In the last few years, Miami has raised its business center under the sun. Miami is pushing to be a startup hub for the Latin American community. According to Forbes, the city is considered one of the hottest cities in the country for startup activity, comparable to Los Angeles and New York. Many tech companies and businesses have found a home in Miami and the city is growing. From 2010 to 2014, Miami was one of five metro areas that accounted for 50 percent of all startups in the United States. This is a list of 35 Miami companies to watch in 2020.
Kugadi
Kugadi is a Miami-based company focused on applying technology to solve real-world problems. It was founded in 2015 by Gavin Heale, Brendon Whateley and Todd Shimizu after seeing a real market need for security.
Todd, who is the lead engineer, says: “It all started when we had a security guard company as a customer who wanted us to build them a website. We quickly realized they needed a lot more than just a website to really scale their business.”
This led to the development of a dispatch system, a guard tour system, an activity reporting system, and a customer portal. All of which are critical to running a modern security guard company.
Kugadi’s core mission is to make the customer’s life better using the simplest solution possible.
“From the beginning, we’ve focussed on a pragmatic approach, and we always look to make the customer’s life as easy as possible,” says Brendon, CTO.
Impact IT
Impact IT offers network infrastructure solutions for small to medium-sized businesses. The company focuses on advanced routing, advanced switching, data center, collaboration, and security.
Impact IT’s mission is to help its clients benefit from the latest and best technologies available. It creates customized solutions to help each client overcome their business challenges. It also helps clients with solutions that span from the white-board to the post-sales cycle.
Impact IT’s team works together with worldwide partners like Cisco, HP, Samsung, and Microsoft, to provide the best technology in the industry to its clients. Its engineers are Cisco certified and experienced.
Papa
Papa’s mission is to support families throughout the aging journey. Papa pairs older adults and families with motivated college students for companionship and assistance with everyday tasks. It offers programs to health plans, providers, employers, and consumers.
Founded in 2016 in Miami, Papa began due to a personal need that Andrew Parker, the CEO and founder of Papa, had with his family. Recognizing the extreme difficulty associated with juggling daily life and senior family member’s needs, Papa was initially built to support Andrew’s grandfather. Andrew and his family recognized how impactful and positive it was to connect their grandfather with a young, energetic, and enthusiastic individual. After the first visit, he knew he had something special to offer other families with the same need.
Formulatedby
Formulatedby is a marketing agency specializing in building data science, machine learning and AI communities. Female-owned and formulated in Miami, it’s best known for the Data Science Salon, a vertically focused conference series around AI and ML, and for working throughout the technology landscape in B2B enterprise marketing and experiential marketing. They are currently headquartered in Miami’s trendy Design District neighborhood.
For more information, visit formulated.by.
Carie Health
Carie Health’s mission is to change the face of American healthcare. Carie Health is in business to rescue the country’s 300,000 remaining physicians from being swallowed by big medicine. It wants to achieve this by allowing doctors to offer the high-quality care that inspired them to study medicine.
With Carie, healthcare professionals are compensated for every patient consultation. Mobile consultations provide patients with convenience while giving doctors the compensation they deserve. The company was founded in 2015 and has raised $7 million in funding.
Somos Films
Somos Films focuses on the production of Spanish language feature films, independently or with producers from around the world. It narrates the stories that entertain and portray reality with top production values, using the best technology. Somos Films participate in events and its movies are distributed in all “windows” of the industry, from theatrical down to free TV, to reach the biggest audiences.
Somos Films works with scriptwriters, evaluates projects and supports technical personnel in all countries where its projects are produced. Somos Films looks for creative and ambitious individuals that can contribute to the company’s growth and its mission to entertain and promote its culture and its values.
itopia
The company reduces your IT staff’s workload by automating every aspect of the Google Cloud platform.
itopia was founded with the notion that the public cloud would revolutionize daily life and how humans do business. itopia automates and orchestrates infrastructure on Google Cloud, enabling enterprises to shed IT burdens and focus on what they do best. This is because enterprises need better ways to keep ahead of market transformations.
itopia’s core offerings include accelerating VDI migration to Desktop as a Service, eliminating infrastructure overhead including Citrix or VMware, and providing a unified management console for securely delivering software to distributed workforces. itopia is a Miami based Google Cloud Premier Partner.
