone took two years of engineering and a 25-day ocean voyage to reach Tampa. It connects to markets by sea, interstate, and rail.

⚡Why It Matters: For founders in construction, logistics, or real estate, a bigger local cement supply chain means fewer material bottlenecks and stronger regional infrastructure.

📰 MEDIA

Local paper launches ad agency, raises eyebrows

Image credit to Tampa Bay Times

The Tampa Bay Times launched Launch Point, a full-service marketing agency it says will help fund local journalism. The catch: when a newsroom sells marketing to the same businesses its reporters cover, editorial independence gets harder to see.

No one alleges direct interference, but the structural conflict is real: who gets a flattering profile, which story gets spiked. The Times built its brand on watchdog reporting, so the question is whether the firewall holds.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay founders are now potential clients of the outlet
that covers them, worth understanding how that could shape local coverage.

🏭MANUFACTURING

East Tampa Bets Big on Manufacturing Jobs

Image credit to Tampa Bay EDC

Manufacturing is now 36% of the Tampa Bay EDC's project pipeline, with leads up 30% since 2020, but only about 12% of manufacturing prospects pick the region (vs. 24% for other industries).

EDC president Craig Richard says the gap is ecosystem: manufacturers want workforce pipelines, training, and incubator space first. The fix is the East Tampa Innovation Center on Columbus Drive, a partnership of the EDC, Opportunity Tampa Bay, and Integral Florida bundling incubation space, workforce training, and business support.

⚡Why It Matters: Founders in manufacturing, construction tech, or workforce development now have a concrete anchor forming in East Tampa, potentially a launchpad for early-stage industrial companies.

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 38 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.1% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A Runway ✈️ (the kind jets use, and the kind founders burn)

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Some weeks, Tampa Bay moves like a startup pitch.

This week feels more like a junk drawer full of useful signals: a fresh accelerator class, real estate software built around maps, AI-powered tumor visualization, a new healthtech company getting statewide attention, a Tampa founder stepping into the Elon movie machine, and millions of dollars flowing into one of the most boring-but-resilient corners of commercial real estate.

That mix is exactly why we track the ecosystem.

The flashy stories tell you where attention is going.
The quieter ones tell you where money, talent, and infrastructure are actually moving.

Here's what moved this week…

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🎓 15 Startups Enter Tampa Bay’s Innovation Pipeline
🗺️ Slack, But Make It Real Estate
🧬 Tumors Get a 3D Upgrade
🏥 A Fresh Healthtech Signal From Embarc’s Orbit
🎬 From Junk Hauling to Musk Mythmaking
📦 Millions in Boring Businesses

Scroll down for the signal…

🎬FOUNDER STORYTELLING / MEDIA

Tampa Entrepreneur Nick Friedman Joins New Elon Musk Film

Nick Friedman, co-founder @ College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving appears in the upcoming movie “Elon.”

Tampa entrepreneur Nick Friedman is taking his founder story to the big screen.

Friedman, co-founder of College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving, is serving as an executive producer and appearing in “Elon,” a new feature film about Elon Musk’s rise from immigrant entrepreneur to one of the most influential and polarizing business figures of the modern era.

The film focuses on Tesla’s early years, including the company’s near-failure moments, leadership conflicts, and high-stakes bets that shaped its path. Friedman said the story appealed to him because of its focus on conviction, resilience, and building when most people think the idea will not work.

Friedman’s own company, College Hunks, was founded in Tampa in 2005 and has grown into a national franchise with nearly 200 locations across the U.S. and Canada, generating more than $290 million in annual systemwide sales.

⚡Why It Matters: Founder stories are becoming media assets. Friedman’s move shows how Tampa Bay entrepreneurs are extending their influence beyond operating companies and into storytelling, brand building, and cultural conversations around business. It is also a reminder that entrepreneurship is not only about the companies being built, but the narratives that inspire the next wave of builders.

🧬 AI / HEALTHCARE

Vu and Moffitt Use NVIDIA DGX Spark to Visualize 3D Tumors in Real Time

Vu Technologies is teaming up with Moffitt Cancer Center to bring AI-powered visualization into cancer research.