DermaSensor
DermaSensor’s mission is to create tools for everyone to improve access to skin cancer detection and care. Its main product is a handheld device that assists primary care providers by checking patients for skin cancer in seconds. The device shows instant results. It works by using pulses of light and spectroscopy to non-invasively assess lesions’ cellular and sub-cellular characteristics.
The technology is called Elastic Scattering Spectroscopy, a process that evaluates how photons scatter when reflected off of different cellular structures. Malignant lesions have been reported to have different cellular and subcellular structures than benign lesions, scattering light differently. The AI algorithm that DermaSensor uses derives from thousands of spectral samples and is led by expert data scientists.
Road
Road is a creative and dynamic electronic branding, commerce, and learning agency. It creates scalable e-businesses for companies by designing and redesigning your global brand, and empower you to become successful in the digital world.
Road works with venture capital firms to scale up their investments. Its e-branding service helps clients build an online presence for their service business in 45 days; its e-commerce service launches an online shop in 60 days; its e-learning service launches an e-learning business in 45 days – all from scratch.
Neocis
Neocis, a robotics healthcare startup, is merging dental implant surgery with advanced robotics. The company focuses on enhancing dental surgeons’ capabilities and advancing patient care through advanced technology.
It works closely with dental surgeons to understand their needs to overcome surgical and treatment challenges. The company drives to innovate and commit to bringing new approaches for improved patient care and quality of life.
Neocis’ main product is the Yomi robot, the first and only FDA-cleared robotic device for dental implant surgery. NEocis was founded in 2012 and has raised $50 million in funding.
haku
Based in downtown Miami, haku is an unparalleled technology partner that forward-thinking event organizers are working with to better plan, manage, promote and sell-out events.
Through an innovative all-in-one platform and unwavering customer service, world-class organizations can plan events, track progress and engage with participants on a level unlike any other. haku’s mission is to be the most trusted and reliable technology partner in the world.
Employee benefits and perks include a fun, energetic, and fast-paced environment working with a growing, talented team and terrific culture; excellent opportunities for growth, competitive compensation, generous and flexible vacation policy, and a benefits package.
HealthSnap
HealthSnap is a technology-enabled service provider on a mission to reshape medical care from a reactive disease-centric system into a proactive health-care system by incorporating the most recent developments in physiological, medical and nutritional science into patient care.
Today’s top provider groups use HealthSnap’s HIPAA-compliant Remote Patient Monitoring and Lifestyle Data Analytics platform to stratify patient chronic disease risk at scale, reduce costly readmissions, maximize patient engagement, and incorporate new reimbursable revenue streams.
Panther Wellness
Panther Wellness is a family-owned company committed to delivering the purest, most efficacious, full-spectrum hemp wellness products. It knows your daily battle for good health because it is their battle too. Panther Wellness preserves the natural potency and intrinsic benefits of the plant.
Panther Wellness’ mission is to spread awareness for the benefits hemp oils provide. Its mission is also to fight for you and the integrity of a natural product. Panther Wellness’ commitment to preserving the natural healing properties of hemp is what drives the company to make hemp products stand out with unquestionable purity, potency, and healthful effects.
Department Coffee
Department Coffee is an innovative company that brews with a proprietary method. Department Coffee is on the cutting edge of producing, manufacturing and delivering cold brew.
The company delivers presentation, affordability and service simplicity unrivaled in the industry. Department Coffee begins by blind tasting ingredients from small-batch roasters and farmers using scrutinizing tasting procedures.
Once selected, ingredients are brewed and analyzed to measure concentration, safeguarding brew consistency. After brewing, the brewer nitrogen infuses and kegs into Sanke Pubkegs, preserving every brew for an extended shelf life of 90 days. Finally, the brews are ready to serve when delivered and maintain product integrity for the entire life of your brew.
Lumu Technologies
Lumu is a company that helps the world measure cybersecurity compromises in real-time. Lumu’s vision is to measure the world’s cyber-compromise by enabling any organization to continuously and intentionally measure and understand compromise to close the breach detection gap from months to minutes. Lumu Technologies created the Continuous Compromise Assessment™ model.
In addition to health insurance, Lumu offers employees great incentives, including flexible personal time off, technical and non-technical training opportunities, as well as second language learning opportunities. Lumu prioritizes building a positive and collaborative environment.
YellowPepper
YellowPepper’s mission is to make mobile payments a reality in Latin America and to create a new payment ecosystem to simplify people’s lives. The company’s software is used to make and process payments, enabling real-time transactions between card, account, and blockchain networks. It does so through a set of identity and payment APIs.