Vu has developed a custom 3D microscopy visualizer for Moffitt that helps researchers analyze high-resolution images of patient-derived microtumors. The tool runs on NVIDIA DGX Spark and uses Vu’s AI-native rendering approach to generate complex visuals faster than traditional rendering pipelines.

In plain English: researchers can interact with complex tumor data in a more visual, responsive, and usable way.

The collaboration began in early 2026, and the tumor cell visualizer is already being used by researchers. Vu says the same infrastructure could eventually support more enterprise data visualization tools through its Vu Intelligence platform.

⚡Why It Matters: Some of AI’s biggest breakthroughs may come from making complex data easier for humans to understand. For Tampa Bay, this is another strong signal at the intersection of cancer research, AI infrastructure, and real-time visualization, with Moffitt helping push advanced biomedical tools closer to practical use.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by adultswim on Giphy

I help people find what matters, but I am not a search engine.

I can turn scattered conversations, hidden patterns, and messy data into something easier to act on.

In real estate, I may look like a map.
In cancer research, I may look like a 3D model.
In startups, I may look like a pipeline.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🏗️ REAL ESTATE / ACQUISITIONS

South Tampa Self-Storage Facility Sells for $8.25M

A Dallas investment firm has acquired a South Tampa self-storage facility for $8.25 million, adding another local example of investor demand for resilient commercial real estate assets.

Baranof Holdings purchased the StorQuest Self Storage property at 5002 S. Manhattan Ave. from an affiliate of William Warren Group. The facility will continue operating under the StorQuest brand.

Self-storage continues to attract investors because of its steady rental income, lower operating complexity, and ability to perform across different economic cycles. Florida remains one of the country’s busiest markets, with millions of square feet of new self-storage space expected statewide this year.

⚡Why It Matters: Not every real estate story needs to be shiny to matter. Self-storage is a quiet indicator of population growth, migration, and investor confidence. For Tampa Bay, the deal shows that even practical assets in strong neighborhoods continue pulling institutional capital into the region.

🏥HEALTHTECH / STARTUPS

New Embarc Member SmartCare360 Earns Recognition at Florida Venture Forum

SmartCare360, a new Embarc Collective member company, earned runner-up honors at the Florida Venture Forum’s Early-Stage Venture Conference, one of the state’s major showcases for high-growth startups and investors.

The recognition puts SmartCare360 in front of Florida’s broader innovation and investment community as the company builds around proactive, technology-enabled healthcare management. Its approach focuses on helping care teams and patients move from reactive care to more coordinated, preventive support.

For Tampa Bay, the Embarc connection is what makes this one especially relevant. SmartCare360 is not just gaining statewide visibility. It is also becoming part of one of the region’s most active founder communities.

⚡Why It Matters: Strong ecosystems grow when promising companies plug into the right networks early. SmartCare360’s recognition gives Tampa Bay another healthtech signal to watch, especially as Embarc Collective continues attracting companies building at the intersection of healthcare, software, and operational improvement.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🗺️ PROPTECH / REAL ESTATE

EarthNotes.ai Launches to Bring Real Estate Conversations Onto the Map

Spencer Muratides, founder @ EarthNotes.ai

After being frustrated with existing real estate tools, Tampa Bay developer, Spencer Muratides launches EarthNotes.ai.

The platform was created to solve a common headache for real estate teams: important conversations, files, notes, and decisions getting scattered across texts, emails, calls, screenshots, Dropbox links, and map tools.

EarthNotes connects that activity directly to the property map, giving teams a shared place to organize conversations, files, people, and decisions around the real estate itself. The founder describes it simply as “Slack, but on a map.”

What started with a handful of local users has now grown into teams at national real estate firms using the platform to move faster, stay aligned, and do more deals.

⚡Why It Matters: Real estate is still full of fragmented workflows, especially when teams are tracking multiple properties, conversations, and deal updates at once. EarthNotes is a good example of a local founder turning an everyday industry pain point into vertical software built for how teams actually work.

🎓ACCELERATORS / STARTUPS

Tampa Bay Wave Names 15 Startups for 2026 Tech|X Accelerator

Tampa Bay Wave has named the 15 startups joining its 2026 Tech|X Accelerator, powered by The Nielsen Foundation.

Now in its ninth year, Tech|X brings together purpose-driven companies building across healthtech, fintech, AI, enterprise automation, sustainability, accessibility, and advanced manufacturing. This year’s cohort includes founders from the U.S., U.K., Chile, and Argentina, with backgrounds spanning Apple, PayPal, Amazon, Cisco, McKinsey, Johns Hopkins, Boeing, Mastercard, the Air Force, the Navy, and more.

The new class adds to Wave’s larger track record of supporting 650+ startups that have raised more than $1.7 billion and created over 7,100 jobs.

⚡Why It Matters: Strong startup regions need strong pipelines. Tech|X gives Tampa Bay another way to attract high-potential founders, connect them with mentors and investors, and turn outside talent into local ecosystem momentum.

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 30 (FEAR) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 58.5% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder.
Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A visualization.
Visualization turns complex information into something people can see, understand, and use. This week’s stories all point to the same idea: better tools help people make faster, smarter decisions.

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Think of Tampa Bay’s innovation ecosystem like a river delta. Multiple channels flow toward the same destination, some carrying more volume than others, all shaped by forces upstream. The first half of the year is still not over but we’re getting close and can’t wait to see what develops.

Here's what moved this week…

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🚁 AI Robotics Company Enters Pentagon's Drone Initiative
🧠 Biotech Startup Raises Millions For Psychedelic Research Alternative
🚀 Maritime Launch Platform Developer Secures Strategic Investment
🏢 Healthcare Tech Company Brings 40+ Jobs to St. Pete
🔐 Cybersecurity Leadership Shuffle Signals AI Strategy Shift
🎓 Academic Accelerator Partnership Opens Innovation Pipeline

Scroll down for the signal…

🎯DEFENSE TECH / AI

XTEND Secures $1B DoW Contract

XTEND, an AI-powered autonomous robotics company, just secured a coveted spot in the Pentagon's massive Drone Dominance Program. The Department of War initiative aims to procure over 200,000 drones by 2027, with a total program value hitting $1 billion.

The company will demonstrate its XOS human-guided autonomous operating system at Camp Grayling, Michigan this summer as part of Phase II trials. XTEND is currently merging with publicly-traded JFB Construction Holdings in an all-stock deal backed by strategic investors. Once the merger closes mid-2026, the combined entity will rebrand as XTEND AI Robotics and trade under ticker XTND.

The defense contract news sent JFB shares soaring 18.92% on announcement day, adding roughly $15 million to the company's market cap. The stock hit a peak gain of 63.6% during the session, signaling strong investor appetite for defense tech plays.

⚡Why It Matters: Defense tech represents a massive opportunity for AI startups, and this contract validates the commercial viability of autonomous drone systems that could have civilian applications down the road.

🧠BIOTECH / FUNDRAISING

Chris Witowski, CEO @ Psilera

Tampa's Psilera Raises $8.8M for Psychedelic Alternative

Tampa biopharmaceutical startup Psilera just closed an oversubscribed $8.8 million seed extension, bringing serious momentum to their mission of reimagining mental health treatment. The company is developing PSIL-006, a neuroplastogen that aims to deliver the therapeutic benefits of psychedelics without the hallucinations or heart risks that come with traditional compounds.

Co-founders Chris Witowski and Jackie von Salm launched Psilera in 2019 with a bold vision: what if you could get the brain-rewiring benefits of psychedelic therapy in a more controlled, safer package? Now they're planning to take their lead compound into human trials next year, potentially opening new doors for treating depression, PTSD, and other mental health conditions that have proven resistant to conventional approaches.

The timing feels right as investors and regulators show growing interest in psychedelic medicine, but Psilera's approach of reducing side effects while maintaining efficacy could give them a significant edge in what's becoming a crowded field.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay continues building its biotech credentials with companies tackling some of healthcare's biggest challenges, showing local founders can compete on the cutting edge of medical innovation.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Giphy

I connect classrooms to accelerators, health systems to startups, and regions to capital.
I am not a person, place, or platform.
But without me, innovation stays isolated in silos.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🚀SPACE / DEEP TECH

St. Pete-based Seagate Space to Build Floating Launchpads

Tampa-based Seagate Space just landed a strategic investment from Space Florida's Project Manta to develop offshore launch platforms. The company will build prototype modules that demonstrate their maritime launch technology, designed to support rockets from Firefly Aerospace and Vaya Space.