YellowPepper values collaboration, ingenuity, passion, honesty, and fun. Employees have medical insurance reimbursement, unlimited vacation time, a company phone, a company laptop. Other benefits and perks may be provided per country by the company.
Vendy
Vendi helps drivers earn extra cash and enhances the rider experience through an effective marketing and distribution channel for brands.
Vendy provides what is arguably the most effective sampling platform and distribution channel for brands to connect with consumers. Drivers using Vendy can earn $1 per sample order and get 50 percent per item sold. They also get weekly cash incentives, free items, and participate in a community of high achievers.
Nearpod
Nearpod is an instructional platform that merges formative assessment and dynamic media for collaborative learning experiences.
Nearpod employees strive to empower educators to create learning experiences that engage and inspire students around the world. With the Nearpod platform, students complete assignments independently while teachers gain insights into students’ understanding with post-session reports.
Also, classroom communities stay connected with collaborative activities and formative assessments like virtual reality, polls, collaborate boards, and game-based quizzes delivered through one seamless learning experience.
8base
8base flips the equation so makers can focus most of their time on the innovation of their digital experience, rather than foundational work. Deliver faster with a compact team with a smaller budget.
With the 8base platform, clients can accelerate time-to-market with a proven and flexible foundation built on AWS. Conquer larger projects with smaller teams and build on a powerful managed platform that is DevOps-free and scales autonomously to growing needs.
“8base was born to radically transform the experience of building and operating software for developers, their sponsors, and end-users alike,” said Albert Santalo, founder and CEO of the company.
8base’s employees work in an open, collaborative environment where every voice is heard, and everyone is held to the same high standards of excellence. 8base is looking for curious, hard-working leaders to join its team and help empower its global community of software developers and business people.
Eberjey
Eberjey believes in the power of softness. In letting ourselves relax into effortlessness. With smooth, supple fabrics, we invite the mind and body to ease into simply being. A radical promise to live a life led by joy.
In the ’90s lingerie market, there was no space for a woman to be her natural self. It was an era of push-up bras and G-strings — and though the overtness of the ’90s excited the fashion world — none of it felt comfortable or naturally sensual to most women. Eberjey developed as a brand that women could come home to and feel at home in. It steadily became the brand that women found synonymous with unwinding after a long day, slipping into a relaxed state of mind.
Founded by two friends, Ali Mejia and Mariela Rovito, Eberjey emerged in 1996 on the simple but radical premise that we should be genuine — genuine to connect to ourselves and our sensuality. They set out to create everyday lingerie that would feel comfortable and effortless. Lingerie that allows you to be you.
In the late ’90s, it was their bralette and brief that took off. They felt barely there — like wearing nothing at all, yet still supported. Eberjey pieces neither pinched, dug in, restricted, or pushed up to demand its wearer be anything other than truly herself. It was this newly defined degree of comfort that put them on the map.
But it was their Gisele PJ — a simple, modern twist on the classic sleeping pajama cut in a signature, buttery-soft modal — that revolutionized sleep as we know it. The original pajama set not only became an instant success leading to international distribution, but also elevated sleepwear into a fashion category. The Gisele PJ instantly became a best seller with thousands of women swearing by and gifting the beloved set. Its irresistible softness simply speaks for itself. Now over 20 years later, Eberjey is universally recognized by consumers as the originator of the modern, perfect PJ. In 2018, Oprah Winfrey joined a long list of women, editors and celebrities —calling Eberjey’s Gisele PJ her absolute favorite.
Rokk3r
Rokk3r was founded to harness collective global geniuses to co-build world-changing companies. Rokk3r enables aspiring entrepreneurs and existing companies to leverage their assets to transform into exponential businesses. Its founders and team are spread across more than six countries to work with the conviction that everyone can be a catalyst for change when given the right resources.
Rokk3r company culture, which encourages autonomy, is a major perk for employees because it empowers them to feel motivated. Rokk3r also has a solid working from home policy that gives team members the flexibility to travel the world while getting work done, whether they want to visit a new Rokk3r office in Miami, London, or Bogotá, or simply see a new country.
Sensie
Sensie connects users around the world to their hearts and intuitive wisdom – its vision is to help connect people to their feelings.
Sensie detects a neuromuscular signal that represents the stress response from a body. Research from the fields of neuroscience and psychophysiology has shown that when your mind is in a state of balance, your muscles go strong and your movement is more fluid.