The floating launchpad concept addresses a growing bottleneck in the space industry: limited coastal launch sites. By moving operations offshore, companies can launch more frequently without the noise and safety restrictions that come with land-based facilities. Seagate's approach could give Florida a significant edge in the increasingly competitive commercial space race.

This investment signals Florida's commitment to maintaining its position as America's space coast, even as other states try to muscle in on the action. For Seagate Space, it's validation that their unconventional approach to solving launch capacity problems has serious backing.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay's space tech ecosystem is gaining momentum, and innovative solutions like floating launchpads could position local companies at the forefront of the next phase of commercial space development.

🔐CYBERSECURITY / LEADERSHIP

Rapid7 Gets New CEO Amid AI-SOC Push

Wael Mohamed, CEO @ Rapid7

Cybersecurity company Rapid7 just handed the CEO reins to tech veteran Wael Mohamed, with former chief Corey Thomas sliding into the Executive Chairman role. The leadership shuffle comes as the Boston-based firm doubles down on artificial intelligence for security operations centers while dealing with some stock market headwinds.

The timing isn't coincidental. Rapid7 is betting big on AI-powered security tools as cyberattacks get more sophisticated and companies need smarter ways to detect threats. Mohamed steps into the top job at a critical moment when the cybersecurity industry is racing to integrate AI capabilities that can actually keep pace with evolving digital threats.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay's growing tech scene includes plenty of startups building security and AI tools, and leadership changes at major players like Rapid7 often signal where the industry is heading next.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🎓 ECOSYSTEM / INNOVATION

St. Petersburg College Partners with Tampa Bay Wave on Innovation Access

St. Petersburg College and accelerator Tampa Bay Wave formed a partnership this week to expand regional innovation and workforce opportunities. SPC students and faculty will gain access to Tampa Bay Wave's programming and entrepreneurial resources.

The partnership connects SPC's College of Business, led by Dr. Emmanuel Hernandez-Agosto, with Tampa Bay Wave's startup ecosystem. Students can now participate in accelerator programming while faculty can engage with entrepreneurs and mentors in the Wave's network.

The interesting part is timing. As Tampa Bay's startup scene matures, educational institutions are becoming more intentional about connecting students to entrepreneurship before graduation. This partnership creates a pipeline from classroom to accelerator to startup.

⚡Why It Matters: Tampa Bay is building infrastructure that connects education directly to entrepreneurship. This partnership could become a model for how colleges and accelerators collaborate to develop regional talent.

🏢HEALTH TECH / NEW IN TOWN

Rectangle Health Opens St. Pete Facility with 40+ Employees

Rectangle Health, a New York-based healthcare payments company, just opened a 12,500-square-foot sales hub in St. Petersburg's Gateway area. The facility at 100 Fountain Parkway N. already houses over 40 employees who started working there in recent weeks, with plans to scale up to 100 team members.

The company chose St. Pete after a nationwide search, citing the younger population interested in job growth and strong talent pool. Chief Business Officer Scott LoPresti says they've been recruiting locally since January, focusing on sales development reps and practice solutions consultants who work with small to medium healthcare practices. Rectangle Health serves over 36,000 healthcare providers with payment and compliance software solutions.

The timing worked out well since Rectangle Health already had a partnership with healthcare payment company Zelis, which also has St. Pete operations. A ribbon cutting is scheduled for June 8 with Mayor Ken Welch attending.

⚡Why It Matters: This expansion shows how Tampa Bay's growing reputation for tech talent is attracting established companies to relocate operations here, creating quality jobs in the healthcare technology sector.

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 55 (NEUTRAL) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 57.7% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder.
Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Partnerships

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*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

Some weeks feel less like a news cycle and more like a pressure test.

This week, Tampa Bay had big ambition on full display: cancer-fighting radiopharmaceuticals, defense AI dealmaking, a massive USSOCOM-linked technology contract, and an AI startup showing early customer traction. But it also came with a reminder that fast-moving ecosystems need more than momentum.