The software mixes this research with machine learning techniques and the sensors on your smartphone to measure the fluidity of your movement, sensing whether stress is present and guiding you through specific techniques to help you achieve peace and calm.
Pipeline Workspaces
Pipeline is committed to bringing the best workplace experience to entrepreneurs, start-ups, independent professionals, and small business teams through community building, innovative and functional design, a dynamic learning environment, and a desirable location. The mission of Pipeline is to provide high design space and an environment for companies to produce exceptional work.
The founder’s motivation for creating Pipeline was born out of frustrations while trying to find a decent place to work. After working from home offices, coffee houses, dull corporate offices, and even traditional executive suites, they became consumed with creating the optimal workplace experience.
Streann Media
Streann Media is a revolutionary SaaS platform that empowers content providers by offering innovative distribution, engagement and monetization tools for the ultimate end-user experience. Streann Media’s solutions include Inside-Chat, Inside-News, Inside-Ad, Inside-Stories, and many more.
Streann Media gives its customers a simple way to distribute, engage and monetize their audiences. The company has raised $1.5 million in funding since its foundation in 2014.
One of Streann’s solutions is the Smart-OTT, which allows you to build branded content apps, distribute your content, engage users with powerful market first technology, and monetize with several business model options.
Tax Care Franchise Group
Tax Care’s mission is to be the bedrock for community businesses by providing the most comprehensive, client-centered service in accounting, tax services, bookkeeping, financial planning, and consulting. Tax Care’s primary focus is to grow with the small business owners and individuals it serves.
Its employees cultivate a unique experience by promoting a culture in which excellence is expected, professionalism is the norm, and caring for clients is at its core. Tax Care offers constructors solutions, small business solutions, international students, wealth management, and more.
Fanatiz
Fanatiz’s mission is to transform the way fans engage with the sports they love. The company is committed to bringing the best possible experience for its clients so they can watch and engage with the sports content they love anytime, anywhere, and at the best price.
Fanatiz is a streaming platform with sports channels for Live and VOD events. Pricing and content are geolocated, so they will depend on the user’s location.
Fanatiz’s employees have great benefits and perks that include unlimited time off, 401k, health benefits including HSA, FSA, Dental, and Vision, free Fanatiz service, work with sports content, a friendly and collaborative environment, and flexible work locations.
Xendoo
Xendoo delivers peace of mind to small businesses by giving insight into their financials. Xendoo is a cloud-based bookkeeping and accounting service focused on small business owners.
Xendoo operates under the values of being lifelong learners, transparent and showing constant customer-love. And it believes nothing is impossible if you are true to your word and stay customer-centric.
Xendoo’s employment benefits and perks include an open and collaborative work environment with stellar views of downtown Fort Lauderdale, weekly team lunches, on-site gym, and casual dress code.
Funeralocity
Funeralocity is a free comparison website offering users the largest search results of prices and locations of funeral services in the US. Whether you are arranging an imminent service for a loved one or a future one for yourself, Funeralocity is an invaluable resource with its independently compiled and up-to-date information for the top 100+ metro areas in the country.
Often, people planning services are not in the location of their loved one, so finding a funeral home from afar can be a daunting process. People planning services are often doing it for the first time and do not know where to begin. Funeralocity makes enlisting funeral services easier.
“We offer the largest and most up-to-date set of prices for funeral homes and crematories that users can search in the privacy of their homes,” says founder Ed Michael Reggie.
Boatsetter
Boatsetter’s mission is to make on-demand water experiences accessible to anyone, so they may create memories that last a lifetime with the ones they love.
Whether you are looking for a boat rental for a day or a week-long charter, Boatsetter provides the largest marketplace for any boating experience, with over 17,000 boats in over 600 locations to choose from.
Boatsetter values are to be the captain, to reach new depths, get ships done, have all hands on deck, and mind your wake. The South Florida based company has raised $27 million in funding since its founding in 2012.
Option Alpha
Option Alpha’s mission is to help investors consistently make smarter, more profitable trades. For this reason, Option Alpha offers a free educational platform to learn how to trade.
For only 30 minutes a day, Option Alpha can teach the skills needed to generate the income you have been dreaming about. Option Alpha offers courses, podcasts, ebooks, webinars, and research to help customers to learn faster.
Option Alpha’s eight core values are: education comes first, great service is guaranteed, tools should be powerful, do not pick the direction, no hidden charges, systematic trading wins, minimal time commitment, and no long-term contracts.