They need trust, discipline, and founders who can survive real scrutiny.

That is the thread this week.

Big opportunities. Bigger stakes.

Here's what’s on the board…

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🤖 SOF Week turns Tampa into a defense AI deal room
🥕 Cairrot AI signs 100 customers in its first 60 days
🛰️ USSOCOM awards a massive $1.8B military tech contract
🚨 A Tampa tech founder faces an alleged $7M investor fraud case
🧬 Tampa Bay makes a serious push into cancer-fighting radiopharmaceuticals

Scroll down for the signal…

🎯DEFENSE TECH / DEALMAKING

SOF Week Turns Tampa Into a Defense AI Deal Room

SOF Week is becoming more than a conference. It is becoming a place where defense technology deals get real.

Federal IT contractor B&A made a strategic investment in Bad Monkey AI, a Washington, D.C.-based startup building battlefield artificial intelligence systems. The company’s technology helps military teams process combat and sensor data in real time, especially in contested or low-bandwidth environments where normal communications can break down.

The partnership combines B&A’s classified systems integration experience with Bad Monkey AI’s Intelligent Event Processor platform. In plain English, the goal is to help operators make faster decisions when data is fragmented, conditions are messy, and time matters.

⚡Why It Matters: Defense AI is not about flashy demos. It is about making better decisions under pressure. For Tampa Bay, SOF Week continues to strengthen the region’s role as a meeting point for operators, investors, contractors, and founders building technology for real mission environments.

🥕AI / INNOVATION

Cairrot AI Hits 100 Customers in 60 Days After Launching From ARK Innovation Center

Connor Kimball, CEO @ Cairrot AI

St. Petersburg startup Cairrot AI is showing early signs of customer pull.

The company launched in early 2026 from the ARK Innovation Center and signed more than 100 customers in its first 60 days. Cairrot operates at the intersection of AI and cybersecurity, a category where customers are looking for tools that can reduce manual work, improve visibility, and help teams respond faster.

The exact product category is still emerging publicly, but the early traction is the signal. In a market full of AI noise, getting 100 customers that quickly suggests Cairrot may be solving a pain point people actually feel.

It also fits Tampa Bay’s broader tech profile. The region already has a deep cybersecurity bench, including companies like KnowBe4, ReliaQuest, Rapid7, and ConnectSecure, giving young AI-security startups a stronger talent and customer environment to build from.

⚡Why It Matters: Traction beats hype. For Tampa Bay, Cairrot’s early customer growth is a reminder that the region does not need to wait for massive funding rounds to spot promising companies. Sometimes the first real signal is customers showing up fast.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Gif by choicehotels on Giphy

I am not revenue, but investors look for me.
I am not marketing, but customers create me.
I can make a small startup look serious before the numbers get huge.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🦅AI / DEFENSE TECH

USSOCOM Awards Trace Systems $1.8B Military Tech Contract

Otto Hoernig III (left), CEO @ Trace Systems Inc.

U.S. Special Operations Command awarded Trace Systems Inc. a $1.81 billion contract tied to the EAGLE-I program, a long-term effort to modernize military command, control, communications, intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities.

The contract spans up to 10 years and focuses on the kinds of systems that help special operations teams see more clearly, communicate faster, and coordinate across complex mission environments. This is not basic IT support. It is mission-critical infrastructure where reliability, speed, and security matter because the stakes are real.

Even if Trace Systems is not a Tampa company, the SOCOM connection matters locally. Large awards like this shape the defense ecosystem around MacDill, creating opportunity for subcontractors, technologists, cleared talent, and companies building adjacent tools in AI, data, cybersecurity, and secure communications.

⚡Why It Matters: Federal defense dollars often create ripple effects far beyond the prime contractor. For Tampa Bay, major SOCOM-linked contracts reinforce the region’s role as a national security hub and create openings for local companies that can plug into the broader defense technology stack.

🚨STARTUPS / FUNDRAISING

Tampa Tech Founder Charged in Alleged $7M Investor Fraud Case

Meade Lewis, founder & CEO @ mIQroTech

A Tampa tech story took a serious turn this week.