SpeedETab
SpeedETab designs ordering experiences around the devices your customers use. That means native mobile apps that your customers can easily navigate to order and pay for their favorite items. The result? Higher average ticket sizes, increased engagement, and an industry-leading user experience.
With SpeedETab, your customers can pay seamlessly through their app with just the tap of a button. Users can save their credit or debit card for easy and secure mobile payments, or even leverage Apple Pay to make paying for their order as easy as possible. For consumers, SpeedETab partners with the top hotspots to let customers skip the line and pick up their items.
Addigy
Addigy is a powerful, comprehensive IT platform that makes daily tasks easier when managing Apple devices.
Configure, patch, and maintain devices the way you choose. With Addigy businesses can generate operational efficiencies for their environment, rely on their network being secure, and keep their end-users productive and give them the privacy they expect.
Addigy’s SaaS Apple device management solution allows for scalability for your growing Apple ecosystem. Leverage Apple programs like Automated Device Enrollment in Apple Business Manager as well as Addigy’s mobile device management solution for a smoother workflow experience that customers want.
Mozper
Mozper’s financial platform is for you and your children. It is designed with specific tools to allow users to manage their children’s debit card. The customer experience revolves around the money assigned to their children, as well as their usage parameters. Recharge money on the platform using your credit or debit card or from a bank account.
Subsequently, you will be able to establish the amounts you assign for each of your children, where you will control their expenses in each category and the possibility of receiving alerts in real-time when a transaction is made.
Through the Mozper application, your children will know the categories in which they can spend, the tasks with which they can increase their balance and they will experience the meaning of the effort for their work, of saving and above all of having healthy finances. No surprise fees, no worries.
Only responsible children, with healthy finances and many opportunities for family communication.
HUBX
The First Anonymous business to business (B2B) Marketplace. HUBX is a marketplace platform democratizing and disrupting the trillion-dollar secondary distribution industry by empowering manufacturers, brands, and distributors to sell anonymously direct to worldwide B2B buyers. HUBX’s platform provides its sellers cutting edge marketplace technology to enhance and grow their business while offering them access to an exclusive collection of top brands at or below wholesale prices. All inventory is new, factory-sealed or factory-refurbished. HUBX’s custom real-time notifications allow customers the ability to identify market trends and immediately react to their current buying needs.
BabySparks
BabySparks is an innovative program that supports early development through meaningful play. Its program includes thousands of video-based activities, developmental milestones, articles, and tips.
Every day, customers receive age-appropriate activities to support all critical areas of their child’s development. BabySparks’ compilation of over 500 developmental milestones and highlights comes from renowned child-development experts including the American Academy of Pediatrics and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
BabySparks is available on iOS and Android in English and Spanish.
Fanmio
Fanmio’s mission is to create the best fan experiences accessible to everyone around the globe. Fanmio is all about experiences and they are obsessed with producing happiness.
Everybody is a fan of something, whether it be a sports team or film; they dream of that chance to meet their heroes. Unfortunately, these rare face-to-face opportunities require expensive travel and lots of their time. Fanmio wants to change this. You just have to pick an experience, prepare questions or snacks for your video chat, and enjoy.
NovoPayment
Novo payment is present in 11 markets across the Americas providing a cloud-native Banking as a Service platform. Whether you’re a bank, payment organization, retailer, fintech or just want to own your payment process, NovoPayment helps you create the new use cases you’re aiming for. NovoPayment’s solutions include digital banking, and payment and card solutions.
NovoPayment’s employees have great benefit and perks like health, welfare, and other supportive components; as well as generous vacation, holidays, a quarterly bonus for all employees involved in project work, which provides an additional incentive for projects to be delivered on time and with quality to the client. In addition, employees are incentivized not only by salary, but also by a variable component of their salary in a percentage that is based on the company’s performance, and their individual performance.
Vineforce
Vineforce is standardizing and streamlining sales management in the beverage alcohol industry. From suppliers to distributors to individual sales teams, everyone is on the same page with just the click of a button. As a suite of brand strategy & customer relationship management software, Vineforce helps brand managers own and lead all marketing activities for their brands while helping sales teams cultivate and grow account relationships within their route.
At Vineforce, their primary mission is to help people become the best version of themselves by providing tools, training, mentoring, and a people-first culture that supports extraordinary mastery of their craft. The company wants to help them become the people they didn’t even know they could be.