Meade Lewis, the 32-year-old founder and CEO of mIQroTech, was arrested on federal wire fraud charges. Prosecutors allege Lewis defrauded investors out of more than $7 million, leading to five separate wire fraud counts.

Details of the alleged scheme are still unfolding, but wire fraud cases typically involve claims that investors were misled through electronic communications about a company’s performance, finances, contracts, or business prospects. Lewis is presumed innocent unless proven guilty, but the case is now a major caution flag for founders and investors alike.

For a growing startup market, trust is infrastructure. When capital starts moving faster, due diligence, governance, financial controls, and clear investor communication matter even more.

⚡Why It Matters: One alleged fraud case should not define Tampa Bay’s startup scene, but it should sharpen the conversation around investor diligence and founder accountability. Healthy ecosystems are not built on hype alone. They are built on trust, transparency, and companies that can survive real scrutiny.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🧬 LIFE SCIENCES / ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

FORGE Wants to Turn Tampa Bay Into a Radiopharmaceutical Powerhouse

Tampa Bay is making a serious push into one of the fastest-moving areas of cancer treatment.

A new coalition called FORGE, led by Speros and Moffitt Cancer Center, has launched with a goal of turning the region into a national hub for radiopharmaceuticals. The group also includes Embarc Collective, USF, and Pasco-Hernando State College, with projections of 4,000 high-wage jobs and $2.6 billion in economic impact over the next decade.

Radiopharmaceuticals are changing how cancer can be targeted. Instead of traditional radiation that can damage healthy tissue around a tumor, these therapies act more like guided missiles, using radioactive compounds that bind to specific cancer cells. The challenge is that radioactive isotopes begin decaying quickly, which makes local production and specialized facilities critical.

That is where Tampa Bay could have an edge. The region already has world-class cancer care and research infrastructure through Moffitt, and FORGE is trying to add manufacturing, workforce development, and commercialization around it.

⚡Why It Matters: This is the kind of science-based economic development that can create durable, high-wage jobs beyond tourism, real estate, and traditional services. For Tampa Bay, radiopharmaceuticals could become a serious life sciences lane if research, manufacturing, talent, and capital keep moving together.

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 60 (GREED) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 59.6% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder.
Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: Traction.

Traction shows that real customers, users, or partners are responding to what a company is building. It is often the difference between an idea that sounds good and a business that is starting to work.

ADVERTISE WITH US // JOIN THE FB GROUP

*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.

Happy Thursday! This is Mind Your Business.

The Bay’s business scene has a lot of shiny objects, but the real story is usually in the wiring.

Who is connecting? Where is capital moving?
Which companies are turning relationships into scale?
What infrastructure is getting stronger before most people notice?

This week, the wiring is active: a local space company is working with NASA on lunar data infrastructure, defense contractors are combining after a major SOCOM win, Haddy is turning a Disney relationship into a bigger advanced manufacturing story, and USF is studying air mobility before air taxis ever hit the skyline.

The headlines are interesting. The connections behind them are the signal.

Here's what moved this week.

🔔 WHAT JUST MOVED
Recent news from the last week shaping Tampa Bay right now.

Here’s what’s on the board:
🚀 A Tampa space company links up with NASA on lunar data infrastructure
🛡️ Tampa defense contractors combine forces after an $85M SOCOM win
🏭 Haddy moves beyond furniture after a Disney deal and eyes national growth
✈️ USF researchers map the future of air taxis before takeoff
🧵 A Canadian apparel company picks Lakewood Ranch for its first U.S. hub
🏗️ East Tampa explores a new home for food access, startups, and workforce housing

Scroll down for the signal…

🚀SPACE TECH

Lonestar Data Holdings Signs NASA Agreement for Moon-Based Data Infrastructure

Tampa-based Lonestar Data Holdings signed a Space Act Agreement with NASA Ames Research Center, giving the company another boost as it works on lunar data storage, off-world computing, and communications infrastructure.

The company’s broader bet is strange enough to sound like sci-fi, but practical enough to matter: store critical data beyond Earth. Instead of treating space as only a destination for rockets and satellites, Lonestar is building toward a future where the Moon becomes part of the digital infrastructure stack.

That matters because data security, disaster recovery, and resilient communications are becoming national security issues. Lonestar is trying to build a backup layer that is not just in another city or another cloud region, but in another world.

⚡Why It Matters: The space economy is moving from exploration to infrastructure. For Tampa Bay, Lonestar gives the region a company playing in one of the most ambitious parts of that shift, where space, cybersecurity, defense, and cloud infrastructure start to overlap.

🛡️DEFENSE / M&A

Andy Wilson, CEO @ Endurion

Quiet Professionals and Spathe Systems Combine Under New Defense Platform

Tampa’s defense sector just gained a more scaled player.

Quiet Professionals and Spathe Systems have combined under Endurion, a new defense platform backed by McNally Capital and led by Andy Wilson, founder and former CEO of Quiet Professionals. The company now brings together more than 400 professionals, deep Special Operations experience, and a landmark five-year, $85M USSOCOM contract.

The bigger story is not just the merger. Endurion is trying to solve a real defense problem: fragmented data, disconnected systems, and mission teams that need faster decisions in high-pressure environments. Its proprietary Pathfinder platform is built to turn scattered data into a common operating picture for mission teams.

⚡Why It Matters: Defense customers increasingly want integrated teams with scale, specialized expertise, and the ability to execute across missions. For Tampa Bay, Endurion reinforces the region’s role as a national security hub where proximity to SOCOM and MacDill can turn specialized contractors into bigger platforms.

🧠TICKLE YOUR BRAIN

Giphy

I can turn a room full of strangers into a startup advantage.
I do not write checks, build products, or hire employees.
But without me, founders waste years trying to find the right people.

What am I?

(Answers at the bottom of the newsletter)

Pause for some deep thinking…

🏭MANUFACTURING / EXPANSION

Haddy Looks Beyond Furniture After Disney Deal Sparks Expansion Push

John “Jay” Rogers, co-founder @ Haddy

Haddy is starting to look less like a furniture company and more like a new kind of manufacturing platform.

The Tampa Bay company, known for using advanced production methods to create furniture, is now leaning into broader opportunities after landing a deal with Disney.

That kind of customer relationship can change the story quickly, especially if the company can apply its manufacturing process to branded environments, hospitality, entertainment, commercial spaces, and other large-scale use cases.

The interesting part is not just that Haddy is growing. It is that the company appears to be stretching the definition of what it makes. Furniture may have been the beachhead, but the bigger opportunity could be custom physical products produced faster, cleaner, and closer to demand.

⚡Why It Matters: Advanced manufacturing becomes much more interesting when it moves beyond novelty and into repeatable commercial use. For Tampa Bay, Haddy gives the region a story that blends design, sustainability, production, and major-brand demand.

✈️FUTURE MOBILITY

USF Researchers Study How Tampa Bay Could Prepare for Air Taxis

USF researchers are looking ahead to a future where electric air taxis, also known as eVTOL aircraft, could become part of regional transportation.

Led by the Smart Urban Mobility Lab, the work focuses less on the flying-car fantasy and more on the boring but important details: where vehicles would land, how cities would manage traffic in the air, how short-distance routes might work, and what infrastructure needs to exist before commercial trips become realistic.

That practical lens is what makes this interesting. The technology may get the headlines, but the real challenge is coordination between airports, cities, regulators, energy systems, and transportation planners.

⚡Why It Matters: Advanced air mobility will not work just because the aircraft exist. Cities need to plan for it early, and USF’s research helps position Tampa Bay as a serious participant in future transportation instead of a region waiting for someone else to build the playbook.

😂MEME STREET

Here’s a Meme You Can Probably Relate To

🧵NEW IN TOWN / MANUFACTURING

Printeez Picks Lakewood Ranch for Its First U.S. Production Hub

Quebec-based Printeez is opening its first U.S. operation in Lakewood Ranch, leasing a roughly 34,000-square-foot facility for its American headquarters and manufacturing hub.

The company specializes in print-on-demand apparel and embroidery, with services like direct-to-garment printing, direct-to-film production, fulfillment, and custom merchandise support. By producing inside the U.S., Printeez can shorten delivery times, serve American customers more efficiently, and reduce friction in cross-border logistics.

This is not a flashy software launch, but it is exactly the kind of operational expansion that adds real weight to a regional economy.

⚡Why It Matters: Manufacturing is getting more distributed, faster, and more software-enabled. For Tampa Bay and the surrounding region, wins like this show that companies are choosing the area for logistics, workforce access, and U.S. market entry, not just lifestyle.

🏗️COMMUNITY / ENTREPRENEURSHIP

East Tampa Explores a New Hub for Food Access, Startups, and Workforce Housing

East Tampa’s Gator Building site could become a mixed-use community hub focused on food access, entrepreneurship, and workforce housing.

The concept includes a food co-op or market, commercial kitchen, food incubator, coworking space, entrepreneurship training, maker space, e-commerce support, and digital media or technology studio space. The current phase is still planning and feasibility, not a final green light.

The idea is compelling because it treats economic development as more than buildings. It connects food, business creation, housing, digital tools, and workforce support in one place.

⚡Why It Matters: Startup ecosystems cannot only serve venture-backed companies downtown. For Tampa Bay, neighborhood-level infrastructure like this could help more people turn skills, recipes, services, and ideas into real businesses.

📌QUICK HITS

🚢 Cruise Demand Could Bring a $100M Boost
Port Tampa Bay says rising cruise traffic could add roughly $100M in regional economic impact, giving the Bay another tourism and hospitality tailwind.

🏈 Weatherford Capital Closes $500M Big 12 Deal
Tampa-based Weatherford Capital is tied to a major $500M Big 12 transaction, another signal that local capital groups are playing in larger national sports and media lanes.

🏢 SafePoint Files to Go Public
Tampa-based SafePoint Insurance has filed for an IPO, adding to the region’s recent streak of insurance and financial services companies testing the public markets.

🛍️Japanese Retailer Heads to Tampa Palms
Japanese lifestyle retailer Ebisu Life Store is set to fill the former Joann Fabrics space in Tampa Palms, bringing another international retail concept into the local market.

⚡ Why It Matters: The startup ecosystem is not built by funding rounds alone. It is built through events, scholarships, microgrants, mentors, university programs, and small doors that help more people get into the arena.

🎯OPERATOR TAKE

One thing I keep coming back to is that Tampa Bay does not need to become a copy of Silicon Valley, Miami, Austin, or anywhere else.

It needs to become a sharper version of itself.

This week’s stories point in that direction. Space infrastructure, defense consolidation, advanced manufacturing, air mobility research, and neighborhood entrepreneurship are all very different lanes. But together, they show a region building multiple layers at once.

That is what I have seen through Masterminds over the years too. The best opportunities usually come from connecting people who would not normally end up in the same room: a founder with a customer, a researcher with an operator, an investor with someone building something unpolished but real.

The next step for Tampa Bay is not just more announcements.

It is more connection between the announcements.

All the best,
Jon Tavarez
Tampa Bay Masterminds, Inc.
A 501©(3) Entrepreneur Support Organization for Tampa Bay founders and innovators

WORTHY MENTIONS: UPDATES, EVENTS, RESOURCES, ETC…

• ⚖️ Fear & Greed Index: 66 (EXTREME GREED) per CNN

• ₿ Bitcoin Dominance at 60.3% See chart

• 🤯 Strengthen your cognition with a daily plant-based drink for calm, focused energy - without the prescription or the side effects. Try Graymatter

• 🤗 Want a front-row seat to our biggest events and a chance to connect with Tampa Bay’s top founders, investors and innovators? Apply to join our team!

• 📅 Want to sponsor an upcoming Masterminds event? Apply here!

Love this newsletter? Forward it to a founder.
Have news to share? Hit reply and send it our way.

RIDDLE ANSWER

Answer: A warm introduction. The right introduction can connect founders to investors, customers, partners, or talent much faster than cold outreach.

ADVERTISE WITH US // JOIN THE FB GROUP

*Please note that some of the links in this newsletter are affiliate links. This means that we may earn a small commission if you make a purchase through these links. We only recommend products or services that we believe will add value to our readers. Your support through these links helps us keep providing valuable content to you. Thank you for your support.